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June 24, 2024 by Jason Barr 1 Comment

The Jenney Myth: How the Home Insurance Building Falsely Became the “First Skyscraper” (Part I)

Jason M. Barr June 24, 2024

Note: This blog post is based on the research discussed in my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers, as well as my working paper on the subject, which includes references to the original sources and archival documents.

What was the first skyscraper?

Well, if you read Wikipedia or ask ChatGPT, both will tell you that it was the Home Insurance Building (HIB), designed by the architect William Le Baron Jenney.^[1]

The Wikipedia entry on the “First Skyscraper” informs us that “The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, opened in 1885, is, however, most often labeled the first skyscraper because of its innovative use of structural steel in a metal frame design.” Similarly, if you go to Jenney’s Wikipedia page, you will read that the Home Insurance Building “was the first fully metal-framed building and is considered the first skyscraper.”^[2]

The only problem with these entries is that they are entirely wrong. His building neither used structural steel nor was the first fully metal-framed building. Jenney’s designation as the “inventor of the skyscraper,” rather, was the result of a public relations campaign initiated by Jenney and his fellow Chicagoans to make the world believe that Jenney created the skyscraper.

The HIB included some engineering innovations, to be sure, and Jenney was one of the leading architect-engineers of his day. But there is not a single metric by which we can say his building was so important that it merits the title that society has given it. It’s time the Jenney Myth died.

The Home Insurance Building (1885) in Chicago. Falsely labeled the “first skyscraper.” Source: Library of Congress.

What is a Skyscraper?

Before discussing the first skyscraper question, we need to define a “skyscraper.” Predating its application to tall buildings, the word “skyscraper” was used to denote nearly any high or tall object. The most notable examples include its use to describe a type of ship’s sail, a tall horse, a fly ball in baseball, and even ladies’ flowery hats that were all the rage in the mid-19^th century.

The first appearance in the press that I can find referring to a tall building as a “skyscraper” was in 1882, when the New York Sun announced plans for the Mutual Life Insurance Building (1884, 11 floors) in New York. The following year, the Chicago Tribune reported in its “New York Gossip” column about the “high-building craze,” which included a discussion of Gotham’s “sky-scrapers,” mentioning its early tall offices such the Tribune Building (1875, 10 floors) and the Western Union Building (1875, 10 floors).

So clearly, by the standards of the press and the popular conception, what mattered was a building’s height and not its structural design. Thus, by the pure height definition, the first skyscraper predated the Home Insurance Building by a wide margin.

The Steel Skeleton

However, in the first skyscraper debate, what mattered most was how the building was constructed. Thus, a “skyscraper” can be defined (for historical purposes) as a relatively tall building having three essential elements. First is a steel skeleton, where all the beams and columns—both for external and internal use—are riveted together to form one complete latticework. Second, the skeleton contains extra steel for wind bracing. And third, the façade is a mere “curtain” that serves no structural purpose.

Against this standard, the Home Insurance Building fails in all categories. First, only the two street-facing exterior walls had iron columns, which were embedded in the exterior masonry piers that ran up the façade. The iron was used to reduce the thickness of the exterior walls, and the iron and masonry shared the load. Additionally, the rear two façades were traditional load-bearing masonry brick. Further, the iron beams and columns were not riveted but were bolted together and reinforced with iron rods since iron was too brittle to be riveted. None of the exterior beams or columns were made of steel. Finally, the building contained no additional materials for wind bracing—instead, the thick masonry walls stiffened the building against wind forces. Without this façade, the ironwork would not have been strong enough to protect the building against intense gusts.

The Client

When Jenney was asked by his client, the Home Insurance Company of New York, to design a Chicago headquarters, he created a hybrid building, combining old and new materials and methods. However, it is true that Jenney was likely the first architect to include steel floor beams inside the building on the upper stories. Jenney’s original plans called for wrought iron beams, but the Carnegie mills asked him during construction to substitute steel instead. However, steel and wrought iron had similar structural characteristics, so there was nothing revolutionary about this substitution.

