The architect-engineer William Le Baron Jenney built the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, using for the first time an all-metal skeleton of cast-iron columns and steel beams to support the masonry shell of floors and walls, creating the prototype for all skyscraper design.
William Le Baron Jenney, an American architect and engineer, used new construction methods that would earn him the title "Father of the Skyscraper-. After completing .
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his architectural and engineering education in Paris, he came back to the U.S. and served as an engineer in the Union army during the American Civil War. After the war Jenney settled in Chicago, where he opened his own architectural office, where many members of the Chicago School served their architectural apprenticeships on his staff, including Louis Sullivan. Jenney's greatest contribution to architecture was his pioneering use of metal frame construction for large buildings, first used in his Home Insurance Company Building. Jenny's revolutionary method of building, termed curtain wall construction, remains the basic design for tall buildings, now known as skyscrapers.
There were many other different architects that were part of the Chicago School, which fought against the normal, more conventional, ways of architecture. Some of these were men like Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, and Louis Sullivan. .
Daniel Burnham, architect and urban planner, was born in Henderson, New York. At the age of 26 he formed a partnership with the architect John W. Root in Chicago. Burnham was administrator and Root was the designer. .
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Together they were "among those who lead the Chicago School- (Curtis 63), and built some of the first steel-.
frame structures, such as the Montauk Block, that were the beginnings of the modern skyscrapers. Their many projects in Chicago included the Masonic Temple, which was at the time, the tallest building in the world.