28 June 2006

Cruising Chicago architecture

As we cruise along the Chicago River viewing the city's world-famous architecture, our tour guide motions to the former location of the house and barn belonging to Patrick and Catherine O'Leary - where the Chicago Fire Academy now stands.

She tells us the Chicago City Council has exonerated Catherine's cow of any wrongdoing. Cruising Chicago architecture by leading architects such as Chicago's own Daniel H. Burnham, who prepared the "Plan for Chicago"; William Le Baron Jenney, the so-called "father of the skyscraper"; German immigrant Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who championed the "less-is-more" modern approach; and Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, leaders of the Chicago School movement, made architectural history in Chicago.

The modern skyscraper was invented here. Jenney's 1885, nine-story Home Insurance Building at LaSalle and Adams streets was the first building whose weight was completely supported by a steel frame instead of walls.

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