Incoming America! Skyscrapers!
Today in 1903, our nation has built one of our first skyscrapers in New York. George A. Fuller has invented the skyscraper. The first skyscraper was invented in Chicago, Illinois in 1854. A skyscraper is a really tall building with many stories. Elevators also made skyscraper’s possible building. In order to build a skyscraper, there must be a lot of steel. Henry Bessemer invented the process of mass producing steel. An American, William Kelly, had held a patent for "a system of air blowing the carbon out of pig iron.Bankruptcy forced Kelly to sell his patent to Henry Bessemer, who had been working on a similar process for making steel. The process was essential to create skyscrapers. Usually our houses are built with wood but, a skyscraper is built with glass and steel. Many architects finally decided that expanding crowded cities was not the solution to create more space; the solution was to build up. By the 1870s , Chicago had become the main financial center for the West, but in October 1871 the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the main wooden part of the city, an area often associated with crime. In the aftermath, the United States flowed in to rebuild the city in a more exclusive fashion. Together, these factors encouraged the building of taller properties in new innovative designs, which, like New York, saw a range of businesses and services being packed into single buildings. Skyscrapers will be the new house in big cities.