The Reliance Building (1895) and its Steel Skeleton Frame. Sources: here and here. This building in Chicago is one of the earliest examples of a true steel-framed skyscraper with a curtain well.

Jenney’s Own Words

When his building was completed, neither Jenney nor the wider architectural and engineering community took particular note. Just as importantly, no one, including Jenney himself tried to claim that the Home Insurance Building represented a revolution in structural design.

When Jenney wrote about his building in the journal The Sanitary Engineer in December 1885, his opening remarks—the accomplishment of which he was most proud—was that he had successfully employed a foundation design to prevent uneven settlement.

Only in the second half of the article does he turn to the structural framing, where he discusses how he implanted the iron columns into the load-bearing piers and connected them to expanded iron lintels, the beams that span over the window and door openings.

Burying the Lead

There was little in his discussion to suggest that he saw his building as anything more than an evolutionary advance, and nothing in his talk hinted that he felt he invented the skyscraper. Surely, if he thought that his iron framing methods were entirely novel and groundbreaking, he would have led with this fact. Ironically, in his article, there is no mention of the word “steel.” This omission is strange given that years later, he would claim that he invented the steel-framed skeleton.

In the ensuing years, as other hybrid and experimental buildings came online, such as the Rookery (1888) and the Tacoma (1889) in Chicago and the Tower Building (1889) in New York, none copied Jenney’s methods. Rather, these structures were inspired from earlier designs in iron framing.

The PR Campaign

Starting in 1896, however, the discussion about the Home Insurance Building began to take a very different tone. At this point, Jenney and his colleagues asserted that the HIB was a revolutionary building. By the mid-1890s, skyscrapers of 20 stories or more were rising around the country, such as the 21-story Masonic Temple Building (1893) in Chicago and the 20-story Manhattan Life Insurance Building (1894) in New York, and people were curious to know who “invented” them.

No doubt, the new towers piqued the curiosity of a one F. T. Gates, the president of the Bessemer Steamship company, a ship manufacturer. In June of 1896, Gates wrote to the trade journal The Engineering Record (ER) to inquire who discovered the idea of steel construction for tall buildings. An editorial offered that its journal had discussed some early examples of tall office buildings, such as the Home Insurance Building, the Rookery, and the Drexel Building (1889) in Philadelphia, though the editor did not pick one building as the first skyscraper.

High Gear

When Jenney read Gates’ letter, he went into high gear. The first thing he did was to write to Gates, telling him, “My claim is that in 1883 I invented and put into practical use in the Home Ins. Bldg. Chicago, what is now known as Skeleton Construction, a radical departure from anything heretofore existing.…” On July 6^th, Gates responded to Jenney, apparently convinced by his pleas, by stating, “Your letters seem to be conclusive as to the invention of the Steel Skeleton Construction.”

In the ER’s July 11^th issue, Jenney also wrote a letter to the ER stating that “The skeleton construction was a radical departure from anything that heretofore appeared and was exclusively my invention.”

Rewriting History

This statement—over a decade after the completion of the HIB—represents the first time Jenney publicly claimed that he invented the skyscraper. Furthermore, these words do not accurately depict the nature of the Home Insurance Building, as described above. First, the building was not a radical departure from earlier buildings. It was predominantly a load-bearing structure with iron to reduce the thickness of the masonry walls. The claim that skeleton construction was exclusively his invention disregards the long history of iron framing dating back at least a century before the HIB was conceived, not to mention the countless other necessities to make a skyscraper possible, such as electric elevators with safety breaks and fireproofing, with which Jenney had nothing to do.

The Voting

Gate’s inquiry also motivated others to write in with their opinions. Seven more letters, five in support of Jenney, were also included in the issue. Most of the writers were intimately involved with the construction of the building and had a relationship with Jenney. For example, one letter was from George M. Lyon, the former business partner of the Home Insurance Company’s Chicago Agent, A. C. Ducat, while another was from Hugh Young, the president of the Young & Farrell Diamond Stone Sawing Company, which provided masonry for the HIB.

