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Introduction
ORIGIONS
Also Known as Commercial
style, 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. A "Second Chicago
School" later emerged in the
1940s and 1970s which
pioneered new building
technologies and structural
systems.
The architecture of Chicago has
influenced and reflected the history
of American architecture. Beginning
in the early 1880s, the Chicago
School pioneered steel-frame
construction and, in the 1890s, the
use of large areas of plate glass.
These were among the first modern
skyscrapers. Many world-famous
architects played a significant role in
the development of Chicago -- rising
from the ashes of the 1871 Great
Chicago Fire into one of the world's
largest cities and greatest collections
of modern architecture.

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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. Quickly, the low buildings
constructed just after the fire were seen as an
inefficient use of valuable space. 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.
So now Chicago was ready to experiment with
daring solutions and would now be the place
where the tall office building would be
perfected. One of the keys to this
development was the invention of the safety
elevator.
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 FIRST CHICAGO SCHOOL
The First Safety Elevator
The 1871 devastating
fire in Chicago

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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

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4The "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
windows 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.
Bay Windows Facing The street

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The first design breakthrough by the Chicago School was in the area of structural
foundations. It arose largely because Chicago was built on marshy ground, which
was unable to support tall buildings. Frederick Baumann suggested that each
vertical foundation of a building should stand on a wide pad that would
distribute its weight more widely over the marshy land. A decade later, Daniel
Burnham and John Root incorporated this exact same idea in their Montauk
Building But this type of foundation took up too much basement space and was
only able to support a structure of 10 stories in height. The way forward was
provided by Dankmar Adler who devise a foundation "raft" of timbers, steel
beams, and iron I-beams. An idea used successfully in the construction of Adler
and Sullivan's Auditorium Building (1889). Adler made a final improvement in
1894 when he invented a type of underground, watertight foundation structure
for the Chicago Stock Exchange which quickly became the template foundation
for skyscrapers across the United States.
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 was
virtually fireproof 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.
An important European influence in
the use of metal skeletal frames, was
the French architect Viollet-le-Duc.
What Were The Characteristic Design Of
The First Chicago School ?
Foundations 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 Romanesque
revival Brattle Square Church, whose tower fired the
architectural aspirations of Boston native Louis Sullivan
when he was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. And it was the revelatory presence of
Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store of 1885,
filling the block bounded by Adams, Quincy, Wells, and
Franklin Streets, that radically altered the design of
Adler & Sullivan's Auditorium Building.
Sullivan's original sketches were for an eclectic
structure terminating in a high, gabled roof. After
the appearance of the Field edifice, Sullivan swept
away his original plans and replaced them with a
virile, restrained Romanesque revival structure
with a single massive tower. "Richardsonian
Romanesque" also influenced Solon S. Beman in
his design of both the brick and granite Pullman
Building (1883) and the Fine Arts Building (1885),
and Burnham & Root's design for the Rookery
Building (1885-87). But perhaps the greatest
master of Romanesque skyscraper design was
Sullivan - notably in his interior of the Auditorium
Building and the entrance to the Chicago Stock
Exchange Building (1893-94) - although he was the
first to embrace the new vertical shape entailed
by buildings that for the first time had greater
height than width.
Stylistic Influence Of the School

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The second source of stylistic inspiration for the First
Chicago School, stemmed from the nature of their prime
building material: steel. The physical attributes of this
crucial material lent themselves to the creation of the
sinuous curve, an outcome which made it a perfect
match for the fashionable style known as Art Nouveau,
which was a feature of both the Rookery Building and
Chicago Stock Exchange.
Steel also facilitated the emergence of the right angle,
boldly expressed in Holabird and Roche's 13-story Tacoma
Building (1889). This idiom was also an important factor in
the upper floors of Adler & Sullivan's Stock Exchange
Building, and most exquisitely in the sense of the sharp
edges of the steel frame lying just beneath the thin,
terracotta and glass walls of Burnham & Root's Reliance
Building (1895).

