The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation
by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler · 14 Sep 2021 · 735pp · 165,375 words
to come in and for finished goods to leave. Those building heights required two urbanizing innovations of the nineteenth century: the safety elevator and the metal-framed skyscraper. The skyscraper has a long history. Joseph Paxton, an English gardener, architect, and member of Parliament, borrowed the metal framing of greenhouses for his design
High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World's Greatest Skyline
by Jim Rasenberger · 15 Mar 2004 · 397pp · 114,841 words
industry. Steel was everywhere. Most evidently, and most awesomely, it was in the cities, ascending hundreds of feet above the earth in the form of steel-frame skyscrapers. The first skyscrapers began to appear in Chicago in the mid-1880s, a year or so after the Brooklyn Bridge opened to traffic. The new
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had a less pragmatic—yet more significant—effect. It gave humans the ability to rise as high as elevators and audacity could carry them. The steel-frame skyscraper was born in Chicago, but New York is where it truly came of age. By 1895, Manhattan’s summit had doubled to 20 stories, then
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nonsequentially, a few floors here, a few floors there, rather than from the bottom up, as walls had always gone. A decade after the first steel-frame skyscraper arrived in New York, the concept of walls as an afterthought was still difficult to grasp. A photograph taken of the building as it went
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, during the construction of a narrow 145-foot-tall structure on lower Broadway called the Tower Building—generally credited as New York’s first true metal-frame skyscraper—a leery crowd gathered in a gale at a safe distance, fully expecting to watch it topple. The building’s architect, Bradford Gilbert, tried to
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, that fearless designer of New York’s Tower Building, referred to his own metal-frame design as “an iron bridge truss stood on end.” When steel-frame skyscrapers became common late in the century, it was bridge companies that fabricated the steel and oversaw their erection. Bridges, with a metaphorical aptness worthy of
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three floors, marking the first use of structural steel in architecture. When the Home Insurance Building topped out in the winter of 1885, the steel skeleton-frame skyscraper—all nine stories of it—was born. CIRCUS ACTS As iron and steel came of age on nineteenth-century bridges, so too did the trade
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high-rises in the world. And it was made of reinforced concrete. By conventional definition, a skyscraper is a tall building supported by a steel frame. “By skyscraper is meant a building that exceeds in height the practical limit of solid masonry construction,” is how a 1939 report on the origins of the
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the towers, steel would rise only as high as the 23rd floor. But those 23 floors would consume almost twice the amount of steel required by a typical steel-frame skyscraper, and its arrangement would be at least twice as complex. The difficulties began with the columns. The function of columns is to transfer
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controlled every aspect of production and distribution, much of this carried out by subsidiaries. The concept of total control was called “vertical integration,” and the steel-frame skyscraper was its soaring triumph. From the raw iron ore deposits of the Mesabi Range in northeastern Minnesota, Big Steel’s reach extended to the coalmines
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American Steel Skyscraper, anyway—was defunct. WINTER This was not good news for American structural ironworkers. Certainly not for New York’s ironworkers, for whom steel-frame skyscrapers were the bread and butter of their trade. It was true that, in the short term, the events of 9/11 had put ironworkers in
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’s Magazine, The bridges. See also bridgemen; ironworkers building early collapse of Quebec Bridge early steel first steel George Washington Bridge railroad, as inspiration for steel-frame skyscrapers, (see also skyscrapers) Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Brooklyn. See also New York City Mohawks in Newfoundlanders in Brooklyn Bridge Brown, Keith Buchanan, Frank bucker-up Buffington
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as early, (see also bridgemen) climbing columns B. Conklin’s life as dangers of falling, (see also falling) deaths of (see fatalities) diversity of first steel-frame skyscrapers and frustrations of gangs on George Washington Bridge golden age for as heroes New York City, (see also New York City) Monday mornings for, at
