Essay Review

It was in Chicago that the high-rise building originated. After the Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed the entire centre of Chicago, the building regulations required the structures of multi-storey buildings to be fi reresistant which, at that time, meant a solid masonry or an iron structure. A structure with interior iron columns could carry a much heavier load, and could have more stories, and this in turn encouraged the use of the recently invented elevators (lifts). Their installation made tall buildings commercially viable, and thus Chicago invented the skyscraper. This term, coined by the leader writer of a Chicago newspaper, at fi rst referred to buildings of ten stories or more, which would now be regarded as a modest height.