Chicago Chicago

Chicago is truly the original home of the skyscrapper- they were invented and first built here in 1890 and now have some of the biggest in the world.

We took a tour this morning and the most interesting buildings were some of the brick-built blocks that were the tallest in the world at the time. To hold up a 17story brick building the walls were 8ft thick and took up 20% of the ground floor space- less than ideal! But when people got comfortable with using a steel frame, it was cheaper, twice as fast and you could build as high as you like.

And i guess the conclusion to that is the Willis (Sears) Tower- one of the tallest buildings in the world, and probably the only one with a glass overhand to stand out over! That's about 440m, Canary Wharf is about 230m high..