Join Chris Stacey, a historian of the city of Chicago, for "Chicago’s Architectural Innovations: Creating a New Form of Building in the Late 19th Century." The emergence of Chicago’s skyscrapers was due to a unique set of factors and more importantly how the people involved in the creation of tall buildings responded to the world around them. A number of barriers exclusive to Chicago created difficulty for engineers and architects to discover a way to meet the demands of real estate speculators who wanted tall buildings with the maximum amount of rental space. The result of overcoming technological, environmental, and economic issues was a new form of American architecture—The Chicago Style—that revolutionized the way of building skyscrapers and thinking about form for at least a century. This presentation pairs well with the Sunday, July 12 "A Walk in the Loop" event.

Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Times: 6:00PM Central, 7:00PM Eastern, 4:00PM Pacific. For those in Europe the time is 12:00AM in London on July 9.

Location: Zoom Video Conference

Cost: Free

Photo Credit: Chris Stacey