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Architects whose names are associated with the Chicago
School include Henry Hobson Richardson, Dankmar
Adler, Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, William
LeBaron Jenney, Martin Roche, John Root, Solon S.
Beman, 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 First Chicago School

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Daniel Hudson Burnham and John Wellborn root ;
Was one of Chicago’s most famous architectural companies of the
nineteenth century. It was established by John Wellborn root and
Daniel Hudson Burnham. During their eighteen years of
partnership, they designed and built res identical and commercial
buildings. Their success was crowned with the coordination of the
world’s Columbian exposition (world’s fair) in 1893. The two men
meet when they worked as apprentice draftsmen in the office of
Drake, Carter, and Wight in 1872. A year later they established their
own architecture office and began work by building private
residences for the wealthy families which allowed them to establish
a basis for their business.
Some of their works are; Montezuma castle (hotel), Rookery building,
Heyworth building, Luzon building, Sydney Kent house and more.
Notable Mentions : Architects of the first
Chicago School

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10The Rookery Building is a historic landmark Completed by John wellborn
root and Daniel Burnham root in 1888, it is considered one of their
masterpiece buildings, and was once the location of their office.
Rookery Building
The building measures 181 feet (55 m), is twelve stories tall and is
considered the oldest standing high-rise in Chicago. It has a unique style
with exterior load-bearing walls and an interior steel frame, which
provided a transition between accepted and new building techniques.
The lobby was remodeled in 1905 by Frank Lloyd Wright. Beginning in
1989, the lobby was restored to the original Wright design.
The name of the building is an indirect reference to the old City Hall
building that occupied the land before the Rookery. That building was
nicknamed the Rookery not only in reference to the crows and
pigeons that inhabited its exterior walls, but also because of the
shady politicians it housed.

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Making prodigious use of light and ornamentation, Root and Burnham designed a central light
court to serve as the focal point for the entire building and provide daylight to interior offices.
Rising two stories, the light court received immediate critical acclaim. "There is nothing bolder,
more original, or more inspiring in modern civic architecture than its glass-covered court", wrote
Eastern critic Henry Van Brunt.The central tower over the entrance in 2011
The Rookery's light court serves as a focal point
for the entire building

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Frank Lloyd Wright had his offices in the building in 1898–
1899. In 1905 Wright received the commission to redesign the
lobby in the building. Wright's work on the Rookery recast the
entryway in his prairie style and added a sense of modernity
through his simple but effective lighting design.
Among Wright's most significant alterations was the addition
of white marble with Persian-style ornamentation. The marble
and decorative details added a sense of luxury to the lobby's
steel-laden interior, marked by Burnham and Root's skeletal
metal ribbing. The entire interior space is bright and open. A
double set of curving, heavily ornamented stairs wind upward
from the lobby's second floor into the building's interior. A
wrap-around balcony on the second floor enhances the feeling
of being within the interior of a “clockwork” The Wright
remodel opened the building up to more of the available light.
CHICAGO SCHOOL

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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. The Reliance
Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1970; and on January 7, 1976, it was designated a National
Historic Landmark.
Building, one of the few offices in downtown Chicago to
partially survive the Great Fire. Hale was the founder of the
Hale Elevator Company, an early producer of hydraulic
elevators necessary in skyscraper design. Hale envisioned a
new tower on the site, but first needed to raze the existing
structure. However, its tenants did not want to terminate their
leases.
Reliance Building

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Daniel Burnham recruited Boston architect Charles B. Atwood to
complete the building with E. C. Shankland as lead engineer. After
raising the original building's remaining three floors Atwood used
white glazed architectural terra-cotta cladding, a feature that would
later become strongly associated with him following his works for
the World’s Columbian World’s Columbian exposition in 1893. The
steel framing on the top ten floors was completed over fifteen days,
from July 16 to August 1, 1895. The Reliance Building, so named for
its functionality, opened in March 1895. It was one of the first
skyscrapers to offer electricity and phone service in all of its offices.
In its first few decades, it provided office space for merchants and
health professionals, and dentist.

