Analysis Of John Wellborn Root's Essay: A Great Architectural Problem

The initial design of American tall office building is based on commercial and economy. It could be first easily identified from the transformation of the word that used to describe skyscraper. Tall office building was not original been called skyscraper. Actually, there is no commonly agreed name for tall office building at the very beginning. In John Wellborn Root’s essay, “A Great Architectural Problem”, he described tall office buildings in detail but didn’t give them a name at all. Later, people directly name them “business block” by their function. It became more literal when people started to call office building “commercial style”. 10 years later, the word “skyscraper” started to gain common acknowledge.

From these three names, skyscraper, business block and commercial style, there are three major characteristics of tall office
Fisher Building in Chicago could be a perfect example to demonstrate. This tall office building used an exterior structure called The Chicago school style, also known as commercial style. The Chicago school style mainly introduced new technology of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings. Unlike Monadnock across the street, which used earlier masonry wall-bearing type of construction, fisher building used skeletal steel columns to support the entire structure. The exterior wall doesn’t support the whole structure at all, instead, surface of exterior wall decreased and changed into windows to provide sufficient sunlight for interior space.

There are also some high level technical advances in the Fisher Building. One of the most unique features is the use of twenty-five foot piles under the foundations in order to accommodate the high pressure on the footings. This had never been done before until 1896 because normal buildings won’t reach a height of eighteen