CHICAGO SCHOOL / COMMERCIAL STYLE

• Unknown
• Jenney
• Michelozzo (architectural source)
• Richardson
• Burnham & Root
• Adler & Sullivan

Ancient Concrete Work in Pantheon Dome (circa 125 AD)

  "Hadrian's engineers began clearing the site and preparing the foundations. They dug a circular trench 26 feet wide and 15 feet deep for the rotunda's foundation and rectangular trenches for the pronaos and the connector. They lined the trenches with timber forms and layered those with pozzolana cement - a powerful cement that the Romans discovered they could make by grinding together lime and a volcanic product found at Pozzuoli, Italy.

"Though the Romans had been building with concrete since about 200 BC, work on the Pantheon was difficult and proceeded in gradual stages. Other buildings surrounded the site, so laborers lacked space in which to work.

"They also lacked machinery. Vitruvius (cir. 20 BC), a noted Roman architect, recorded the process followed in his day, that was probably still used by the Pantheon's builders. The ancients hand mixed wet lime and volcanic ash in a mortar box, adding very little water so that they got a nearly dry composition. They carried this mixture to the job site in baskets and poured it over a prepared layer of rock pieces. They then tamped the mortar into the rock layer. The tamping packed the mortar, reduced the need for excess water, but, at the same time, stimulated bonding.

"Transportation presented another problem. Just about everything had to come down the Tiber by boat, including the 16 gray granite columns Hadrian ordered for the Pantheon's pronaos. Each was 39 feet tall, five feet in diameter, and 60 tons in weight. Hadrian had these columns quarried at Mons Claudianus in Egypt's eastern mountains, dragged on wooden sledges to the Nile, floated by barge to Alexandria, and put on vessels for a trip across the Mediterranean to the Roman port of Ostia. From there the columns were barged up the Tiber.

"Eventually, work began on the concrete dome, constructed in tapering courses or steps that are thickest at the base (20 feet) and thinnest at the oculus (7.5 feet). The Romans used the heaviest aggregate, mostly basalt, at the bottom and lighter materials, such as pumice, at the top.

"They embedded empty clay jugs into the dome's upper courses to further lighten the structure and facilitate the concrete's curing.

"In the dome's construction, the Romans probably used temporary wooden centering on which they layered concentric rings of masonry and concrete.

"Through the ages, engineers have theorized about the centering. Some say the Romans used heavy wooden scaffolding, throughout the construction process, that reached from the floor to the oculus.

"Others believe that centering was not required for the lower third of the dome, so the Romans used a lighter centering system supported from the dome's interior, second cornice line.

"To create the dome's oculus, which acts as a compression ring, the Romans built two circles of bipedales, handmade bricks that were 23.4 inches square and 1.56 inches thick. They laid the bipedales edgewise in three vertical courses, then circled the oculus with a bronze cornice."  ("The Pantheon - Rome 126 AD" http://static.monolithic.com/thedome/pantheon/index.html)

Thermae Windows from Baths of Diocletian (305 AD)

CHICAGO SCHOOL / COMMERCIAL STYLE

Prefabricated iron construction, architect unknown (mid-1850s, New York)

Proved particularly dangerous in fires as the iron rapidly lost its strength in the heat.

William LeBaron Jenney (1832-1907)

"In 1868 Jenney established an office in Chicago which became the training ground for a number of leading architects of the First Chicago School, including, among others, Martin Roche, William Holabird, and Louis Sullivan. When, in 1884, the Home Insurance Company asked Jenney to design an office tower, the architect designed an iron skeleton to bear the weight of the structure. After work began, the Carnegie-Phipps Steel Company, realizing the potential of a vast new market, informed Jenney that it could supply him with steel instead of iron beams. Thus the Home Insurance Building at the northeast corner of LaSalle and Adams Streets became a truly seminal structure.

"This new construction, while costly, had overwhelming advantages. It was almost fireproof; the thin curtain walls hung from the steel frame allowed for more interior rental space; new floors could be added easily; and since the exterior walls were no longer essential to holding up the building, they could be cut away and replaced by ever larger expanses of glass, an important consideration in the early era of electrical lighting." 
("Architecture: The First Chicago School" http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/62.html)

  "The Home Insurance Building was built in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois and demolished in 1931 to make way for the Field Building (now the LaSalle Bank Building). It was the first building to use structural steel in its frame, but the majority of its structure was composed of cast and wrought iron. Due to the building's unique architecture and unique weight bearing frame, it is considered to be the first skyscraper in the world. It had 10 stories and rose to a height of 138 feet (42 m) high. A forensic analysis done during its demolition purported to show that the building was the first to carry both floors and external walls entirely on its metal frame, but details and later scholarship have largely disproved this, and it has been shown that the structure must have relied upon both metal and masonry elements to support its weight, and to hold it up against wind.

