1. Historical Development of Skyscrapers in the US
A Brief Presentation on The Rise of Tall Buildings
By Daniel J. Bornt

2. Up until the mid 1800’s the maximum height for buildings was four to six stories due to several factors:
Too many stairs to climb up and down every day.
Masonry walls had to be thicker at base, eating up floor space.
Framing could only go up so high before becoming unstable in wind.
Masonry walls have to made thicker and thicker at the bottom floors to support the floors above; eventually they would eat up much of the floor space at the bottom and would be so thick as to be impractical.

3. Crystal Palace (1851) by Joseph Paxton.
The processing and manufacture of standardized iron components freed architects from having to depend on heavy masonry or timbers to support their buildings.

4. The invention of the elevator allowed the vertical transportation of people and goods without using stairs.
Who wants to climb all those stairs? In 1857, the installation of the first passenger elevator in the Haughwout Department Store in New York City made it possible and practical to construct buildings more than four or five stories tall.

5. Iron became even stronger with its refinement into steel through the Bessemer process.

6. Chicago, needing to be rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1871, became the first city where architects put these new technologies to use in a tall building. (Father of skyscrapers: 185’ tall Home Insurance Bldg. 1885)
Home Insurance Building Vital Statistics: Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA Completion Date: 1885 (demolished in 1931) Height: 138 feet Stories: 10 Materials: Steel Facing Materials: Brick Engineer(s): William LeBaron Jenney
Considered the first American skyscraper, the 10-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the first tall building to be supported by a metal skeleton of vertical columns and horizontal beams. Engineer William LeBaron Jenney discovered that thin pieces of steel could support a tall building as well as thick stone walls could. The steel necessary to carry Jenney's 10-story building weighed only one-third as much as a 10-story building made of heavy masonry. Since the steel skeleton supported the weight of the entire building and the exterior wall was really just a skin to keep out the weather, the Home Insurance Building was the first tall building to have many windows. Jenney’s steel frame brought floor space and windows to the structure we now know as the modern skyscraper. During construction, people were so worried that Jenney’s building would fall down that the city halted construction to investigate the structure’s safety. Today, the Home Insurance Building is considered the "father of the skyscraper.“
Source:

7. As space in urban areas became scarce, constricted by geography and previous development, the need to be close to shipping ports, transportation hubs, and the city center instigated vertical development in buildings…

8. …And as engineers and architects developed new structural designs and construction techniques, they became confident in going higher and higher.

9. Now the race was on as Big Business vied to build even taller and taller buildings in Chicago and New York and other major cities.

10. The completion of the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1973 at 1454’ gave us the tallest building in North America and remains so until this day.

11. New York’s 1776’ Freedom Tower replacing the World Trade Center towers will eclipse the Sears Tower as the United States’ tallest when completed in 2008.

12. How high will we go? In 1956 Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the mile-high Illinois tower for Chicago.

13. We’re getting there! Burj Dubai in the UAE will be nearly half a mile high, at 2,313’ tall.

14. Illinois Tower (Proposed 1956)
Burj Dubai (2008)
Freedom Tower (2008)
Tapei Financial Center (2004)
Petronias Towers (1998)
Sears Tower (1974)
World Trade Center (1973)
Empire State (1931)
Woolworth Building (1913)
Home Insurance Chicago (1885)
Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural genius rather overreached itself with his 1956 proposal for a mile-high skyscaper of 528 floors situated in Chicago and to be named The Illinois. A building of this size would have severely tested the engineering capabilities of the time (bear in mind that the world’s tallest skyscraper was still the Empire State Building) and would provide difficulties even today. Aside from the obvious fire hazards, the topmost floors would need some form of weighting in order to prevent their swaying violently in the wind. Then there’s the question of moving around the people who live or work there. So many elevator and service ducts are required for a structure of this size that the lower floors are almost entirely taken up by the core shafts that run through the building which makes very tall buildings uneconomical when so much valuable rental space is lost.
Wright was 89 years old in 1956 so The Illinois represented his last hurrah; having changed the face of twentieth century architecture he’d obviously decided to go out on a high point, as it were. I often wonder whether he expected that it might eventually be built, just as the medieval cathedral builders drew up plans that they knew they’d never see completed in their lifetimes. Source: Enormous structures I: The Illinois
Published March 26th, 2006 in {architecture}