One of the two letters not expressing support for Jenney was from Dankmar Adler of Adler & Sullivan in Chicago. Adler felt that one could not assign an inventor and gave a more historically accurate perspective by writing, “Take it altogether, the skeleton construction, or its present successor, the steel-cage construction, was a growth rather than an invention….the credit for which should therefore be given my profession as a whole rather than to anyone in its ranks.”

Another letter was from George Post, who felt his Produce Exchange Building (1884) in New York should be considered the first example of curtain-walled construction in a tall office building, and whom today many architecture historians feel was the first to use true external iron framing.

In the July 25^th issue, two more letters appeared. One was from the Chicago engineer C. L. Strobel, who agreed with Adler and wrote, “The correct conclusion …of building work actually done would therefore seem to be that the modern steel-frame construction is a development towards which a number of individuals have made valuable contributions.”

Burnham Weighs In

Strobel’s letter was followed by one from Daniel Burnham, arguably the most famous and important Chicago architect from the 1880s to the early 1910s. He wrote:

This principle of carrying the entire structure on a carefully balanced and braced metal frame, protected from fire, is precisely what Mr. William L. B. Jenney worked out. No one anticipated him in it, and he deserved the entire credit belonging to the engineering feat which he was the first to accomplish.

In the same spirit as Jenney, Burnham sought to place the HIB as the pivotal structure in skyscraper history. As discussed above, Jenny’s building was not a “braced metal frame,” as it had no wind bracing and the ironwork was not fully self-supporting.

Similarly, the statement that “No one anticipated him” ignores the many historical precedents in iron framing, while the comment that “he deserved the entire credit” exaggerates Jenney’s role within this history. Burnham had worked in Jenney’s office as a draftsman in 1868, and they were long-time colleagues and friends. His letter can be considered more of a recommendation letter than an unbiased account. In this regard, it’s important to view Burnham’s words with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Buffington

The August 8^th issue of the ER included a letter from Leroy Buffington, a Minnesota architect who in 1888 received a patent for iron-framed construction. Buffington claimed, “I have used construction like the Home Insurance Company’s Building of Chicago since 1876.” Like Jenny, Buffington was trying to argue his case and was prone to making statements that overstated his role in skyscraper history. There is no evidence that his buildings in Minnesota used external iron framing or had curtain walls.

The W. L. B. Jenney

Finally, in February 1897, Gates was convinced by the Chicago architects that supported Jenney and concluded that HIB was novel enough that his company would name their next vessel, “the ‘W. L. B. Jenney,’ after the eminent engineer and architect of Chicago, to whom we think the iron and steel trade is most indebted for this great advance in the construction of buildings.”

Jenney was quite pleased that Gates had given him this forum and victory. He wrote back to Gates saying, “I accept [this honor] with many thanks: it is the one official recognition, confirming my claim to the invention of the Steel Skeleton Construction, though as far as I know, no one has ever made the claim….I have also to thank you for the inquiry through the Engineering Record, which brought the matter to the notice of the Architectural and Engineering profession.”

Jenney’s use of the phrase “though as far as I know, no one has ever made the claim” is untrue (as will be discussed in the next blog post), as is his highly exaggerated statement of inventing “Steel Skeleton Construction.”

Jenney, for the Win

Jenney now had his tautological victory—he had told Gates that he was the winner, and Gates declared Jenney the winner; therefore, he was the winner. Just as importantly, Jenney used Gates’s decision as if it were a final, factual judgment. Gates was a business executive with limited knowledge and information regarding tall building construction, as evidenced by his query to the ER. He relied on the opinions of others, but most stated opinions came from people with a personal and professional interest in promoting Jenney—and several of them had directly received letters from him pleading for their support. The more nuanced opinions of industry insiders like Adler and Strobel were ignored, likely because they refused to play the game of picking an “inventor.”

