Builders have striven for height ever since the Tower of Babel, but until the end of the nineteenth century the tall structure was a monument, a symbol of temporal or spiritual power, not the functional building we know today. That changed when from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871 Chicago rebuilt itself as the most modern city in the world. Tall buildings were going up in other places then, too, but no other city made such a determined and sustained effort to build and define their use and form. There are a lot of reasons that the modern tall office building evolved only at that time and preeminently in Chicago. It’s a story that illustrates the complexity of large-scale technological development, and it also shows that some of the things we think we know about the birth of the skyscraper are myths. Here’s how it happened, how a number of necessary technologies emerged at once and coalesced as the skyscraper.

To begin with, although virtually the entire business center of the city and much of its wealth were destroyed by the fire, Chicago’s economic structure, based on trade, survived. Grain and cattle still poured into the city, the ships still docked, and the trains still ran, albeit with difficulty. Credit was therefore still good. Out of a total loss estimated at about two hundred million dollars, less than half was insured. From San Francisco to Maine and beyond to London, insurers lost a total of seventy-five million dollars. Fifty-one of them went into liquidation across America, including fourteen in Chicago that were completely wiped out. Chicago’s trade, however, rebounded.

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