The Home Insurance Building is completed in Chicago
Jenney's ten-storey office building is finished at LaSalle and Adams. Its metal skeleton carries the floors and the external walls, so the wall stops being the structure and becomes an envelope. It is conventionally the first skyscraper; the claim is contested because the frame mixed cast iron, wrought iron and Bessemer steel and the masonry piers were not wholly relieved of load.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Home Insurance Building, Chicago · site · United States
- The steel skeleton frame · technology system · North America, then worldwide · not located
- William Le Baron Jenney · person · United States · not located
- Chicago · city · United States
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Skyscrapers; Home Insurance Building; Jenney, William Le Baron - The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago
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.
Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library · 2004-2005 (online edition) · Partly verified
The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, entries on Skyscrapers and on the Home Insurance Building, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/
The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875-1925
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.
University of Chicago Press, Carl W. Condit · 1964 · Partly verified
Condit, C.W., The Chicago School of Architecture, University of Chicago Press, 1964
Recorded on Home Insurance Building, Chicago
- The Home Insurance Building is completed in Chicago
- The Great Migration
- Demolition supplies the evidence for the claim
- The first Chicago Marathon, as the Mayor Daley Marathon
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The first Chicago Marathon, as the Mayor Daley Marathon · 1977-09-25
- Demolition supplies the evidence for the claim · 1931
- The Great Migration · 1916–1970