Quote:
Originally Posted by Centropolis
it gets really murky but most people interested in the subject likely would agree. the home insurance building had some steel in it, is a fair contender and had some floors added to it later.
pretty sure there's a plaque on the side of the wainright building stating that it's the worlds first skyscraper and FLW called it (to paraphrase) the first expression of a tall building as architecture (even though it's obviously not very tall relatively speaking). wikipedia calls it "the first early skyscraper" which means...
i'm also pretty sure that there are/were other no-name metal framed buildings of approximately the same general size but older than these examples.
as in all of these murky matters of history, the most voices win.
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yeah, the skyscraper evolved into existence over the course of several decades, it wasn't invented by some 19th century architect dreaming at his drafting board one afternoon saying
"aha! i've got it! here's what we'll do.", so there is absolutely no way to definitively pin down "the world's first skyscraper".
it's similar to the development of the bicycle (one of my other great passions). there was no single point in time where bicycles magically sprung into existence out of a vacuum. in reality, various kinds of two wheeled riding contraptions evolved over the course of the 19th century until they were finally refined into what we would recognize today as a modern diamond-frame, pedal and chain driven bicycle towards the end of the 19th century.
it was a process, not a a single point in space and time.