Jenney was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on September 25, 1832, the son of William Proctor Jenney and Eliza LeBaron Gibbs. Jenney began his formal education at Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1846, and at the Lawrence Scientific school at Harvard University in 1853, but transferred to the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures (École Centrale Paris, France) to study engineering and architecture.[1] In Paris he discovered the writings of Viollet-le-Duc and he will become one of his followers: "the research and discoveries of Viollet le Duc surpass anything that any other author has been able to write".[1]
At École Centrale Paris, he learned the latest iron construction techniques as well as the classical functionalist doctrine of Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760–1834) – Professor of Architecture at the Ecole Polytechnique.[2] He graduated in 1856, one year after his classmate, Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower.[7]
By the end of the war, he had become a major, and was Engineer-in-Charge at Nashville's Union headquarters.[1] After the war, in 1867, Jenney moved to Chicago, Illinois and began his own architectural office, which specialized in commercial buildings and urban planning.[citation needed]
Jenney is best known for designing the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago. The building was the first fully metal-framed building and is considered the first skyscraper. It was built from 1884 to 1885, enlarged by adding two stories in 1891, and demolished in 1931.[3] In his designs, he used metal columns and beams instead of stone and brick to support the building's upper levels.
The Home Insurance Building in Chicago built in 1885 (photo after a 1891 addition of 2 more floors) demolished in 1931
The steel needed to support the Home Insurance Building weighed only one-third as much as a ten-story building made of heavy masonry.[3] Using this method, the weight of the building was reduced, thus allowing the possibility to construct even taller structures. Later, he solved the problem of fireproof construction for tall buildings by using masonry, iron, and terra cotta flooring and partitions. From 1889 to 1891, he displayed his system in the construction of the Second Leiter Building, also in Chicago.
Horticultural Building at World's Columbian Exposition19 South LaSalle, Chicago, Illinois as seen in 2012 (built 1893)
According to a popular story, one day he came home early and surprised his wife who was reading. She put her book down on top of a birdcage and ran to meet him. He strode across the room, lifted the book, and dropped it back on the bird cage two or three times. Then, he exclaimed: "It works! It works! Don’t you see? If this little cage can hold this heavy book, why can’t an iron or steel cage be the framework for a whole building?" Jenney applied his new idea to the construction of the Home Insurance Building, the first skyscraper in the world, erected in 1884 at the corner of LaSalle and Monroe Streets in Chicago. Another source cites the inspiration for the steel skyscraper as coming from vernacular, Philippine architecture, where wooden framed construction gave Jenney the idea.[8] The Home Insurance Building was the first example of a steel skeleton building, the first grid of iron columns, girders, beams, and floor joists ever constructed.[9]
He died in Los Angeles, California, on June 15, 1907. After Jenney's death, his ashes were scattered over his wife's grave, just south of the Eternal Silence section of Uptown's Graceland Cemetery.[5] In 1998, Jenney was ranked number 89 in the book 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium.[7]
Original notes and papers of Jenney, including "Jenney's 1884 holograph notebook containing, among other things, structural calculations for the Home Insurance Building, and his undated sketch entitled 'Key to the sky scraper.'", are held by the Art Institute of Chicago.[10]
L.Y. Schermerhorn Residence, 124 Scottswood Road, Riverside, Illinois, built in 1869
Former Church of the Redeemer, now a Baptist church in Chicago, Illinois (built 1886)Metropolitan Block, 770 Main Street, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, built in 1874, NRHP-listed[11]
Ingall's Block, SW corner of Pennsylvania and Washington, Indianapolis, 1875, commercial block once home to one of the first branches of Saks and Co. (now Saks Fifth Avenue)[12]
West Park District section of Chicago's boulevard system
Part or all of Garfield Park, 100 North Central Park Avenue, Chicago, NRHP-listed
Part or all of Humboldt Park, roughly bounded by North Sacramento and Augusta Blvds., and North Kedzie, North and North California Aves. and West Division Street, Chicago, NRHP-listed
↑Landmarks Preservation Commission (November 10, 2009). "B. F. GOODRICH COMPANY BUILDING"(PDF). NYC.gov. New York City. pp.4, 5, 11. Retrieved June 18, 2026.
↑Condit, C., The Chicago School of Architecture. A History of Commercial and Public Building, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1964, Chapter 4, "Jenney and the New Structural Technique," p. 81.
^ Haden, Erik. "William LeBaron Jenney". Structural Engineers Association of Texas. Archived from the original on May 19, 2005. Retrieved December 17, 2005.
Turak, Theodore (1986). William Le Baron Jenney: A Pioneer of Modern Architecture (Architecture and Urban Design, No 17). Umi Research Pr. ISBN0-8357-1734-8.
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