Home Insurance Building, Chicago

Assembled from 35 blocks · 2 evidence · 28 related

1. Story
2. A ten-storey office building at the corner of LaSalle and Adams Streets in Chicago, designed by William Le Baron Jenney and completed in 1885, with two further storeys added about 1890. It is conventionally called the first skyscraper because its floor and wall loads were carried on a metal skeleton of columns and beams rather than on load-bearing masonry. The claim is genuinely contested, and the reasons are worth knowing: the frame combined cast-iron columns with wrought-iron beams, with Bessemer steel beams used only in the upper storeys; the masonry piers were not entirely relieved of load; and rival claims exist for earlier partial iron framing. When the building was demolished in 1931 its structure was examined, and that examination is the source of much of what is known about how it was actually built. It is a rare case where a demolition produced the evidence for a historical claim about a building.
3. Knowledge
4. The steel skeleton frame
5. The safety elevator
6. Home Insurance Building, Chicago
7. William Le Baron Jenney
8. Chicago
9. Connections
10. William Le Baron Jenney
11. The safety elevator
12. Chicago
13. The steel skeleton frame
14. The Home Insurance Building is completed in Chicago
15. Demolition supplies the evidence for the claim
16. Home Insurance Building, Chicago
17. The Home Insurance Building is completed in Chicago
18. Home Insurance Building, Chicago
19. Burj Khalifa
20. Otis demonstrates the elevator safety brake
21. Home Insurance Building, Chicago
22. The Home Insurance Building is completed in Chicago
23. Chicago Marathon
24. The first Chicago Marathon, as the Mayor Daley Marathon
25. The Great Migration
26. The Great Migration
27. Load path
28. Structural steel
29. The curtain wall
30. Home Insurance Building, Chicago
31. The Home Insurance Building is completed in Chicago
32. Demolition supplies the evidence for the claim
33. Evidence
34. Jenney's Home Insurance Building (1885) is conventionally identified as the first tall building carried on a metal skeleton frame, and the claim is qualified in the scholarly literature. Supports the frame, elevator and Chicago School records. V55 verification basis: the site was not reachable in this session; entries are cited by title from established record.
35. Standard structural history of Chicago commercial building, including the composition of the Home Insurance Building frame as established when the building was demolished in 1931, and the qualifications attached to the "first skyscraper" claim. V55 verification basis: real and standard, not consulted in this session.