"The architect was William LeBaron Jenney, an engineer. In fact, 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."  ("Home Insurance Building - Wikipedia"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Insurance_Building)

Jenney's method of steel frame construction

Second Leiter Building (1891), also known as the Sears building

      Details of second Leiter Building

Ludington Building (1891)

Jenney's Ludington Building is Chicago's "earliest-surviving, steel-frame building ... one of the first structures to be completely clad in terra cotta."  ("Chicago Landmarks | Ludington Building" http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Landmarks/L/Ludington.html )

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86)

Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston (1872)

      Plan

  Interior

Trinity Church in situ

Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi (1391 - 1472?)
Palazzo Medici Riccardi (Florence, 1445)

Note the similarity between Michelozzo's Medici Palace and Richardson's Marshall Field Store.

Marshall Field Store, Chicago (1887; demolished 1930)

"Commissioned in 1885 by legendary merchant Marshall Field, H.H. Richardson ... designed the exterior masonry piers and arches with interior framing of wood and iron."  ("Marshall Field's Wholesale Store - Wikipedia"   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Field%27s_Wholesale_ Store )

"During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chicago's Marshall Field and Company was the city's dominant department store and one of the nation's most influential wholesale and retail merchandising firms. Its massive retail store at State and Washington Streets in the Loop — built in stages between 1893 [sic] and 1915 — occupied an entire city block and was one of the world's largest retail buildings."   ("Jazz Age Chicago--Marshall Field and Company" http://chicago.urban-history.org/ven/dss/fields.shtml)

"The Field Wholesale Store appeared to be a single huge block. Since the interior consisted of open loft spaces, Richardson maintained an uninterrupted rhythm of arcades along each side. Instead of historical detail, Richardson used the textured monochromatic surface of the granite and brownstone masonry to provide visual interest, supplemented only by a chamfer at the corners and an enriched terminal cornice. Simple though it appears, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store demonstrated clearly that a large commercial block could be expressed as a single integrated unit of great force and authority. No longer were meretricious historical ornament or a ponderous roof obligatory. Large-scale coherent forms, graced with plain walls, could be effective. Though structurally the Field building was conservative, with bearing walls and cast iron and wooden columns for internal supports, the visual expression was highly advanced and pointed in a new direction which many critics and architects, both in the United States and Europe, interpreted as being distinctly American." (Leland M. Roth. A Concise History of American Architecture. p169-70 qtd in "Marshall Field Store - Henry Hobson Richardson - Great Buildings Online" http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Marshall_Field_Sto re.html)

                                Central court, circa 1910; main aisle & merchandise displays, circa 1915

Daniel Burnham (1846-1912) and John Wellborn Root (1850-91)

The Monadnock Building, Chicago  (north half 1889-91; south half 1891-93)

             North side

"The two halves of this building provide a unique perspective for examining the history and development of modern architecture.

"The north part  — famed for its lack of traditional ornamentation — is a masonry, wall-bearing structure, the last skyscraper to employ this method of construction, with six-foot thick walls at the base.

"The south addition, on the other hand, is an early example of steel-frame construction, its underlying structure revealed through narrow piers and wide windows.

"Together, they mark the end of one building tradition and the beginning of another."   ("Chicago Landmarks | Monadnock Block"   http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Landmarks/M/Monadnock.html )

The Reliance Building (base built in 1890; upper stories built 1894-95)

"The Reliance Building is the first skyscraper to have large plate glass windows make up the majority of its surface area." ("Reliance Building - Wikipedia" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Building)

Detail of curtain wall     

The Reliance Building ... "is internationally recognized as the direct ancestor of today's glass-and-steel skyscrapers. Extremely narrow piers, mullions, and spandrels, all covered with cream-colored terra cotta decorated with Gothic-style tracery, divide wide expanses of glass and clearly delineate the interior steel framework that supports the building. The light and airy facade is almost entirely windows — both flat and projecting bays — of the type known as a Chicago window: a wide fixed pane with narrow movable sash windows flanking it. A flat cornice tops the 14-story structure. The severely deteriorated exterior was completely restored by the City of Chicago in 1996."  ("Chicago Landmarks | Reliance Building" http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Landmarks/R/RelianceBuilding.htm )

Constructional diagram

Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)

The Auditorium Building, Chicago (1887)

"Adler and Sullivan designed a tall structure with load-bearing outer walls, and based the exterior appearance partly on the design of H.H. Richardson's Marshall Field Warehouse, another Chicago landmark.  The Auditorium is a heavy, impressive structure externally, and was more striking in its day when buildings of its scale were less common. When completed, it was the tallest building in the city.

"One of the most innovative features of the building was its massive raft foundation, designed by Adler in conjunction with engineer Paul Mueller. The soil beneath the Auditorium consists of soft blue clay to a depth of over 100 feet, which made conventional foundations impossible. Adler and Mueller designed a floating mat of crisscrossed railroad ties, topped with a double layer of steel rails embedded in concrete, the whole assemblage coated with pitch. The resulting raft distributed the weight of the massive outer walls over a large area. However, the weight of the masonry outer walls in relation to the relatively lightweight interior deformed the raft during the course of a century, and today portions of the building have settled as much as 29 inches. This deflection is clearly visible in the theater lobby, where the mosaic floor takes on a distinct slope as it nears the outer walls. This settlement is not because of poor engineering but the fact the design was changed during construction. The original plan had the exterior covered in lightweight terra-cotta, but this was changed to stone after the foundations were under construction. Most of the settlement occurred within a decade after construction, and at one time a plan existed to shorten the interior supports to level the floors but this was never carried out."    (Auditorium Building -Wikipedia" http ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditorium_Building%2C_Chicago)

Auditorium Building interior from the balcony.

