Manhattan Building
- Architect
- William LeBaron Jenney
- Year
- 1891
- Style
- Chicago School
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- the chicago school
The Manhattan Building rose to 16 stories between 1889 and 1891 at 431 South Dearborn Street, the first building in America to reach that height, a feat made possible by architect William LeBaron Jenney's purely skeletal steel frame. It is the oldest surviving skyscraper in the world built on that fully skeletal structural system, and the sixth oldest surviving building in Chicago. The Paymaster Corporation was its first tenant.
the building
A skeleton frame. Jenney hung the building's walls entirely off an internal steel skeleton rather than letting them bear their own weight: granite covers the lower floors and lighter brick the upper stories to ease the load, while the north and south tile walls rest on steel cantilevers carrying their weight back into the interior frame.
The bow windows. Rows of projecting bow windows bring light deep into the building's interior spaces, a practical response to the narrow floorplates typical of Loop lots at the time.
the style
The Manhattan Building belongs to the Chicago School's founding generation of skyscrapers, the moment architects first proved that a steel skeleton, not masonry walls, could carry a tall building's full weight, a structural argument this building makes explicitly at 16 stories, the tallest anyone had gone in America up to that point.
More on Chicago Schoolthe architect
William LeBaron Jenney is often called the father of the skyscraper for pioneering skeletal steel-frame construction, and the Manhattan Building stands as one of his purest demonstrations of that idea, the oldest surviving building anywhere built on a fully skeletal frame.
significance
The Manhattan Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 16, 1976, and designated a Chicago Landmark on July 7, 1978. It holds the distinction of being the oldest surviving skyscraper in the world built on a purely skeletal support system, and the sixth oldest surviving building in Chicago.
nearby
- Old Colony Building
- Harold Washington Library
- Fisher Building
- Pontiac Building
- Leiter II Building
- Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago building