![]() While the form changed little over time, they were easy to decorate with turned Italianate details below the roofline or around the doorway, or with carved limestone lintels and panels of art glass. Originally built in working- and middle-class neighborhoods across Chicago, workers cottages are modestly scaled and sized, often with gabled roofs and side-set front entrances balanced by windows. Workers CottageĪn 1883 advertisement, printed in both English and German, refers to these homes as the “Handsomest Brick Cottages in Chicago.” For the ones that remain, it’s still true. Atwood), Monadnock Building (Burnham & Root), Carson Pirie Scott & Company Building (Louis Sullivan) 2. Notable Examples: Reliance Building (Burnham & Root, Charles B. Many feature Chicago windows, fixed central glass panels flanked by two narrower glass sashes, filling bays that are often repeated horizontally and vertically. How to identify: Buildings of the Chicago School can be singled out by their stocky appearance, substantial height, masonry cladding, and decorative cornices. Louis Sullivan took those same forms and upgraded them by adding geometric shapes, covering facades with lacy roulette curves. ![]() Architects like Burnham & Root and William Le Baron Jenney added delicate natural forms to the interiors, adorning the cornices and entrances with flowers, leaves, wreaths and ribbons. Improved techniques in foundation construction also helped architects take building to new heights on the swampy Chicago ground, and steel frameworks replacing iron skeleton construction made the skyscraper possible-these steel and glass structures were flexible in terms of floor plan and virtually fireproof.īut it was the details and flourishes-the artistic consideration-of these tall buildings that made the Chicago School iconic. The Chicago School was a culmination of timely and groundbreaking engineering techniques, such as the introduction of the hydraulic elevator, which made it possible to extend a building’s height over six stories. This bold commercial style of architecture emerged a decade after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, as the buildings constructed immediately after the city’s rapid rebuild became unsuited to supporting the flourishing downtown. While no list can include everything, here is a sample of Chicago’s defining architectural styles and types-and how to identify them. The end result? Chicago is a city of supertall skyscrapers and belts of bungalows-and both are equally important to its narrative. The Chicago architects who rebuilt the city were astonishingly innovative, with advancements in engineering like fireproofing and modern skeletal steel construction, as were the working-class immigrants who created our local residential styles, the backbone of our housing stock. ![]() Chicago grew from a log fort near Lake Michigan and the mouth of the Chicago River to a bustling mid-19th-century metropolis, only to see much of the city destroyed in two days in the Great Fire of 1871. Our access to the natural resources of the Midwest provided ample building materials, including timber from Michigan, limestone from Indiana and Joliet, Illinois, and bricks from quarries in suburbs to the south and west. Chicago is the ever-beating architectural heart of America: From developing the modest balloon-frame home to creating the skyscraper, Chicago is the birthplace of some of the most iconic and groundbreaking buildings the country has ever seen.
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