Steel-frame skyscraper
Rascacielos con estructura de acero
- Date
- 1885 · confidence high
- Place
- Chicago, Illinois, United States
- Credited to
- William Le Baron Jenney (Home Insurance Building, 10 storeys, 1885); Chicago School (Burnham, Root, Sullivan)
- People
- 👤 William Le Baron Jenney1832–1907
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Building whose weight is borne by a metal skeleton rather than by its walls, which become mere cladding. It broke masonry's height limit.
The Home Insurance Building combined iron and steel; some historians consider the Rand McNally Building (1889) the first entirely of steel.
What it led to
- Vertical city and business district (Manhattan, Chicago's Loop)
- Curtain wall and modern architecture
- Rising urban land prices and densification
Built on
- Structural iron and prefabrication (Crystal Palace)1851
- Safety elevator1852-1854
- Bessemer process1856
- Electric elevator1880–1889
- Bessemer steel
- Otis's safety lift
- Structural cast iron
Made possible
- Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building2004-2010
- Curtain wall
- Empire State Building
- High-speed lift