ABSTRACT
Even before skyscrapers took possession of the downtown cityscape, Chicagoans had worried about the scale of commercial buildings there. The lowrise warehouses, wholesale businesses, and other commercial buildings of the 1850s and 1860s had seemed large enough to “submerge” downtown churches and residences. Now [in the 1890s] high-rise monuments to commerce towered over other city structures, frankly proclaiming business as the heart of the city (Figure 10.1). When they commissioned skyscraper office buildings, Chicago’s city builders were not creating a sentimental realm for residence, religion, the contemplation of nature or gregarious promenading. They were operating out of their own pockets and for the sake of profit, multiplying rental income from a single urban lot many times over by piling up floor space with the aid of modern building technology. By their height, expense, and status as complex tools for money making, skyscrapers were expressive of the city’s prosperity, competitiveness, and the aggressive pursuit of private goals. Here, surely, in these “hives of business,” was the home of Mammon, unfettered and unalloyed.1
