Skyscraper, a many-storied building whose weight is carried by a skeletal metal framework or an internal supporting shaft (or shafts) concealed within the masonry. The term skyscraper originally denoted the highest sail on a clipper ship; later it was applied to tall buildings.
Beginnings. The first skyscraper, in the modern sense, was the ten-story Home Insurance Building (1885) in Chicago, designed by William Le Baron Jenney. Other buildings of similar height had been constructed of solid masonry, but the Home Insurance Building was the first to incorporate the principle of a concealed metal framework carrying the main portion of the structural load. A number of similar structures were built during the next few years until, in the 1890s, the steel framework evolved into a completely riveted skeleton that carried the entire weight of the building. Aesthetically, these early skyscrapers looked less like single buildings than like several two- or three-story buildings set one on top of another. It was Louis Sullivan, the father of modern architecture, who first conceived and executed a building whose design was based on the idea of a unified structure being and looking tall, rather than merely high¡Xan idea that was made an actuality primarily through the use of unbroken vertical lines leading from the lower stories to the cornice. First and foremost among such buildings was the Sullivan-designed Wainwright Building (1890) in St. Louis, Mo.
20th Century. Early in the 1900s many skyscrapers were built in the larger U.S. cities. Sullivan's principles, however, were almost entirely abandoned. Instead of striving toward an original and organic unity of structure and environment, most architects turned to the European past for their ideas, turning out a series of borrowed forms, such as American Gothic, and creating what Frank Lloyd Wright was later to call "twentieth century gravestones." In the 1930s and again in the 1950s and 1960s, there occurred a renaissance of skyscraper building in the United States. In addition to continued eclectic borrowings from the past, a new European influence became markedly evident¡Xone represented by the schools of Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose architectural ideas gave rise in the United States and elsewhere to a variety of building designs ranging, predominantly, from rigid boxes on stilts to rigid boxes not on stilts. Outside of the United States, particularly in Latin America and Italy, other developments were taking place. Native architects created original designs, but many of them were influenced, at least partially, by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wright was both the most gifted designer and the severest critic of skyscrapers. As early as 1896, when the idea of a supporting riveted skeleton was barely out of its infancy, he was working on a new means of supporting the weight of tall buildings¡Xa means that would provide added strength, lighter construction weight and cost, more floor space, and vast new design possibilities. Briefly stated, Wright's idea was to replace the supporting skeletal framework with a centrally situated tubular shaft from which the floors of the building would be cantilevered, much as the branches of a tree are "cantilevered" from the trunk. In addition to supporting the structure, the tubular shaft would contain the elevators, washrooms, ventilation ducts, and other things that ordinarily take up an unnecessarily large amount of floor space. The best architectural expressions of his revolutionary concept of the skyscraper are the S. C. Johnson building in Racine, Wis., and the H. C. Price office and apartment building in Bartlesville, Okla.
Recent Developments. With the destruction by international terrorists of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, observers called for a cessation of competition over height and a renewed emphasis, instead, on quality, aesthetics, and meaning for the local community. There was also a great increase in interest in designing for safety and security, with encased steel columns, new fireproofing standards, and improved emergency exits becoming the norm. Some tall buildings¡Xsuch as Taipei's Taipei 101 and Shanghai's World Financial Center¡Xwere already under construction or in their final planning stages when the September 11 tragedy took place. As a result they had to adapt midstream to the new safety measures. So well did they do so, however, that public worries over extreme height began to be pushed aside, and the race for the tallest building resumed.
The Shanghai World Financial Center, intended to reach a height of over 1,500 feet (460 meters) when completed in 2008*, includes an enormous, 164-foot- (49-meter-) diameter void, or "hole," near the top to allow for the passage of wind through the structure. Building sway resulting from wind pressure is a central problem for skyscrapers. The solution used by the designers of Taipei 101 (1,667 ft; 508 meters) is equally unique: a massive "movement damper" in the form of a 600-ton, suspended steel sphere occupying five floors near the top; the giant ball sways to counterbalance inertia created by the wind.
* 2005 in the original text, updated by editor.
Source: "Skyscraper." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online http://ea.grolier.com/cgi-bin/article?assetid=0359150-00 (accessed August 13, 2007).