The Chicago Temple Building is a Neogothic skyscraper designed in 1922 by Holabird & Root, and built between 1923 and 1924 in Chicago, IL.
Chicago Temple Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as First Methodist Episcopal Church Chicago.
Its precise street address is 77 West Washington Street, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.
Holabird & Root was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.
The studio was founded in Chicago in 1880, and even though it has changed names several times, the firm has evolved and is still active more than a century later.
The firm has played an important role in shaping the skyline of the windy city, and in the overall development of modern architecture in the United States.
The studio has evolved and adapted to the passage of time, from its rise with the Art Deco movement, to embracing the Modern style, and currently introducing sustainability into their designs.
That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was First United Methodist Church as the Main Developer.
The Chicago Temple Building can be categorized as a Neogothic building.
The Neo-Gothic style, also known as Gothic Revival, emerged in the United States during the late 19th century, taking inspiration from the Gothic architecture found in Europe from centuries prior.
The Gothic Revival movement took elements characteristic of the Gothic buildings, such as pointed architect, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses, and applied them to newer buildings, even those belonging to typologies that did not exist during the original Gothic period, such as skyscrapers.
Neg-Gothic buildings usually feature pinnacles, gargoyles and other decorative elements that emphasize the verticality of the structure, and include stonework that features the craftsmanship of skilled artisans of the time.
The Chicago Temple Building was completed in 1924. These were the late days of the Neogothic movement, which had been around for almost 200 years at the time.
Art-deco would soon take over US architecture, and therefore, even though Holabird & Root didn't venture into what was cutting edge in terms of style at the time, and took instead a more conservative approach to the design of the Chicago Temple Building, it is possible that the design already started showing some traits that would later become characteristic of the art-deco movement.
The Chicago Temple Building reaches an architectural height of 568ft (173m), 568ft (173m) if you count the antenna, with the last accesible floor being 400ft (122m) off the gorund. It has a total of 23 floors, served by 2 elevators.
, with other complementary uses such as .The Chicago Temple Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.
A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.
The facade is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.
Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a light-colored limestone cladding.
