Chicago School (architecture)

The Chicago School was a late nineteenth-century architectural movement that shaped commercial buildings through steel-frame construction, large windows, and economical design.

Steel-frame construction: A building system in which a skeleton of steel columns and beams carries structural loads. It let Chicago architects build taller buildings without relying on thick load-bearing masonry walls.
Great Chicago Fire: The October 1871 fire that destroyed much of central Chicago and killed hundreds of people. Its destruction created an urgent opportunity to rebuild the city’s commercial core.
William Le Baron Jenney: An American architect and engineer associated with early steel-frame skyscrapers in Chicago. His Home Insurance Building became a key experiment in framed construction.
Richardsonian Romanesque: A late nineteenth-century architectural style marked by heavy masonry, rounded arches, and forms inspired by Romanesque architecture. Its weighty masonry contrasted with the Chicago School’s increasingly skeletal steel construction.
Curtain wall: A non-load-bearing exterior wall suspended from a building’s structural frame. It separated the Chicago School’s exterior façade from the frame carrying the building.
Chicago: The largest city in Illinois, located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. Its expanding economy and rebuilding shaped the movement’s setting and ambitions.
Louis Sullivan: An American architect whose writings and buildings helped define modern commercial architecture. His Chicago buildings joined new structural possibilities with distinctive ornament.
Beaux-Arts architecture: An academic architectural style emphasizing classical composition, symmetry, and elaborate ornament. The 1893 fair’s Beaux-Arts display challenged the commercial modernism developing in Chicago.
Skyscraper: A tall building whose height is enabled by structural framing, elevators, and related technologies. The movement helped establish the commercial skyscraper as a distinct building type.
Chicago Board of Trade Building (1885): A Chicago commercial building completed in 1885, designed by William W. Boyington. Its prominent civic-commercial architecture preceded the mature Chicago School skyscrapers.

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