ABSTRACT
This chapter covers an amazing period in American construction history. The industry responds to a burgeoning time of expansion and change. The American industrial revolution, triggered by the Civil War and British innovations, leads to demands for construction that re-align the old way of putting projects together. Perhaps the most significant change was the emergence of the general contractor – someone willing to commit to a price and a time for building from a set of plans prepared by an architect or engineer under contract to an owner. That contract would probably be the Uniform Contract worked out between the AIA and the National Association of Builders in 1888. The availability of new materials and components effectively frees up the airspace above cities and towns from a time-honored standard of five stories. In the process this creates tensions between the crafts as new trades emerge. The story of how steel, concrete, elevators, curtain walls and other new materials transformed what was built is related here. Also the rise of the power of labor through organizational prowess is covered. The period also sees an expansion in educational activity for architects and engineers with the formation of university and college courses leading to degrees. Mechanics' institutes helped train the manual labor. There are four sidebars detailing the Supervising Architects' Office of the Treasury Department, the production of drawings/blue prints, the continuing story of Lockwood Greene and brief cameos of five early general contractors.
