The Chicago School was a movement of architects in Chicago in the late 19th century known for pioneering the steel-frame skyscraper. Key developments included William LeBaron Jenney's use of a steel skeleton in the Home Insurance Building (1885), allowing for taller buildings with more space. Other influential architects included Louis Sullivan, who developed decorative styles emphasizing vertical lines to make buildings appear taller. The Chicago School helped establish the skyscraper as the dominant building type in American cities.

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Introduction
ORIGIONS
The Chicago school was a
school of architects active in
Chicago at the turn of the 20th
century. They were among the
first to promote the new
technologies of steel-frame
construction in commercial
buildings.

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While there were many reasons for the
emergence of this school one of the major
once were:
The 1871 devastating fire in Chicago that
created the need of rebuilding the city and
also Architects were encouraged to build
higher structures because of the escalating
land prices. By 1890 Chicago had a population
of more than a million people and had
surpassed Philadelphia to become the
second-largest metropolis in the United
States.
Chicago was ready to experiment with daring
solutions and would now be the place where
the tall office building would be perfected.
Two of the keys to this development were the
invention of the safety elevator and the
development of manufacturing affordable
steel.
The early structures of Chicago such as the Montauk had
traditional load-bearing walls of brick and stone, but it was the
metal skeleton frame that allowed the architects of the First
Chicago School to perfect their signature building, the skyscraper.
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL
The First Safety Elevator
The 1871 devastating
fire in Chicago

4. Equitable Life Insurance Building, New York City, George
B. Post, 1868-1870

5. Western Union Telegraph Building, New York City,
George P. Post, 1872-1875

6. New York Tribune Building, New York City, Richard
Morris Hunt, 1873-1875

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The development of the skyscraper can be understood not only as an
architectural style, but as the manifestation of the Chicago fire 1871
turned into redemption.
Designed by William Le Baron Jenney, the home insurance building was
an icon. He devised a solution to the problem of fireproof construction
for tall buildings. What he did was substituting steel in the structural
system for cast iron, which melts at high temperatures clad the building’s
exterior with traditional masonry.
This new construction, while costly, had overwhelming advantages. It was
almost fireproof; the thin curtain walls hung from the steel frame allowed
for more interior rental space; new floors could be added easily; and
since the exterior walls were no longer essential to holding up the
building, they could be cut away and replaced by ever larger expanses of
glass, an important consideration in the early era of electrical lighting.
The Home
Insurance Building,
which some
regarded as the first
skyscraper in the
world, was built in
Chicago in 1885.
INVENTION OF THE SKYSCRAPER

8. Home Insurance Building, Chicago, William LeBaron
Jenney, 1883-1885

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The "Chicago window" originated in this school. It is a three-part
window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two smaller
double-hung sash windows. The arrangement of windows on the facade
typically creates a grid pattern, with some projecting out from the
facade forming bay windows. The Chicago window combined the
functions of light-gathering and natural ventilation; a single central
pane was usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were
operable. These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel
bays that projected out over the street.
The Chicago window combined the functions of light-
gathering and natural ventilation; a single central pane was
usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were
operable.

10. Chicago Windows
Oriel Bays

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The first series of high-rises in both
New York and Chicago had traditional
load-bearing walls of stone and brick.
Unfortunately, these could not
support super tall structures, a
problem which stimulated Chicago
School designers to invent a metal
skeleton frame - first used in Jenney's
Home Insurance Building (1884) - that
enabled the construction of real
skyscrapers. A metal frame could be
fireproofed and, since the walls no
longer carried the building's weight,
enabled architects to use thinner
curtain walls, thus freeing up more
usable space. The same applied to
the exterior walls, which could now
be replaced by glass, reducing the
amount of electrical lights required.
What Were The Characteristic Design Of
The First Chicago School ?
Steel Frames

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Chicago architects had a new set of skyscraper
aesthetics, the driving force for this style of aesthetics
emanated from two totally different sources: architect
Henry Hobson Richardson and the very nature of the
material newly adopted which was steel.
The first was the architect Henry Hobson Richardson.
His ideal was the rugged Romanesque of the South of
France. In 1870 on Boston's Commonwealth Avenue,
Richardson designed the trailblazing Richardsonian
Romanesque Trinity Church.
Stylistic Influence Of the School

13. Richardsonian Romanesque Architecture

14. Marshall Field
Wholesale Store,
Chicago, H.H. Richardson,
1885-1887

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Architects whose names are associated
with the Chicago School include Henry
Hobson Richardson, Dankmar Adler,
Daniel Burnham, William LeBaron
Jenney, and Louis Sullivan. Frank Lloyd
Wright started in the firm of Adler and
Sullivan but created his own Prairie
Style of architecture.
Who Were the Greatest Architects of the Chicago School?

