Review: Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871–1934, by Thomas Leslie

Abstract

Thomas Leslie Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871–1934 Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013, 264 pp., 40 color and 120 b/w illus. $39.95, ISBN 9780252037542 Thomas Leslie's sophisticated analysis of Chicago's leading role in the genesis of the skyscraper revisits the early phases of the skyscraper's development, corrects assumptions about Chicago's role, and links ostensibly minor or unrelated issues to form a fresh view of the topic. Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871–1934 breaks new ground by expanding into the post-1900 development of this building form and ends before German refugee architects arrived to begin a new thrust and historians predicated the idea of a “Chicago school.” Unlike earlier historians who drew deceptive clarity from simplification and myth, Leslie expresses the intertwined realities that designers and builders experience as they strive to solve the technical and formal problems presented by a novel building type. Combining numerous elements—architectural and construction history; cultural, technological, and social history; political, planning, and economic history—Leslie presents a story that rings true as a portrait of professional life in the building world in all its ambition and ambiguity. The book concludes with a critical evaluation of the iconic monographs and a chronology of the buildings. Leslie ponders how the skyscraper has been defined, misunderstood, and redefined from many standpoints, and he addresses the conceptual messiness of overlapping technological phases and the back-and-forth of avant-garde daring and fiscal conservatism. He reviews and evaluates the development from monolithic to frame construction, the evolution of codes, and innovations in materials (terracotta, plate glass) and services (electricity and vertical transportation) and explains their mutual influence, taking care not to neglect the uncertainties and retarding influences of new technologies' teething troubles. The result is a comprehensive view of the basis for the designers' decision-making processes. In the struggle to provide stable foundations in Chicago's poor subsoil, Leslie sees one component of a possible answer to the perennial question of why the skyscraper's early development was concentrated in Chicago and …