“Review of *The Rise of the Skyscraper: The Genius of Chicago Architecture from the Great Fire to Louis Sullivan*, by Carl W. Condit”

AboutWinston Weisman reviews Carl Condit's The Rise of the Skyscraper a year after Henry-Russell Hitchcock's own review of the same book in American Quarterly (see sullivan188.pdf), crediting Condit with a lucid, well-illustrated account of Chicago's post-fire commercial architecture but arguing the book's central premise—that the skyscraper is fundamentally a technological phenomenon explicable entirely through Chicago developments—is asserted rather than demonstrated. Weisman notes Condit never resolves whether the Montauk or Home Insurance Building deserves priority as the first true skyscraper, and contends the book slights significant vertical-emphasis precedents in Philadelphia (citing Sullivan's documented familiarity, through his apprenticeship with Frank Furness, with buildings like the Jayne Building) as well as New York's own tall-building lineage running from George Post and Bruce Price through McKim, Mead and White. He also faults Condit's account of John Root's early New York training under John Snook for failing to connect Root's exposure to that city's contemporaneous office-building boom, concluding the book is a valuable but incomplete contribution pending further research into skyscraper development outside Chicago.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28195310%2912%3A3%3C30%3ATROTST%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4