And, more importantly, the letter writing campaign convinced the public because Jenney, Burnham, et al. were the experts and leaders of the Chicago Skyscraper Revolution. Additionally, no one really knew what the guts of the structure looked like, as they were hidden in stone. In the debates, Jenney pointed to his published drawings of the iron beams connected to the expanded lintels, which had the appearance of an iron frame on paper but, physically, operated very differently in practice. Jenney’s words and drawings seemed true, and there was no way—or reason—to try to prove this American genius wrong.

An example of how the press repeated Jenney and Burnham’s words can be seen in an 1898 article entitled, “Chicago’s Skyscrapers” in The International: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Travel and Literature published in Chicago, which stated that “More effective than anything else in settling the dispute was a letter from Mr. D. H. Burnham.”

Left: Masonic Temple in Chicago (1893). Right: Manhattan Life Insurance Building in New York (1894). Sources: here and here.

Post-1896

After 1896, Jenney continued to insist that he invented the skyscraper. In one final writing, before he died in 1907, Jenney published a brief memoir in The Western Architect. Once again, taking liberty with the facts, he states that when the Home Insurance Building Committee asked about other buildings of similar form, “I replied there was none; that they would have the first; that the steel construction was a simple engineering problem….” Again, notice how Jenney simplifies and misrepresents the description of the building as the first steel skeleton constructed building. Whether Jenney believed what he was saying or not can never likely be known, but he was not above bending the truth.

When Jenney died, he continued to receive the honor in his obituaries. The Pittsburgh Press, for example, wrote, “William Le Baron Jenney, inventor of the skyscraper…died in Los Angeles, Cal., yesterday….” A few days later, a Chicago Sunday Tribune reported that Jenney “discovered skeleton construction….”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

But Why?

But what was driving Jenney’s dogged attempt to re-write history? Why was he so eager to claim the epithet “inventor of the skyscraper”?

The answer to these questions will be revealed in the next post, which you can read here.

—

^[1] There is a near-universal consensus among architectural and engineering historians that the HIB was not the first skyscraper. The problem, however, is that this understanding has not spread to the broader public. Architecture historians have done little to undo this persistent myth, as evidenced by the incorrect information in widely read sources like Wikipedia.

^[2] ChatGPT simply repeats Wikipedia’s response if you ask it, “What was the first skyscraper?”

May 10, 2018 by Jason Barr Leave a Comment

Ugly Architecture: 130 Years of Manhattan Skyscraper Complaints

Jason M. Barr May 10, 2018

Critics of Manhattan’s new supertall superslim buildings have a laundry list of complaints. One particular trope is that they are ugly and out of scale with their surroundings. While I believe it’s important to debate the pros and cons of tall buildings, it’s also important to keep in mind that today’s beefs continue a 130-year tradition of grousing about skyscrapers.

In this vein, I thought it might be worthwhile to give a short pop quiz. I will give you 10 quotes from architectural critics from 1890 to the present. Try to give (a) the year the quote was made, (b) the name of the architectural critic, and (c) the building under discussion.

The Quiz

Please note a few things. First, the years of the quotes are random, so you cannot infer dates from the order of the questions. Second, each quote was written just around the time the building was completed (or being constructed). Lastly, one quote was made by an anonymous writer.

Ready, set, go!

“[A] lesson in how to be mediocre without really trying. For its bulk, its importance, its effect, and its ballyhoo, it had an obligation to be much better. Size is not nobility; a monumental deal does not make a monument.”

“How disappointing for the rest of us, though, that [the company] has built itself a stolid lump of a building, one that encourages the public to treat the architecture the way more and more people are treating their local paper: by ignoring it.”

“If this [suggested change in design offered by the critic] had been sensitively, that is to say artistically done, would not his building have shown more logic, more organization, more form and comeliness, more variety in a higher unity, than it shows now?”

