Chicago school /Commercial style

Buildings constructed in Chicago during the 1880s

and 1890s
Use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding
(usually terra cotta)
plate-glass window areas and limiting the amount of
exterior ornamentation.
elements of neoclassical architecture
Many Chicago School skyscrapers contain the three
parts of a classical column.
The lowest floors functions as the base,
the middle stories, usually with little ornamental
detail, act as the shaft of the column, and
the last floor or two, often capped with a cornice
and often with more ornamental detail, represent
the capital. The Chicago Building by Holabird &
Roche (1904-1905)
Home Insurance Building

Skyscraper in Chicago

Architect William Le Baron Jenney

Tallest in the world from 1884 to 1889

First tall building to use structural steel

in its frame

Opened in 1884, and was demolished

47 years later in 1931.

Had 12 floors (54.9 meters)

Majority of its structure was composed

of cast and wrought iron.

Chicago window
Three-part window : a large fixed centre panel flanked by two smaller double-hung sash
windows.
creates a grid pattern
some project out from the facade forming bay windows.
These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel windows, that projected out
over the street.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 –1928)
Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist.
Mackintosh took his inspiration from his Scottish upbringing and blended them with
the flourish of Art Nouveau and the simplicity of Japanese forms.
The Glasgow School of Art (GSA)
Masterpiece Of Charles
Rennie Mackintosh
Built during 1897-1909.
Severely damaged by a fire in
May 2014
Louis Henry Sullivan (1856 –1924)
American architect
Father of skyscrapers & father of modernism
Creator of the modern skyscraper
Influential architect and critic of the Chicago
School
Mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright
Inspiration to the Chicago group of architects
Trinity of American architecture:
Sullivan, Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank
Lloyd Wright
Form follows function
decorations, usually cast in iron or terra cotta,
ranging from organic forms to geometric
designs
Massive, semi-circular arch
Guaranty Building
Designed by L.Sullivan in partnership with Adler (1895)
Completed in Office building in Buffalo, New York is in
the Palazzo style
Divided into three "zones" of design:
A plain, wide-windowed base for the ground-level
shops;
The main office block, with vertical ribbons of masonry
across nine upper floors to emphasize the building's
height;
Ornamented cornice perforated by round windows at
the roof level, where the building's mechanical units
(such as the elevator motors) were housed.
The cornice is covered by Sullivan's trademark Art
Nouveau vines and each ground-floor entrance is
topped by a semi-circular arch.
Wainwright Building

10-story Red Brick Office Building At

Missouri.
Among The First Skyscrapers In The World.
Designed By Dankmar Adler And Louis
Sullivan
Palazzo Style
Built Between 1890 and 1891.
tripartite (three-part) composition
(base-shaft-attic) based on the structure of
the classical column
Base: retail stores with wide glazed
openings; Sullivan's ornament made the
supporting piers read as pillars.
Above it: semi-public offices up a single
flight of stairs are expressed as broad
windows in the curtain wall.
A cornice separates the second floor from
the grid of identical windows of the screen
wall
A wide frieze below the deep cornice,
expresses the formalized yet naturalistic
celery-leaf foliage