Manhattan Apartments

The Manhattan Building on Dearborn Street holds the record for the oldest surviving skyscraper in Chicago that uses a skeleton of riveted steel. When William Le Baron Jenney finished it in eighteen ninety-one, he pushed his luck with the city planners by building sixteen stories high on narrow foundations. To keep it from leaning into the street, he used a system of caissons filled with concrete. It serves as a physical timeline of how engineers figured out how to build toward the clouds.