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13
The Reliance Building is a skyscraper located at 1 W.
Washington Street in the Loop community of Chicago, Illinois.
The first floor and basement were designed by John Root of the
Burnham and root architectural firm in 1890, with the rest of
the building completed by Charles B. Atwood in 1895. It is the
first skyscraper to have large plate glass windows make up the
majority of its surface area, foreshadowing a design feature
that would become dominant in the 20th century.
Reliance Building

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Louis Henry Sullivan (1856 –1924) was an American architect,
and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of
modernism". He is considered by many as the creator of the
modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the
Chicago school, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an
inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who have come
to be known as the Prairie school. Along with Henry Hobson
Richardson and Wright, Sullivan is one of "the recognized
trinity of American architecture.
Louis
Sullivan
“Form follows function” would become one of the prevailing
tenets of modern architects.

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Another signature element of Sullivan's work is the massive,
semi-circular arch. Sullivan employed such arches throughout
his career—in shaping entrances, in framing windows, or as
interior design.

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18
Also known as the Wainwright Building is a Ten story red brick
office building at 709 Chestnut Street in downtown Louis,
Missouri. The Wainwright Building is among the first
skyscrapers in the world. It was designed by Dankmar Adler
and Louis Sullivan built between 1890 and 1891.
The Wainwright Building

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As designed, the first floor of the Wainwright Building was intended for
street-accessible shops, with the second floor filled with easily accessible
public offices. The higher floors were for "honeycomb" offices, while the
top floor was for water tanks and building machinery.
Aesthetically, the Wainwright Building exemplifies Sullivan's
theories about the tall building, which included a tripartite
(three-part) composition (base-shaft-attic) based on the
structure of the classical column. And his desire to emphasize
the height of the building. He wrote: "[The skyscraper] must
be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of altitude
must be in it the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It
must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer
exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single
dissenting line.
The Wainwright Building

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20The base contained retail stores that required wide glazed openings;
Sullivan's ornament made the supporting piers read as pillars. Above
it the semi-public nature of offices up a single flight of stairs are
expressed as broad windows in the curtain wall. A cornice separates
the second floor from the grid of identical windows of the screen
wall, where each window is "a cell in a honeycomb, nothing more"".
The building's windows and horizontals were inset slightly behind
columns and piers, as part of a “vertical aesthetic” to create what
Sullivan called “a proud and soaring thing.” This perception has since
been criticized as the skyscraper were designed to make money, not
to serve as a symbol. The ornamentation for the building includes a
wide frieze below the deep cornice, which expresses the formalized
yet naturalistic celery-leaf foliage typical of Sullivan and published in
his System of Architectural Ornament, decorated spandrels between
the windows on the different floors and an elaborate door surround at
the main entrance. "Apart from the slender brick piers, the only solids
of the wall surface are the spandrel panels between the windows.....
They have rich decorative patterns in low relief, varying in design and
scale with each story." The building includes embellishments of terra
cotta, a building material that was gaining popularity at the time of
construction. In 1968, the building was designated as a National
Historic Landmark and in 1972 it was named a city landmark.

22. Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Adler & Sullivan, 1890-
1891

23. Carson Pirie Scott Department Store,
Chicago, Adler & Sullivan, 1899-1904
• Steel-framed structure
• Dramatic increase in window area
• The greatest amount of daylight
• Vertical and horizontal lines on the facade

24. Carson Pirie Scott

25. National Farmers Bank
• Owatonna, Minnesota
• Built in 1908
• First of Sullivan’s “jewel
boxes”
• Clad in red brick with
green terra cotta bands
• Features two large arches
• Restored in 1958 and
1976-1981

31. Monadnock Building, Chicago, Burnham & Root, 1884-1892
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EJidEJa9dA

32. Reliance Building, Chicago, Burnham & Root, 1889-
1891