In the mid-1880s, Chicago pulled off something nobody else had tried before by building a tall, metal-framed office tower called the Home Insurance Building. We’d call that a skyscraper today. It didn’t look like much by our modern standards, but it really shocked people back then. Why? That’s what we’re going to find out.
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Key takeaways
You’ll learn about:
- When & where the building went up
- Why people were so shocked
- Why people couldn’t agree on whether it counted as the “first” skyscraper
- What experts found decades later when they tore it down
- How it eventually disappeared from the skyline
What counted as a “skyscraper” in the 1880s
In those days, the word “skyscraper” didn’t have a clear meaning. Some people used it for anything taller than about six stories, while others used it to talk about the new steel-and-iron framing that allowed buildings to stretch higher without massive walls.
Yes, Chicago & New York were both experimenting with height around the same time. But the exact definition depended on who you asked.
Where and when
The Home Insurance Building was built on the corner of LaSalle & Adams in downtown Chicago. In May 1884, construction kicked off, and workers finished the following year. The building was initially 10 stories tall & roughly 138 feet high.
In 1890, they added two more floors, and this helped it stand out even more among the low-rise neighbors. Such an expansion wasn’t common back then, especially on a structure that already seemed daring for its time, but the new floors went up. And the building kept standing.
How the frame worked & what made it new
Engineer William Le Baron Jenney had a clever idea. Rather than relying on heavy stone or brick walls to hold everything up, he used a metal skeleton to support a big part of the structure. He used iron columns & beams to carry much of the upper-floor weight. This meant the walls didn’t have to be so thick, leaving more room for windows and shaving off a lot of bulk.
It was a rather different idea from the usual construction work at the time. This tended to be slower & heavier, as well as more limited in how tall it could go.
Not a pure steel cage
Another twist was that the building wasn’t fully metal. The lower levels & shared walls between buildings still worked like old-school masonry supports, with the iron frame taking some of the load. But the brick & stone still did a lot of the work, especially in terms of the wind, meaning that the first skyscraper wasn’t actually a pure steel cage.
Why people were startled
It’s hard to imagine why people were so surprised to see this building. But back then, most Chicago buildings were chunky & squat, maybe five or six floors high. Then came this tall, almost delicate-looking tower, with lighter-looking upper floors and bigger windows. The walls didn’t seem nearly as solid as people were used to, which made people uneasy.
There was a fear over whether it could handle storms, as well as shock that something so tall could be made with iron beams hiding behind thin walls. Fire was another issue. In the 1870s, the city had already faced many big fires, so people feared another.
Thankfully, none of this turned into a crisis on the site. But people were still worried about a different kind of office block taking shape over a busy corner.
The debate over “first”
But the real question comes from the term “skyscraper.” Some engineers called it the first skyscraper because it leaned so heavily on a metal frame, which was something no other commercial building had done at that scale yet.
Yet others pushed back. They argued that the masonry was still important, and true skyscrapers needed a fully self-supporting skeleton that handled both gravity & wind. To this day, people still debate about whether it actually counts as a skyscraper.
What replaced it
But the Home Insurance Building eventually came down in 1931 to make space for newer development. By then, taller & sleeker towers had taken over downtown. But this teardown did reveal some secrets about the building.
The engineers opened up columns & checked connections, essentially dissecting the entire thing. What they found confirmed what some had suspected. The frame was part skeleton & part old-fashioned structure, with exterior walls that weren’t true curtain walls. The iron didn’t take all the stress.
As such, it made for a clever hybrid that was quite different from modern skyscrapers.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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