“This one unravels as a cascade of clunky curves descending toward ribbons billowing into canopies. The conceit is falling water. The effect: a heap of volumes, not liquid but stolid, chintzily embellished, clad in acres of eye-shadow-blue glass offset by a pox of tinted panes, like age spots. It’s anybody’s guess how the building got past the drawing board.”

“Such buildings show one of the real dangers of a plutocracy: it gives the masters our civilization an unusual opportunity to exhibit their barbarous egos, with no sense of restraint or shame.”

“If you don’t look up, you could like this building.”

“But for thoughtful and refined design, one looks everywhere in vain, and the critic finds himself forced to follow the example of the designer—to ‘cuss the thing and quit it’.”

“The two buildings offer stunning proof that art and style alone are a ludicrous measure of successful urban architecture; what kind of ‘art’ assassinates a city?”

“The new building, designed by [the architect], is an elf prancing among men.”

“As presently designed, this fearful instrument of urbicide will be not only the tallest, but unquestionably one of the, ugliest buildings in the world.”

The Answers

How do you think you did? Here are the answers….

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1963, Ada Louis Huxtable, New York Times architecture critic from 1962 to 1983, on the Pan Am (MetLife) Building, just north of Grand Central Station. Article: “Architecture Stumbles On.” New York Times, April 14, 1963, 119.

2007, Justin Davidson, New York Magazine architecture critic, on the New York Times Headquarters on West 41^st Street.

1902, Montgomery Schuyler, critic and journalist, in the Architectural Record, on the Flatiron Building, at Fifth Avenue and 23^rd.

2013, Michael Kimmelman, New York Times architecture critic, on One57, a luxury condo building on West 57^th Street.

1931, Lewis Mumford, The New Yorker architecture critic and urban scholar, in the New Republic, on the Chrysler Building. Article: “Notes on Modern Architecture.” The New Republic, March 18, 1931, 119-122.

2003, Paul Goldberger, currently the architecture critic at Vanity Fair, in the The New Yorker, on the Time Warner Center, at Columbus Circle.

1890, Anonymous, in the Real Estate Record and Builders Guide, on the World Building (demolished) near City Hall.

1987, Ada Louise Huxtable, in the New York Times, on the AT&T (Sony) Building and IBM Building in Midtown East. Article: “Creeping Gigantism in Manhattan.” New York Times, March 22, 1987, Section 2.

2005, Paul Goldberger, in The New Yorker, on a luxury apartment building on Astor Place.

1966, Wolf Von Eckardt, architecture critic for the Washington Post, in Harper’s Magazine, on the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Article: “New York’s Trade Center: World’s Tallest Fiasco.” Harper’s Magazine, May 1966, 94-100.

Top (from left): World Building (1890), Flatiron Building (1902), Chrysler Building (1930), Pan Am (MetLife) Building (1963), Twin Towers (1970/1). Bottom (from left): AT&T (Sony) Building (1984), Time Warner Center (2003), Astor Place (2004). New York Times Building (2007), One57 (2014).

The Spire and the Point

My guess is that, unless you are an architectural historian steeped in the writings of America’s most prominent architecture critics, you had a hard time with this quiz. A phrase here or there, or the writing style, might suggest one time period over another; but there was nothing inherent in any of the quotes to suggest a particular building.

The point is that since day one, skyscrapers have been controversial. Architecture critics seek to provide some indications about whether a building has artistic merit, is new or derivative, achieves the goals of the designer, and/or provides useful urbanism. Naturally, there are buildings that they are going to love and others they are going to hate. To be human is to have an opinion.

But opinions evolve. Take the case of the Pan Am (MetLife) Building. Completed in 1963 it was berated as a monstrous behemoth thrust down amid the Beaux Arts effervescence of Grand Central Terminal and the Helmsely (New York Central) Building. Despite being designed, in part, by Walter Gropius, one the world’s foremost modernist architects, Ada Louise Huxtable, along with many others, hated it for being too large and out of scale with the neighborhood.