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The Reliance Building has been called "proto-Modernist" in its
lack of the hierarchy found in classical facades. Its stacks of
projecting bay windows and terra-cotta cladding create an effect
of extraordinary lightness. Its steel frame construction is
physically light as well, being one-third the weight of an
equivalent stone structure. It was a direct precursor of the all-
glass Friedrichstrasse skyscraper proposed by Mies van der rohe
in 1921.
The addition of the remaining floors in 1894–1895 completed
the building and marked the "first comprehensive achievement"
of the Chicago construction method. The building's plate-glass
windows are set within the terra-cotta-tiled facade. Its steel-
frame superstructure is built atop concrete caissons sunk as
much as 125 feet beneath the footing.

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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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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.

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List of the most important high-rise buildings associated with the First Chicago
School of architecture, together with the architects responsible.
- First Leiter Building (1879) William Le Baron Jenney
- The Montauk Building (Montauk Block) (1882-83) Burnham and Root
- Pullman Building (1883) Solon S. Beman
- Home Insurance Building (1884) William Le Baron Jenney
- Marshall Field Warehouse (Chicago) (1885-7) H.H.Richardson.
- Rookery Building (1885-87) Burnham and Root
- Chamber of Commerce Building (1888-9) Edward Baumann & Harris
W. Huehl.
- Tacoma Building (Chicago) (1889) Holabird & Roche
- Second Leiter Building (1889-91) William Le Baron Jenney
- Auditorium Building (1889) Adler and Sullivan
- Fisher Building (1895-6) Designed by Charles Atwood, D.H.Burnham
- Sullivan Center (Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company Building) (1899)
Sullivan
- Gage Group Buildings (1899) (at S. Michigan Avenue) Holabird &
Roche
- Flatiron Building, New York (1901-3) D.H.Burnham & Company
- Heyworth Building (1904) D.H.Burnham & Company
- Reliance Building (1890-95) John Root and Charles B. Atwood
- Rand McNally Building (1890) Burnham and Root
- Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Missouri (1890-91) Adler and
Sullivan
- Monadnock Building (Monadnock Block) (1889-91) Burnham
and Root
- Schiller Theatre Building (Garrick Theater) (1891-93) Adler and
Sullivan
- Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1893-94) Adler and Sullivan
- Prudential Building (Guaranty Building) Buffalo (1894) Adler
and Sullivan
- Marquette Building (1895) Holabird & Roche
- Chicago Building (Chicago Savings Bank Building) (1904-5)
Holabird & Roche
- Brooks Building (1909-10) Holabird & Roche
Famous Skyscrapers Designed by the First Chicago School

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Conclusively, the First Chicago School was an astonishing and a profoundly important achievement.
The Chicago World Fair of 1893 signaled the end of the city's dominance in skyscraper design,
although its reputation would soon be restored with the emergence of the Second Chicago School. Its
matchless tradition of technical skills and aesthetic boldness would surface again in Chicago in the
1930s with the arrival of the Bauhaus, and in the following decades in the work of Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe and his followers, along with the outstanding multi-disciplinary achievements
of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel
Owings.

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Introduction and Origin
THE SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL
In the 1940s, a new wave of building design - known today as
“the Second Chicago School of architecture " emerged from the
work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his efforts of education
at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Its first and
purest expression was the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
Apartments (1951) and their technological achievements.

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DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building which Khan designed and
was completed in Chicago by 1963. This laid the foundations
for the tube structures of many other later skyscrapers.

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25The Second Chicago School is famous for structures like the Lake Shore
Drive Apartments (1948-51), and the Seagram Building (1954-58). The
principal firm of architects associated with the Second Chicago School is
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, whose breakthroughs in design and
structural engineering during the 1960s, spearheaded by Fazlur Khan,
confirmed America as the undisputed leader in high-rise 20th-Century
architecture and led to a new generation of supertall towers.
Interior