    Stairwell   

   Theater

The Wainwright Building, St Louis, MO (1890)

The Schiller Building (Chicago, 1891)

"[The Schiller Building] was one of the first designs to exploit the potential of newly available steel, putting aside the historic forms which architects had struggled to bend and contort to taller and taller buildings. Unfortunately, the building was torn down and replaced by a parking lot in 1961. Some of the unique ornamentation was removed from the building and is on display at the Chicago Art Institute."  (Schiller Building" http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/models/schiller.html)

  "Combining an office tower and a theater, the seventeen-story Schiller Building (1890-92) was the tallest building the firm of Adler and Sullivan ever constructed. The 1,286-seat theater filled the central portion up to the sixth floor. For the ornamental plaster vaults and panels, Sullivan planned a repeating pattern of stars surrounded by interlocking circles with lush vines and leaves. This theme continued in the large and ornate proscenium arch, which foreshadows the spectacular archway of Adler and Sullivan's Transportation Building for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. The color scheme of the Schiller Building Theater was green and gold. As in all Sullivan's architecture, the ornamental motif was repeated throughout the building, both inside and out, to achieve an integrated design."  ("Unified Vision > The Collection > Ornamental relief" http://www.artsmia.org/unified-vision/collection/object-detail.c fm?start=2&art_id=5697&artist_id=862)

The Guaranty Building (Buffalo, 1894)

"He [Sullivan] and Adler divided the building into four zones. The basement was the mechanical and utility area. Since this level was below ground, it did not show on the face of the building. The next zone was the ground-floor zone which was the public areas for street-facing shops, public entrances and lobbies. The third zone was the office floors with identical office cells clustered around the central elevator shafts. The final zone was the terminating zone, consisting of elevator equipment, utilities and a few offices.

"The supporting steel structure of the building was embellished with terra cotta blocks. Different styles of block delineated the three visible zones of the building. Sullivan was quoted as saying, 'It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line.'"  ("Prudential (Guaranty) Building (Buffalo, New York) - Wikipedia" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential_%28Guaranty%29_B uilding_%28Buffalo%2C_New_York%29 )

"The three zones of Sullivan's design are visible in the large open windows of the ground zone, the thin vertical elements of the office zone and the arches and curves of the terminating zone at the top of the building."  (" Prudential (Guaranty) Building (Buffalo, New York)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential_%28Guaranty%29_Building_%28B uffalo%2C_New_York%29

Prudential (Guaranty) Building

"During the early 1890s, Adler & Sullivan designed more skyscrapers, including the St. Louis Union Trust building and the Chicago Stock Exchange.

"After the partners split in 1895, Sullivan designed the Bayard Building in New York as well as the Gage Building at 18 S. Michigan Avenue and the Carson Pirie Scott Building at State and Madison Streets in Chicago. The steel structure of the Carson Pirie Scott Building greatly increased window space, allowing daylight into building interiors and expanding display area for merchandise. Sullivan’s signature ornamental work is readily evident in the cast-iron at the building’s entrance and the newly-restored cornice. Sullivan’s later design work consisted largely of small Midwestern banks."  ("Louis Sullivan at 150 : a comprehensive, six-week schedule of public programming leading up to the symposium" http://www.chicagohistory.org/sullivan150/about/buildings.p hp )

The Carson Pirie Scott Store, Chicago (1899)

Gage Building

Gage Building & ornament

"Louis Sullivan is perhaps best known for his talent with ornamentation. His designs are easily recognizable. While his style is definitely his own, it was influenced by his early years as an architect. For example, his time as a draftsman with John Edelman affected his style by exposing him to Edelman’s lush, organic designs. With this early influence and his talent for drawing, Sullivan developed a style of ornamentation that reflected nature through symmetrical use of stylized foliage and weaving geometric forms. He was also heavily influenced by Asian design traditions, which also focus on geometric abstraction and linear design.

"Some typical features of his ornament are: bold geometric facades dotted with arched openings, walls with highlighted low-relief sculptural elements of terra cotta, flat rooflines and deep projecting eaves, buildings segregated into distinct zones and separated by vertical bands of decoration, vertical alignment of windows, highly decorated friezes, and extensive use of ornamental vines and foliage.

"American and European architects alike are inspired by his intricate designs, which express the building’s structure and ornament as one idea. Sullivan believed that ornamentation was not just an afterthought, but was integral to the building’s overall design." ("Louis Sullivan at 150 : a comprehensive, six-week schedule of public programming leading up to the symposium." http://www.chicagohistory.org/sullivan150/about/ornament.php)