Opinions Change

By 2001, however, perceptions reversed. Christopher Gray, author of the Streetscapes column in the New York Times, from 1986 to 2014, aptly quotes John Jurayj, a painter from Brooklyn, who has been involved in preservation efforts:

The old Post Office at the south end of City Hall Park was thought of as garish, and it obstructed a view, and so it was demolished in 1939, but now we’d fight to protect it….It seems that New Yorkers are emotionally connected to what were originally brutal interventions of our skyline. The loss of the World Trade Center shows that buildings that we may not think of as great architecture are important to our sense of ourselves and our city. Aesthetics are dependent upon the passage of time.

Huxtable also hated the AT&T (Sony) Building designed by Philip Johnson (with John Burgee), one of the most creative and influential architects of the 20^th century.^[1]She saw it as another example of the horrors of Manhattan gigantism; yet today the structure is prized for its style. Philip Johnson, in many respects the quintessential modernist, realized it was time to reject the International Style and hopped on the postmodern bandwagon. His “Chippendale” topped skyscraper is a playful “rebuttal” to the black glass box that dominated the skyline for a quarter century after World War II.

In 2017, protests ensued when the current owner, the Olayan Group, from Saudi Arabia, announced its plans for a large renovation. They want to build a glass curtain wall over the street front and replace a glass arcade and annex building with an outdoor garden. These proposed changes generated opposition; today the building is awaiting a review from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

New York’s Earlier Skyscrapers

Going back in time a bit (and risking hyperbole), is there anyone alive who does not like the Flatiron Building? Today, it’s one of the most beloved and iconic structures on the planet. When constructed in 1902, however, it was called Burham’s Folly, because it was believed that noted Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham, designed a dud that would topple over in the wind. Disliked by critics, it was seen as rising way out of proportion with the neighborhood. Many found its rounded edges and triangular shape disconcerting.

Then there’s the Chrysler Building. While, at the time, most New Yorkers appreciated its steel spire, sleek gargoyles, and soaring height, Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), one of the most-read architectural critics and urbanists of his day, thought the building was a garish example of egos gone wild. His opinions were not that far off the mainstream thinking about the supertall skyscrapers at the time. In the late 1920s, there were many complaints that the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings were “freak” projects, built, as monuments not money makers, and symbolized the worst of human impulses, all the while imposing rampant congestion on the streets.

Today, we look as these buildings quite fondly, as examples of the glory days of the Roaring Twenties. An era when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat; giddy Flappers were sipping bathtub gin while swinging to the musical stylings of Duke Ellington; and Charles Lindbergh was flying solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Ugly or Not They Make New York New York

Say what you will about the new skyscrapers going up in New York today. Maybe they are ugly, maybe not. But we can’t use aesthetics as a reason to prevent them from being built. Today’s uglies are tomorrow’s gems. Today’s swans are tomorrow’s crows.

After World War II, New York was derided as a place where skyscraper design was bland and beholden to the developer’s bottom line. We should celebrate the attempts to bring forth original styles and shapes in the 21^st century. In the long run, they may succeed or fail, but its the striving to produce the new that makes the city so vibrant. New Yorker’s should once again embrace the power of architecture to enhance not only the look of the skyline but also its culture of creativity.

Just to be clear, I’m not against preservation (and will return to this topic in a future post). I strongly believe a city should preserve some of it historical architecture; and, I believe there is a role for the government regulation of tall buildings. But to suggest they are too ugly, too tall, or out of scale is, in a way, an attempt to clip the wings of New York. The historical buildings that we are most proud of were also the ones that got the same complaints as we hear today.

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^[1] Huxtable also complained about the former Huntington Hartford museum (2 Columbus Circle, 1964), disparaging it as a “die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops.” Originally designed by Edward Durrell Stone, in 2008 it was renovated and given a new look, but only after calls to landmark it. I personally liked the building before it was changed; it struck me as an example of whimsical modernism with a marble façade, a more pleasing contrast to the cold glass boxes of Midtown.

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