The thoughts that gave us skyscrapers

[mount_oregano]

Skyscrapers were invented in Chicago. Historians argue that their development had at least two causes: the economic need for intense urban land use, and technological improvements such as iron-framed structures and elevators, which made their construction possible. I believe, more romantically, that Chicago gave birth to skyscrapers also because the land is flat flat flat, and people longed for the emotional exhilaration of vertical elements in landscapes. As soon as Chicagoans could, they started building habitable mountains.

To support my thesis that the skyline is architectural melodrama, I offer quotes from two men who played key roles in the development of the city’s skyscrapers.

Daniel Burnham was a founding partner of the architectural firm Burnham and Root, which in 1881 was commissioned to create the Montauk Building, the tallest structure in Chicago at the time. Because of its soaring height, the word “skyscraper” was coined to described it: an astonishing 10 stories tall.

Burnham, an ambitious man, also played key roles in the design of the 1893 World’s Fair: the Columbian Exposition and in the creation of the Plan of Chicago, which gave the city, among other gems, its lakefront parks. In 1910, in a speech at the Town Planning Conference in London,he said:

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistancy. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”

Louis Sullivan, another notable Chicago architect and a man of deep philosophical beliefs, did not have a favorable opinion of Burnham, calling him “a colossal merchandiser” obsessed with size and cost. He also thought the pseudo-classical style of the 1893 World’s Fair had set back modern American architecture by forty years.

Sullivan’s aesthetics inspired Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School of architecture. His skyscraper designs incorporated girders and led to taller, slender buildings, which he often adorned with cast-iron or terra cotta motifs. In the March 1896 issue of Lippincott’s Magazine, he wrote of an architect’s emotion in the article “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered”:

“…what is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? And at once we answer, it is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It is the very open organ-tone of its appeal. It must be in turn the dominant chord in his expression of it, the true exitant of his imagination. It must be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. 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 — that it is the new, the unexpected, the eloquent peroration of the most bald, most sinister, most forbidding conditions.

“The man who designs in this spirit and with the sense of responsibility to the generation he lives in must be no coward, no denier, no bookworm, no dilettante. He must live of his life and for his life in the fullest, most consummate sense. He must realize at once and with the grasp of inspiration that the problem of the tall office building is one of the most stupendous, one of the most magnificent opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man.”

The words of these two men aspire to lofty, staggering, magical exultation, and to mountain-making melodrama. They gave us the skyline that remains the boast and thrill of Chicago, a triumph of height over length and breadth. Can we equal that forward-looking ambition in our own time? What can we do that would remake lives a century from now? What spirit stirs us today?

Comments

[cmcmck]

Although it's generally considered that the very first was in Buffalo- the guaranty building by Sullivan & Adler.

[mount_oregano]

Nope. An early skyscraper, but built in 1896, a long way from being the first by any criteria. Maybe the first skyscraper in Buffalo. However, it is a very typical Louis Sullivan building.

[captlychee]

Sullivan's speech reminds me of Raymond Chandler's 'Down these mean streets...' from The Simple Art of Murder.

As to what the 21st century offers in inspirational terms, the only two things we have are corporations with huge market capitalisation and the possibility of a manned mission to Mars. The latter has some physical difficulties to overcome, but the former will come froma siphoning of money out of productive enterprise and into large companies via hedge funds. Ah, well. Perhaps we will have taller skyscrapers that are mostly residential or prisons, since most actual work will be carried out remotely.

[mount_oregano]

The former is venal, but the latter might be magic. Have you heard Ada Palmer's song about Mars?
https://sassafrass.bandcamp.com/album/somebody-will-teaching-collection

[pjthompson]

I can't think of anything now that will have that sweep of "magical exultation." Maybe there's something, but I'm bankrupt at the moment.

You read The Devil in the White City, right? What an interesting portrait of Burnham and the whole Fair experience. As well as that other guy.

[mount_oregano]

I should have read the book, but I have taken the walking tour of the fair site, which included an explanation of the rivalry between the two architects. The Japanese Garden is still there and still wonderful.

[pjthompson]

The book is a mixture of the story of the making of the early skyscrapers and the great Fair plus its underbelly/shadow: the serial killer JJ Holmes and his murder castle. Erik Larsen writes very novelistically. It's quite fascinating.

[mount_oregano]

I not only should read the book, I must!

[pjthompson]

I don't *think* you'll be disappointed. 😁

[captlychee]

I vaguely recall the murder castle. I suppose it came up because Melbourne (Australia) is supposed to resemble Chicago. Any purpose-built murdering house is interesting in itself, I suppose.

[pjthompson]

Holmes put a lot of care and thought into his. Truly chilling.

[mount_oregano]

I've heard of him. He was even in an episode of "Timeless," an SF TV show about time travelers. They're tricked into going into the hotel and barely escape.

[captlychee]

I didn't think of this until just now:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?view=detail&mid=DEB8018EAB0DFD884FD4DEB8018EAB0DFD884FD4&shtp=GetUrl&shid=ca52c7c2-9b39-4ac3-b759-dfb3d8b42728&shtk=TGFrZSBTaG9yZSBEcml2ZSAtIEFsaW90dGEgSGF5bmVzIEplcmVtaWFo&shdk=WW91IGNhbiBub3cgZ2V0IHlvdXIgb3duIHBlcnNvbmFsaXplZCB2ZXJzaW9uIG9mIExha2UgU2hvcmUgRHJpdmUgZnJvbSBBbGlvdHRhIEhheW5lcyBKZXJlbWlhaCwgZm9yIHlvdXJzZWxmIG9yIGFzIGEgZ2lmdCBhdCBodHRwOi8vd3d3Lmxha2VzaG9yZWRyaXZlbXVzaWMuY29t&shhk=exs01R17Ut0q6BTpO5ObLFYN3JR2SgdW3BhFfIA36co%3D&form=VDSHOT&shth=OSH.Qt6bL72Wtt9Wi1AWxblzKg

Hmm That didn't embed like I thought it would :(

[mount_oregano]

This song is an anthem here in Chicago.

I wrote an article about Lake Shore Drive for my apartment building newsletter because we live right next to it. Burnham proposed the road in his Plan of Chicago.
https://sueburke.site/2020/03/19/lake-shore-drive-how-it-reached-my-neighborhood/

[captlychee]

Yes, I first heard an instrumental version at the 2011 WorldCon in Reno, advertisng the 2012 one, and I was really, really taken by it. It was on a player piano at O'Hare airport in 2013

A newsletter for an aprtment building. You really love to write. I wonder if there are any such things like that in Melbourne? back in the mist of ancient 1985 there was local TV station that started up in the Ministry of Housing's flats. It was the only way the immigrant population living there could get news in their native language. Gone now :(

[mount_oregano]

I would rather write than do anything else.

I live in a building of about 1300 residents and a social committee that in before times used to have regular parties, family movie nights, speakers, etc. It's been trying to organize events on Zoom now, since the way covid is going here, we're going to be very socially distanced for a long time. I am required to wear a mask everywhere in the building outside my apartment unit, obviously a good and necessary idea or this place would become a death trap.

Right now I'm working on an article for the newsletter about the Nike Hercules missiles stationed about two miles south of us in the park at the lakeshore during the Cold War. They were armed with nuclear warheads! And people thought it was a good idea!