Styles and Movements

Chicago School

Also Known As Commercial Style

Modern

Citation Formats

General Reference

Architecture and Design Atlas. "Chicago School." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://architecture.interactiveatlas.org/styles/chicago-school-architecture.

APA Style

Architecture and Design Atlas. (n.d.). Chicago School. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://architecture.interactiveatlas.org/styles/chicago-school-architecture

BibTeX

@misc{architectureanddesignatlas-chicago-school,
  author = {Architecture and Design Atlas},
  title = {Chicago School},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://architecture.interactiveatlas.org/styles/chicago-school-architecture},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The group of architects, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, William Le Baron Jenney and Dankmar Adler among them, who rebuilt Chicago's commercial core after the fire of 1871 and, working with the new metal frame and the safety elevator, developed the tall commercial building's basic modern grammar: an expressed structural grid, large plate-glass Chicago windows, and Sullivan's tripartite base, shaft and capital composition. The Home Insurance Building of 1885 is usually credited as its first complete statement, though earlier partial iron-framed buildings complicate any claim to a single, undisputed first skyscraper.

Facts

Period

from 1871 1

Period

to 1893 1

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 turned prevailing American taste back toward classicism, commonly cited as the school's decline.

Origin Region

Chicago, United States 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Louis Sullivan

Source Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of ArchitectureBanister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition)

The First Skyscraper

Source Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of ArchitectureBanister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition)

Sources

1. Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture

Banister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition), Architectural Press, 1996

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