Carl W. Condit

This thoroughly illustrated classic study traces the history of the world-famous Chicago school of architecture from its beginnings with the functional innovations of William Le Baron Jenney and others to their imaginative development by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. The Chicago School of Architecture places the Chicago school in its historical setting, showing it at once to be the culmination of an iron and concrete construction and the chief pioneer in the evolution of modern architecture. It also assesses the achievements of the school in terms of the economic, social, and cultural growth of Chicago at the turn of the century, and it shows the ultimate meaning of the Chicago work for contemporary architecture. "A major contribution [by] one of the world's master-historians of building technique."—Reyner Banham, Arts Magazine "A rich, organized record of the distinguished architecture with which Chicago lives and influences the world."—Ruth Moore, Chicago Sun-Times

This work surveys the early days of the Chicago skyscraper. It investigates the role of prominent architectural firms in skyscraper construction, the evolution of architecture in Europe and the United States, structural techniques, and the Chicago School in the twentieth century.

[My] original plan was to regard this history as a single unified work, and the corresponding intention of the University of Chicago press was to publish it in a single volume under the title Chicago since 1910, A number of factors, however, suggested that there would be advantages to both reader and publisher in splitting the book into two separate parts. The long texts, the total of 176 plates and line cuts, the extensive tables and index, and the formidable bibliography would together have resulted in a book of nearly unmanageable size and discouraging price to the reader, and of prohibitive cost, in this age of tight budgets, to the publisher. Publication in two volumes, though it would mean no saving in total expense, at least had the merit of spreading it over a longer period of time. I doubt that the division adversely affects the continuity of the text-indeed, it throws into sharper relief the drastic discontinuity in urban development that came from the long hiatus in building caused by the depression of the thirties and the war that followed it. Those years marked the turning point for the American city-from expansion, confidence, and civic resurgence to economic and cultural decline. The two volumes thus treat two markedly different manifestations of the modern urban world.