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Reliance Building

Architects
Burham & Root, Base D.H. Burnham & Co. Upper
Year
1890
Style
Chicago School
City
Chicago, IL
Collection
the chicago school
Reliance Building
Photo: Jay Carriker (JCarriker), CC BY-SA 2.5
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The Reliance Building at 1 West Washington Street began in 1890 with a ground floor and basement by John Root of Burnham & Root, then was completed in 1895 by Charles B. Atwood of D.H. Burnham & Co. It's considered the first skyscraper to wrap large plate-glass windows across the majority of its surface, a design move that anticipated the glass curtain walls that would dominate 20th-century towers. Vacant and deteriorating by the 1940s, it was restored in the late 1990s and has operated as a hotel and restaurant since 1999.

the building

Glass before its time. Root and Atwood covered most of the facade in large plate-glass windows framed by narrow white terra-cotta piers, a proportion of glass to wall that wouldn't become standard skyscraper practice for another half-century.

Two architects, one tower. The building was designed in two campaigns five years apart — John Root laid out the base before his death, and Charles B. Atwood completed the design and the upper floors once D.H. Burnham & Co. took over the commission.

the style

The Reliance Building is a textbook example of the Chicago School's structural logic made visible: a steel frame let the walls become almost entirely glass, a stripped-down commercial aesthetic that stood in deliberate contrast to the heavier masonry towers of the previous decade.

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the architect

John Root, of the pioneering firm Burnham & Root, designed the building's base before his death in 1891; Charles B. Atwood, working for D.H. Burnham & Co., completed the design in 1895. Both firms were central to the development of the Chicago School skyscraper.

significance

The Reliance Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1976. It's also part of the Loop Retail Historic District. After falling into disrepair starting in the 1940s, it was restored in the late 1990s and since 1999 has housed a 122-room hotel — now the Staypineapple, An Iconic Hotel, The Loop — and the Atwood Cafe.

nearby

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