The History of Skyscrapers

WHY

Frankly speaking, the wish for erecting VERY big buildings is as old as the hills. Big buildings are not simply BIG buildings, they are perfect indicators of power and wealth. Earlier they used to honour leaders or religious beliefs (for instance, why not think about the pyramids in Egypt, the gothic cathedrals of France).

At first sight, all these buildings have nothing in common, but… Let’s have a closer look at them. Actually, they were built with stone or masonry walls, supporting most of the weight, so we deal with load-bearing walls.

This was just the 1^st step and namely it in the 19th century gave birth to a completely new type of building: the skyscraper. Elevator is regarded the first serious development and invention. Before Elisha Graves Otis developed a safety device that kept elevators from falling if a cable should break, all the elevators were too primitive elevators and steam-operated. Later it was switched to an electric motor. Thus, an elevator became the main feature, which made skyscrapers rather convenient.

There is the second stage of elevators’ development. Chicago, 1871, an awful fire took place and destroyed many buildings, but, the years that followed, and despite the most gloomy predictions of extremely slow and difficult, almost impossible recovering, the city experienced explosive growth. It is really hard to imagine, but by the 1880s, the available land for new buildings was almost absent and city architects had to think about alternatives. In a very quick way, people realized they have to build tall buildings instead of wide buildings. But in order to make these dreams come true they had to change construction techniques. A new method of building was born, a grid of steel beams and columns were used, they provided the needed support even in the cases of earthquakes and harsh winds. That is how the first skyscraper was born.