Home Insurance Building

Table of Content

• Famous quotes containing the words home, insurance and/or building:
• What Do You Think Is The Significance Of The Home Insurance Building In Chicago?
• Building on Difficult Ground
• Was The Home Insurance Building The First Skyscraper?
• When was home insurance building built in Chicago?
• Materials
• Flatiron Building
• Constructed in 1884, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the world’s first skyscraper

He might have made hundreds of millions by patenting his inventions, but he preferred to let the world progress. He gave every idea he had freely to his fellows, and to him money was but a minor consideration. The National Biscuit company will, after May 1, have for its headquarters practically the whole eleventh floor of the Home Insurance Building. Suites of rooms will be specially reserved for President Crawford, Counsel Green, and other officers of the company. The present headquarters are in the rooms lately occupied by the American Biscuit company, in the Old Colony Building, while special quarters for stock transfer purposes are also being temporarily rented on the sixth floor of the Home Insurance Building. Originally, the Home Insurance Building was 10 stories (138 ft. tall).

The Chicago Fire rocked the insurance world with the revelation that the industry was unprepared to meet such a massive calamity. Fifty-eight insurance companies were driven into bankruptcy by the fire. Even worse, thousands of policyholders were never compensated for their losses.

Famous quotes containing the words home, insurance and/or building:

The building weighed only one-third as much as a stone building would have; city officials were so concerned that they halted construction while they investigated its safety. The Home Insurance Building is an example of the Chicago School in architecture. The Home Insurance Building, built in 1885 and located on the corner of Adams and LaSalle Streets in Chicago, Illinois, went down in history as the world’s first modern skyscraper.

As the first skeleton construction only dates from 1894, but little more can be said than that no material injury has as yet occurred. The architect proposed to submit his designs and calculations to bridge engineers. The design for the skeleton building resembled in many respects iron railroad bridges. But this is not a eulogy, but a story of how Jenney came to build skeleton steel buildings.

What Do You Think Is The Significance Of The Home Insurance Building In Chicago?

Increased rigidity is secured as well as a material reduction of the weight of the columns. Steel riveted columns as now manufactured are considered perfectly safe with a coefficient of safety of four, while for cast iron columns a coefficient of safety of eight is not considered other than reasonably safe. Constructed in 1884 in Chicago, Illinois, Home Insurance Building is the world’s first skyscraper. It was also the first tall building to use structural steel in its frame, although the majority of its structure was composed of cast and wrought iron.

Chicago began to shoot upward until the city became famous as the city of sky scrapers. Structural steel markets boomed, improvements were suggested and adopted, but through all the improvements Mr. plans for air spaces, for light wells, for elevators and for vaults have remained unchanged. The question of expansion and contraction of a column 150 feet high under the extreme variation of temperature, say 130° or more, from the hot sun in summer to excessive cold in winter, presented itself. A solution was found by Mr.Jenney by supporting the walls and floors of each story independently, story by story, on the columns, thus dividing the total movement into as many parts as there were stories. The key to Mr. Jenney’s great success was that he was botyh builder and architect, and had an intimate knowledge of materials. He had tried to get his maximum of light with stone, with wood, and had not succeeded because the materials would not properly carry the weight He decided on iron and steel.

Building on Difficult Ground

The 1850s and '60s were a period of growth for Chicago insurance, as more national companies opened Midwestern offices and more Chicago-based firms were founded. By 1871, Chicago boasted 129 insurance companies, 14 of which were headquartered locally. Robinson's Atlas, 1886Chicago is not an “insurance town” on a par with Hartford or New York, but it still holds an important place in the history of the industry. While Eastern cities were home to pioneering life insurance companies, Chicago insurers spurred historic growth and innovation in fire and automobile coverage, safety standards, and insurance forAfrican Americans. The insurance industry also helped to shape and reshape the physical city and played a crucial role in the aftermath of the ChicagoFire of 1871. But it was a devastation that gave way to the opportunity to rebuild anew.

