Sullivan, the scraper and the iron deficiency

OKAY!

Im starting to get a small handle on my homework. It's fascinating to me how much information I'm putting in my brain, it's not used to it. I find that I have to do a lot of writing things down to make sense of it all. I'm sure that's true of most people, except those creepy waiters that can remember all the orders, even if they're complicated.

I was amazed to walk out of my building and see 3 important skyscrapers right in front of me. Granted now, these scrapers are small, 10-12 stories at the most. But let's remember where we started shall we?

We had the swamp yadda yadda, had a little DuSable and a little Ogden. We had pre-fire wooden structures...and then we had Sullivan, Burnham, Jenney and Root.

When I think about it, it all makes sense. Once the fire happened, there were very strict restrictions put on the buildings in the Loop. They could not be wood anymore, which led to iron structures. Iron structures were growing in bridges, Sullivan loved himself some bridges as did William Le Baron Jenney. They took this strength and Jenney used it to build the first skyscraper, The Home Insurance Building which is now gone. Once the iron structure could hold up, buildings could be built higher.

Once the elevator was made, the people could actually get up the buildings that were reaching so high.

The thing I read today, which I loved, is Sullivan talking about the trinity. The Holy Trinity. The trunk, the limbs, the head. He believed in form follows function, correct. However, many people misinterpret this to mean that ornament or beauty has no room in that statement. But Sullivan believed that beauty was part of a buildings function. Badoom.

But here's his structure for every skyscraper:

The bottom 2 floors-wide windows, wide atrium, ornamentation around the very obvious entrances. Wide windows for outside shopping and plenty of room for the public to go in and out.

The middle floors-usually offices, all rooms the same size and layout, so the middle floors are generally the same on the outside as well, grouped together-hence, the trunk.

The top floors-the attic, mainly used to top off the building and end it, according to Sullivan...with a pretty ornamentation something on top.

The three buildings outside my building, although by 3 different architects, all amazingly have this layout.

ITS ALL SO COOL.

Now, once Jonathan really lets loose on Victoria..history will be made.