Named for the city in which it materialized and flourished, the Chicago School of skyscraper design marked the emergence of the first truly American style of architecture. A concern for the economic use of materials in a speculative environment resulted in a radically new solution for the high-rise building, quite removed from the historicism and eclecticism of the past. Beginning in the mid-1870s and peaking in the early 1900s, the skyline of Chicago underwent an amazing transformation, evoking the “Brown City” designation made so famous in the critical work by Lewis Mumford. The so-called death of the Chicago School style in 1922 resulted in part from the ever-increasing popularity of the White City and coincided with the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. Yet, with the 1938 arrival of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed Illinois Institute of Technology), a so-called Second Chicago School of architecture emerged. This synthesis of late 19th-c...