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Manhattan Building

WTTW

The word “skyscraper” was first used to refer to buildings in an 1888 article in the Chicago Inter-Ocean: “The ‘sky-scrapers’ of Chicago outrival anything of their kind in the world.”

The Manhattan Building was designed by William LeBaron Jenney, who introduced the use of a skeletal frame system to support the weight of exterior walls and take buildings higher —without the massive stone foundations of previous buildings.  His structural engineering innovations in steel and iron made our tall skylines possible.  

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