Reliance Building

Hey, it’s the Reliance Building. The Reliance Building has both a great story and an important place in the history of Chicago skyscrapers.

Elevator entrepreneur & real estate mogul William Hale hired Daniel Burnham & John Root to build him a tall building at Washington & State. But he already had a building there and the tenants didn’t want to move. So they jacked up the four story building 20 feet or so and by 1891 constructed the new foundation and base underneath.

By 1894, the tenants had moved out and the rest of the construction could begin. But in the meantime, John Root had died. So Daniel Burnham hired Charles Atwood to complete the building. And the structure he designed and built would be vary innovative.

Hale wanted an office building with doctors & dentists on the upper floors, so large windows were important. And Atwood really delivered.

When you look at the building, the dark granite two-level base designed by Root gives way to a dramatic rise of glass and white terra cotta tile that Atwood designed. The building has abundant lighting, with seven-and-a-half-feet square panes of glass on the bay windows, flanked by double-hung windows for ventilation.

Atwood achieved this expanse of glass by using an steel skeleton frame construction — leaving only thin curtain walls on the outside, where the thick brick walls used to be.

And because he used a steel skeleton frame throughout, they were able to erect the top ten stories in 15 days — which was unheard of in the 1890s.

You’ll see a similar steel-frame construction in Atwood’s next building, Fisher Building @ Dearborn & Van Buren. And more terra cotta tile at the Carson, Pirie, Scott Building by Louis Sullivan just a block south on State.

Currently, the building is the hotel Staypineapple. So if you wanted, you could see how large those windows are, from the inside.