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York City New York City arrival of Sam Parks, (see also Parks, Sam) Chicago vs., as skyscraper capital, (see also Chicago) early fatalities in first steel-frame skyscrapers in ironworkers in, (see also ironworkers) Mohawks in native ironworkers in Newfoundlanders in skyline in early 1900s skyline in late 1880s skyscrapers (see skyscrapers) steel
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squareheads squeezers Starrett, Paul Starrett, William Starrett Brothers & Eken steel in bridges, (see also bridges) concrete vs. iron vs. removing, from World Trade Center disaster steel-frame skyscrapers, (see also skyscrapers) in Time Warner building walking wires in suspension bridges workers (see bridgemen; ironworkers) steel industry decline of unions and, (see also Parks
The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell · 30 Sep 2008 · 202pp · 62,773 words
harbor, kept moving and growing and building right on top of the Winthrop fleet’s foundations. Literally: the office building that was Boston’s first steel-frame “skyscraper” was built in 1893 on top of the site of Winthrop’s Boston house. Plus, having been to Plymouth, I now feel confident that Winthrop
Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities
by Alain Bertaud · 9 Nov 2018 · 769pp · 169,096 words
demand, in particular in areas well served by transport networks; and • it stimulates innovation in construction: without land prices, there would have been no skyscrapers, no steel frame structures, and no elevators. A Channel of Communication Is Needed between Urban Planners and Urban Economists Do I exaggerate the knowledge gap that exists between
Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
by Yoni Appelbaum · 17 Feb 2025 · 412pp · 115,534 words
. He held no principled objection to height. His architectural office was in an eleven-story building in San Francisco, one of the city’s first steel-framed skyscrapers. But when he commuted back across the bay, he wanted to return to a city of respectable homeowners, not one filled with upwardly mobile migrants
Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It
by Azeem Azhar · 6 Sep 2021 · 447pp · 111,991 words
. Our first 10-million-person ‘megacity’, New York, was born in the 1930s on the back of various technological enhancements – electricity, mass transit, modern sanitation, steel-framed skyscrapers, the safety elevator. It also depended on new supply chains that could provide the food and goods needed to sustain a population of that size
A Crack in the Edge of the World
by Simon Winchester · 9 Oct 2006 · 482pp · 147,281 words
Louis Stevenson and Ambrose Bierce and Jack London and Bret Harte and the then Samuel Clemens, scribbler of bawdy doggerel; that there were ten-storey steel-framed skyscrapers* and grand municipal buildings with churchly domes and acres of gold foil; that there were three working opera houses and orchestras in abundance and stores
2312
by Kim Stanley Robinson · 22 May 2012 · 561pp · 167,631 words
framing struts, bolted onto concrete plugs in the raw rock of the interior wall. Swan stared at the people around her in the immense steel frame of the skyscraper, none of them known to her, and realized it had been a mistake to take this flight—not as bad as the blackliner, but
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
by Edward L. Glaeser · 1 Jan 2011 · 598pp · 140,612 words
1970s had more than twenty stories, while fewer than 40 percent of the buildings erected in the 1990s were that tall. The elevator and the steel-frame skyscraper made it possible to get vast amounts of living space out of tiny amounts of land, but New York’s building rules were stopping that
Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy
by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel · 2 May 2022 · 363pp · 98,496 words
gouged from the red earth of Western Australia is loaded into cavernous bulk carriers and shipped to China, where it’s forged into the steel that frames Shanghai skyscrapers. Without seaborne trade, there would be no smartphones, and no glass of red wine with dinner. Without tankers to distribute it cheaply and efficiently
Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers
by Jason M. Barr · 13 May 2024 · 292pp · 107,998 words
Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers
by Stephen Graham · 8 Nov 2016 · 519pp · 136,708 words
Capitalism in America: A History
by Adrian Wooldridge and Alan Greenspan · 15 Oct 2018 · 585pp · 151,239 words
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World
by Joshua B. Freeman · 27 Feb 2018 · 538pp · 145,243 words
Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives
by Stefan Al · 11 Apr 2022 · 300pp · 81,293 words
Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
by J. Bradford Delong · 6 Apr 2020 · 593pp · 183,240 words