THE RISE AND RISE OF CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE
Since it was founded in 1830 by 200 or so pioneering souls, Chicago has shown an unstinting appetite for expansion, innovation and the grand gesture, be it in commerce or culture. By 1880 the population had rocketed to more than half a million and would more than double again in the next 10 years. Only the great fire of 1871, which burnt a four-mile-wide swathe through the city and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 slowed the energetic progress that found its most tangible expression in its varied and ground-breaking architecture.
With so much of its downtown area destroyed in 1871, Chicago is not a city to visit for ancient history, more for its original solutions to rebuilding. With money to spend from banking and manufacturing, handsome office blocks, civic buildings and grandiose churches emerged that blended European Beaux-Arts, Renaissance, Gothic Revival and Baroque influences with Chicago swagger.
What set the city apart from the 1880s was the pioneering use of steel-framed structures, which were strong, relatively lightweight and could accommodate plate glass, a new material in the 1890s. The first so-called skyscraper – a mere 10 floors – was the steel- framed Home Insurance Building by Chicago School architect William Le Baron Jenney. Chicago showed no sentimentality for this architectural first, however – the building was torn down to be replaced in 1931 with the soaring Art Deco Field Building.
Innovative leaps in construction engineering opened up new design possibilities for leading architects such as Louis Sullivan. His Sullivan Center, formerly Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co, used a tiled facade, deep-set windows and plate glass and steel construction to maintain a lightness across the vast expanse of the store. The intricate iron decorations around the corner doors, however, are a direct link to a more romantic tradition.
Architectural Traveller | Page 40
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