The designs for the main stairway are very artistic, and are to be carried out in this material. The construction of the building is in the hands of some of the most skillful contractors in the country, and the building, when completed, will not have its superior among the insurance buildings of the country. Six Hale Hydraulic elevators will give rapid and easy access to all floors, and the building will, when finished, cost not less than $600,000. He believed iron and steel would solve the problem, and in 1883 he found the opportunity, and in the face of doubts of his fellows he built the Home Insurance building, founding a new era in city building. The Home company appointed him its architect, and instructed him to prepare designs for a tall fireproof office building at the northeast corner of La Salle and Adams streets.

President Herbert Hoover and New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt attended the dedication of the 102-story, 1,250 high building. Erected in just 13 months, the building grew at a rate of more than a story a day, while constructed workers toiled on girders a fifth of a mile above the ground. The building would remain the world's tallest for forty years, before it was overtaken by the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.

Ducat had been a major in the Civil War, during which he had made the acquaintance of William Le Baron Jenney. Had Jenney not been a good friend of Ducat, it is reasonable to assume that Jenney’s career would have faded into obscurity. Instead, Ducat gave Jenney a chance to design his first tall office building.

When was home insurance building built in Chicago?

Levine & Co., stated that all the several thousand tons of metal brought to his company’s yards is in first class condition as far an he can find. “So far as the metal work Is concerned the Home Insurance building could have remained standing until doomsday.” Mr. Clonick said. A committee was appointed some time ago to make a thorough study of the Home Insurance building and its findings will not be made known until the last brick has been carried away. However, some authorities assert that the results to date indicate that the Home Insurance claims to be the first skyscraper very likely will be substantiated. Elevators were already invented at this time, and were implemented in the building. These elevators seemed like relatively new technology at the time, but were very slow and clunky compared to elevators today.

The story of how Jenney saved a section of Grant’s army at Shiloh not only illustrated his resourcefulness as an engineer but thrown an interesting sidelight on the great general. To understand Jenney and his method of working it is necessary to know the character of the man and his education. Six of its members came over on the Mayflower and the Little James to Plymouth. John Jenney, the first of the American family, came from England in the Little James in July, 1623, and it is recorded that while he had been a brewer and baker in England and Holland, he became a builder in America. In 1636 the court at Plymouth gave him the privilege of building a mill on the town brook to grind and beat corn. John was, like his distinguished descendant, a landscape artist, for he was appointed to lay out the highways.

Chicago is the home of the world’s first skyscraper, and the Home Insurance building, recently demolished to make way for the huge forty-three story Field Building, has been awarded the honor of being the first structure ever to use the skeleton type of construction. A whole window bay taken from between the third and fourth floors Is to be installed In the architectural section of the Rosenwald Museuni of Science and Industry. The architec- tural section of tlie museum will dem- the art of building from the (lawn of civilization to the present time and the Home Insurance bay, measuring 16xl6 feet, will be installed Jn the department showing the birth and growth of the skyscraper.

He set them gaping by constructing great buildings from the top down, or from the middle up; he calmly stuck steel smokestacks into office buildings, ignoring the cries of alarm; he acknowledged no precedent, but established half the existing precedents in modern building. It fronts 140 feet on La Salle and 97 on Adams, with a height of 180 feet. The walls of the lower two stories are made of one course of granite blocks. The foundations are heavy, and the brick walls of the superstructure are very thick. The principal tenants are Armour & Co., who have general offices here, and the Union National Bank, of which J. Insurance agents, manufacturers’ agents, publishers, and professional men fill the building.

The plumbing of this building has been referred to already in our columns, but the work just finished on the eighth floor deserves specification, and in the building throughout no expenses nor pains have been spared to have the plumbing as good as any office building in the country. On the floor named—in one chamber and everything in marble—are twenty closets, five compartments, three wash basins, and a slop-sink which is one of the finest put up in Chicago, being all marble in panel work. In the hallway of each floor there is a beautiful drinking fountain. Mr. Edward Baggot, whose work it is, likewise furnished one of the floors with gas fixtures at Fifth avenue and Madison street.