An American Innovation.

The skyscraper dominates today's city skyline. The most distinctive American contribution to world architecture, the skyscraper epitomizes the idealistic and material essence of the modern metropolis. Today's tallest building in the world rises some 1,535 feet above Shanghai, China. Other structures top 900 feet in Hong Kong, Japan, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Toronto. The high-rise has become such a visual commonplace that it is easy to forget that, prior to 1883, the word skyscraper did not even exist.During the 1890s American architects erected the first buildings ever to reach for the heavens, as they experimented with new materials and technologies that made their aspirations possible.

The Need for Height.

The birth of the skyscraper represents a confluence of commercial necessity and technical innovation. At the end of the Civil...