Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 170

A look at Chicago's past By June Sawyers book had been placed inadvertently on a bird cage by his wife. The cage was made of flimsy wires, but it provided steady support for the book. Inspired, Jenney recalled structures he had seen in the Philippines that were made of light bamboo frames but could withstand the force of violent typhoons and earthquakes. Why, he thought, couldn't the same design principle be used for larger buildings? When construction resumed, Jenney was ready with radically new plans. Jenney's design revolutionized architecture.

Departing from the old method that relied on thick load-bearing walls and massive foundations that made tall buildings uneconomical, Jenney utilized a skeleton of iron and steel that allowed building up without digging deep and building out. It was the first new--and more efficientmethod of erecting tall structures since the Gothic cathedrals of medieval times. Born in 1832 into a wealthy seafaring family from Massachusetts, Jenny had studied architecture in Paris but came to its practice in a roundabout way. After joining the California gold rush, he sailed on to the Philippines, became fascinated with railroads, returned to the States and served as an engineer with the Union Army during the Civil War. Years later he founded an architectural firm that became a training ground for many leading architects of the Chicago School, among them William Holabird, Martin Roche, Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan.

Jenney died in Los Angeles in June, 1907, amid challenges to his claim of being the first architect to use the skeleton frame. The dispute was not settled until 1931, when a committee appointed by the estate of Marshall Field determined that the Home Insurance Building was indeed the "first skyscraper." Ironically, the landmark was razed that same year to make room for the 42-story Field Building, now the LaSalle Bank Building. Way We Were tional rupted Jenney by lines, had a but originally bricklayers' construction, designed strike. begun the Sitting in building 1884, dejectedly along was during inter- tradithe delay in his living room, Jenney noticed that a heavy had On LaSalle Street, a giant step to the sky in the was pride. hicago among Lavery, the not tallest is There who them now beginning on necessarily were the skyscraper a proud the 1911 those English a to visit be who cause skyscraper to painter the of praised city Chicago civic John itself but it, of gushed, "There has been nothing on Earth like it since Egypt built the pyramids." On the other side were critics like architect David Knickerbocker Boyd, who warned that "the skyscraper constitutes a menace to public health and safety and an offense which must be stopped." As more and more of the tall buildings were built, critics feared pedestrians would be overwhelmed by a dense urban forest of towering slabs blocking the sun and turning the streets into gloomy canyons.

Some, like the inventor Thomas Edison, grew alarmed at the rapid rate of skyscraper building, and prestigious magazines such as Scientific American, Literary Digest and Atlantic sought restraints on further skyscraper construction. The landmark structure that opened the way for the skyscraper to soar to breathtaking heights was William LeBaron Jenney's Home Insurance Building, erected on the northeast corner of LaSalle and Adams Streets in 1885. At 10 stories more were added in or William LeBaron Jenney and the Home Insurance Building, the 1885 landmark skyscraper on LaSalle at Adams. around 120 feet, it was taller than the average five-story commercial building of its day but shorter than at least three others: Chicago's 130-foot-tall Montauk Block Building, built in 1882, and the Western Union and New York Tribune buildings, both built in 1875 in New York City. But Home Insurance was the first to use the innovative skeleton frame.

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