Why was the home insurance building built in Chicago?

Table of Content

• What Do You Think Is The Significance Of The Home Insurance Building In Chicago?
• Famous quotes containing the words home, insurance and/or building:
• The World’s Tallest Building In 1884: The Home Insurance Building
• Constructed in 1884, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the world’s first skyscraper
• Materials
• A New Design

The remaining two lotlines were protected by code-required masonry bearing walls. The lot was sufficiently wide for Jenney to “slip-in” two offices in back of the Adams slab turning it into a double-loaded corridor. This required the elevator core to be pushed deep enough into the lot to make a lightwell that also allowed one office to be located on the opposite side of the lightwell. As a result, when those same buildings are surrounded by slums or overcrowded, they serve as an emblem of economic disparity.

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.

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

For a number of years a controversy has taken place as to whether the Home Insurance building or the Tacoma building was the first building of skyscraper type. The Home Insurance building, which was designed by William Le Baron Jenney, was completed In the fall of 1885, a few years prior to the Tacoma building. When the latter structure was torn down a few years back, the controversy flared up and has been going on ever since. Skeleton construction was adopted instantly—everybody adopted it—for the secret was solved. In one case it brought disaster; the collapse of the Ireland building in New York after which Mr, Jenney wrote a severe reproof of architects who brought disaster to use steel and iron without knowing their business. During the world’s fairt year in Chicago thousands of architects from all over the world came to Chicago and watched with amazement the construction of the New York Life building.

The building opened in 1885 and was demolished 47 years later in 1931. At this time, it was still conventional construction practice to make the foundations for both the columns and intermediate mullions the same size, independent of the load they carried. The rotation resulted from the heavier-loaded piers settling at a greater rate than the smaller mullions, transferring more and more load to the mullions, and often resulted in severe cracking in and around them. The easiest way to avoid this differential settlement was to transfer the mullion loads over to the main piers before they reached the ground. If this could be done, not with a single transfer beam at the lowest floor, but with a series of transfer beams as Jenney had detailed, the loads in the mullions would be uniform, and therefore the mullions’ cross-section would not have to increase as the piers did, keeping the windows as large as possible.

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

The construction of tall towers could provide much needed density to help reduce housing costs and inequality in cities such as New York and San Francisco. The Home Insurance Building, Chicago’s tallest structure, was built in 1927. It was constructed in 1901 and served as the location for the first two floors of the New York Public Library. It was demolished for the construction of the Field Building, also known as the LaSalle Bank Building. The Home Insurance Building was an important part of Chicago history.

The two masonry bearing party walls that ran the entire height of the building on its north and east lotlines, as well as the interior iron cage, were typical for the period. Jenney‘s objective was to minimize the size of the masonry piers in the office floors in order to maximize the daylighting of the interior office space. Therefore, he inserted a cast iron section within the exterior masonry piers in the two street facades. These were story-high, hollow rectangular cast-iron columns that supported the floor beams. The iron columns were set on top of the granite piers at the third floor and were bolted one on top of another to support the upper seven floors and roof. Chicago has no parallel for the greatness and dignity of this entrance, nor has this country unless in one or two New York instances.

The World’s Tallest Building In 1884: The Home Insurance Building

If he liked a student in his office or a draftsman he would stop his work and spend an hour or two teaching, instructing, explaining. He was a naturak teacher, able to impart his own knowledge to others, and his success in this line is evinced by the fact that scores of men who now are at the head of the architectural profession in America were trained under him. Yet, except among architects and builders, he was little known in Chicago. Possibly he was as well known in Berlin, London, Vienna, Paris—in any great city—as he was in his own. Architects and builders from all over the world came to him to learn—and were taught.

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 Chicago press at the time of its construction did not refer to it as the first skyscraper in Chicago. An 1884 list of buildings considered skyscrapers in Chicago listed three buildings in the city whose final heights would be taller than the Home Insurance Building's, although the Home Insurance Building was completed in 1885, a year after the list. Iron framing of multistory buildings had originated in England in the late 18th century and was able to replace exterior load-bearing walls by 1844, but social movements and legal regulations hindered their use at that time.

Between 1913 and 1930, New York City’s MetLife Tower was the world’s second tallest building. The Woolworth Building, which stood as the tallest structure in the world from 1913 to 1930, was surpassed by the Wall Street Building in New York City in 1930. The Empire State Building surpassed the Chrysler Building in 1931 as the world’s tallest building, which stood from 1930 until 1931. Following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a boom of new construction would revitalize the city’s economy and completely transform its skyline. Instead of wood, the new buildings going up in Chicago were made largely of stone, iron and steel, a relatively new material. The Home Insurance Building, located at the corner of Adams and LaSalle Streets in the Loop, Chicago’s business district, became a leading example of this era of new construction.

Constructed in 1884, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the world’s first skyscraper

He returned home, entered Lawrence Scientific school at Cambridge, Mass., but not being satisfied with the school sailed in June, 1853, and entered the Ecole Centrale de Art et Manufactures. Indeed, Mr. Jenney openly hinted that Mr. Du Maurier’s “Trilby” was but a story of the student lives of Du Maurier and the great painter, but when accused of being the “Little Billee,” he always made strenuous denials. A man of long ancestry and honored name, a student with Whistler and Du Marier in the Latin quarter of Paris, he would address the architects of the world on involved scientific propositions or slip out to the kitchen of his club and gravely instruct the chef in the art of preparing a certain pastry.

Two more stories were added in 1890, bringing the construction up to 12 stories (180 ft.). Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians. Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more.

Materials

One of his first big works was to lay out and build the beautiful village of Riverside for Emery E. Childs of Philadelphia. There was another trait of character which endeared him to his professional brothers, and to their usual enemies, the builders. He always gave a man a hearing, and if possible a chance, and it is said there are dozens of rich men in Chicago and New York today who owe their wealth to his interest and kindness.

Several buildings after the Civil War incorporated some form of innovation to indicate their claim to be the first skyscrapers. In 1870, the Equitable Life Assurance Society completed the construction of its 7-story headquarters in Manhattan. It is the world’s first facility to use steam-powered elevators for office tenants. Because of the building's unique architecture and weight-bearing frame, it is considered one of the world's first skyscrapers.