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General Information

Completion: 1879
Status: demolished (1972)

Project Type

Function / usage: Office building

Awards and Distinctions

Location

Location: , , ,
Coordinates: 41° 52' 51.60" N    87° 38' 3.40" W
Show coordinates on a map

Technical Information

Materials

inside frame wrought iron

Excerpt from Wikipedia

The First Leiter building (or Leiter I) was a Chicago commercial structure built in 1879 by William Le Baron Jenney. It was renovated and extended in 1888, and demolished in 1972.

Jenney designed this building, located at Washington and Wells Streets, as a department store for Levi Z. Leiter. This building marked a significant milestone in architectural engineering: it combined, for the first time, four essential elements of a modern skyscraper in one building. These were: ist great height (Leiter I was originally five stories tall, and shortly after expanded to seven stories); an iron skeletal frame; terra cotta fireproofing materials on all of ist structural members; and, vertical transportation via elevators. It also utilized a new type of glass in ist windows. Although the city building department required Jenney to build one exterior party wall as a traditional masonry loadbearing structure and the floors were of heavy timber construction, the rest of the building was a truly modern innovation.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "First Leiter Building" and modified on 15 November 2021 according to the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

Participants

(role unknown)

Relevant Web Sites

Relevant Publications

  • About this
    data sheet
  • Structure-ID
    20000371
  • Published on:
    06/09/1999
  • Last updated on:
    10/01/2015
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