ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the historical growth of all the technical factors that underlie the ultimate skyscraper form. There are about a dozen parallel and successive lines of evolution, which may be grouped under four primary headings: structure, safety, internal transportation, and habitability. All these characteristics must be inherent in the skyscraper or any other kind of large multistory building that is used by a number of people on a regular, sustained, daily basis. Moving rapidly through the chief milestones in the development of iron framing, the chapter argues that the Crystal Palace in London, 1851, was the best known and the most important. It was followed by the warehouses of the St. Ouen Docks in Paris, 1864–1865, designed by Hippolyte Fontaine, a builder and inventor who helped to develop the first practical electric motor in 1873 in collaboration with Théophile Zenobe Gramme. They were the first fireproof, iron skeleton, curtain-walled, multistory buildings ever built.
