Reliance Building

Among these is counted the Reliance Building (1895), by Burnham’s chief designer Charles Atwood, considered a landmark in the development of the tall office building, because the slim glass and steel tower presaged Modernist skyscrapers. Burnham continued to think big. At 500,000 square feet (45,000 square metres), his Ellicott Square…

…went on to produce Chicago’s Reliance Building (1890–95), an excellent office building with logically ordered spaces enclosed by faceted walls of glass and a steel skeleton covered by terra-cotta panels. Sullivan found his best expression of the skyscraper in the Prudential Building, in Buffalo, New York (1894–95), and he developed…