Nowadays the language of architecture is pretty much international, with the same big names – Foster and Partners, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Cesar Pelli – using the same glass and steel technology to build almost interchangeable skyscrapers. Back in the day, around the end of the 19th Century, only the US was building high, and those early proto-skyscrapers were just like European buildings, in the Beaux-Arts style say, except they were taller. Like this:
[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Co.]
It was a unique American movement. There are still a few around, though most are long gone. This extraordinary tower, the West End Trust Building, was built in 1898 but was demolished in 1928 to make way for the Girard Trust Building, now the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia. Even when it was first built this kind of structure, still using load-bearing masonry walls, was already on the way out: the first steel-framed skyscraper appeared (in Chicago) in 1885.
It's easy to see why they knocked it down. It may have been structurally unsound, of course, though the Monadnock Building, at 20 stories the largest ever load-bearing masonry building (again Chicago), is still standing. But no, it's hardly a thing of beauty. Back in the Twenties, with the rise of Modernism and the influence of architects like Louis Sullivan and his "form follows function" mantra, this must've seemed like some monstrous decadence. But it was kind of magnificent.
Full size here.
Mick Hartley 
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