Fisher Building

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Fisher Building
Life Span: 1896-Present
Location: NE corner of Dearborn and Van Buren streets
Architect: D. H. Burnham & Co., Peter J. Weber (Annex)

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1899

Fisher Bldg.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Fisher Bldg.—279 Dearborn cor. Vanburen.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Fisher Bldg.—343 S Dearborn cor. Vanburen.

Chicago Tribune, December 29, 1895

BUILDING OF THE YEAR
Chicago has not fared well In the way of new buildings when previous years are taken into comparison. A vast amount of building was done in the period before the World’s Fair and each year s record still suffers by a comparison with that. Cost of buildings in 1895 has been satisfactory as compared with last year, while tite number of buildings and the amount of frontage involved have shown a decrease. Among the more prominent buildings of the year are the Fisher, the Great Northern Hotel Theater and office, the Studebaker, Lewis Institute, and the Davies.

The Fisher Building is being erected on Dearborn and Van Buren streets and Plymouth place for L. G. Fisher. The building is twenty stories and basement high and its cost when completed is estimated at $615,000. The exterior construction is of semi-glazed terra cotta of a yellowish shade and the design is in the French Gothic. The building fronts seventy feet on Van Butren street and about 100 feet each on Dearborn street and Plymouth Place. The principal entrance, seventeen feet wide, is on Dearborn street, in the northern part of the building.

It will lead immediately to the elevators, which will be located on the north wall. The north wail is also constructed of the yellowish semi-glazed tile above the height of 130 feet, which is the limit of fireproof buildings under the present ordinance.

The Dearborn street frontage has four bay windows extending from the top of the first story to the top of the seventeenth, ending In a graceful arch at that point. On the Van Buren street front are two bay windows, while the Plymouth place front has three. The interior is of steel construction, with tile floors and partitions. Six high speed elevators 4½ x 6½ feet, will have automatic openings, double doors, opening the full width of the car.

The building will be equipped with steam heat and electricity. The vestibule and entrance hall of the building will be finished in onyx and bronze, the floor being of mosaic. The ceiling and staircase are of the finest imported marble, while the elevator enclosures vill be of solid bronze. Above the first story the floors in the halls are of mosaic and the walls wainscoted in marble to a height of seven feet. The interior woodwork is of quarter-sawed mahogany, the glass in the doors being of crystalline plate and the rest plate.

Each room will contain a marble washbasin with a plate glass mirror and a coat closet. In connection with the barber shop will be maintained two bathrooms for the use of the occupants of the building. The first story is divided into ten stores, each 13×28 feet: or they will be arranged to the desires of the tenants. The second story is planned with a view to its use by a bank, and the basement may be used for safety deposit vaults. D. H. Burnham & Co. are the architects of the building. The ground on which the structure rests is under lease to Mr. Fisher by the Jennings estate for a term of ninety-nine years, the ground rent beling $4,200 a year.

The Inland Architect, May, 1896

THE FISHER BUILDING, CHICAGO-A BUILDING WITHOUT WALLS.
In the evolution of the modern office building there is nothing more wonderful than that the fact should have been accomplished of erecting a building literally without walls. Steel and concrete foundations and steel frames, supplanting, for the same purpose, the old timber frames of our forefathers, have long since, by a mere change of material, enabled us to build houses of enormous size with safety and economy, while other no less important inventions have enabled us to make them resist the demon of fire, which was the only terror of our ancestors, and make us believe almost that they will last forever. But such structures have always combined in their anatomy some features of contemporaneous buildings. If they have dispensed with front walls, they have retained often rear walls and those adjacent to other prop-erty. They have had division walls or stacks of vaults rising like towers within, and even in the fronts have had encasements of heavy bricks, outside of the frames, and stone basements set as if for ballast at the lower stories. But here, for what we believe to be the first time in human experience, one of the highest commercial buildings in the world has been erected almost without any bricks. It fronts on three streets, and on the remaining side adjoins other property. The fronts are covered with cellular terra cotta on the outside, not in imitation of a wall, but following upward the steel supporting members, and closing in the transoms between the windows, leaving two-thirds of the exterior to be inclosed with glass. On the inside the outlines of the rooms are defined by hard-burned hollow building tile. On the other side the steel skeleton is covered on the exterior by a skin of hollow building tiles to the top of the tenth story and thence to the top with cellular terra cotta, the only suggestion of a wall in the building; but not a wall, for it is supported independently at every floor. On the interior it is inclosed in a skin of hollow building tile from the bottom to the top. The total number of bricks used in the whole was 225,000, and these were employed in backing up and strengthening parts of the terra cotta of the fronts. Only two bricklayers were employed at any time in this part of the work.

The Fisher is located on the shallow block between Dearborn street and Plymouth place, fronting on both of those streets and having its south front on Van Buren street. The front on Van Buren street is 70 feet 6 inches, and the fronts on Dearborn street and Plymouth place are 100 feet each. The height is 235 feet from the sidewalk to the top of the cornice. Within these dimensions it contains 18 stories and an attic, while the basement, which extends out to the curb wall on three sides, is 3 feet below the sewer level of the adjoining streets. In addition to these dimensions, the north end is carried up one story higher to make room for the elevators, one of which carries loads from the basement to the attic, and its annunciator has twenty numbers. Its cubic area is 1,960,000 feet from the bottom of foundations, and it cost about $575,000, or very nearly 30 cents per cubic foot.

The design in every detail of construction and ornamentation was by D. H. Burnham & Co., under whose supervision it was constructed. Situated as it is in the very midst of the business district of Chicago, it is surrounded by many of the most important business buildings of the city, and is conspicuous in that it overshadows all of its tall and stately neighbors. This admirable site has been employed to such advantage that all of the rooms and corridors throughout the building receive direct and uninterrupted light. The shape and size of the property are such that the corridors are short and T-shape in plan, with the result of great economy in office space. All offices have exterior light, and it was not necessary to vary the exterior outline except in the construction of bay windows above the second story, which may be found in every room from the third to the seventeenth story, inclusive. These facts at once render apparent the easy accessibility and cheerfulness of all parts of the building.

The ground floor is subdivided for shops. From each of the three surrounding streets a broad corridor, richly decorated in mosaic, leads to the elevators. The second floor is devoted to a spacious banking room, while the floors above are conveniently subdivided for all classes of desirable tenants. Six swift-running hydraulic passenger elevators of the most modern type, connect the eighteen stories in the shortest possible time.

It goes without saying that such a building is fireproof; that all constructive steel work, on which its whole strength depends, is protected with hollow fireclay tile; that the floors are of a similar material, being flat arches, on the latest and strongest end pressure system, and that the partitions are also of hard hollow fire-clay tile of the lightest pattern. These, with the sanitary electric and heating appliances, which will be described more in detail later on, are all of the latest and most approved patterns. The floors of the halls are of marble mosaic, and those of the rooms are of white maple, and whatever of inside finish in wood became necessary to use is of polished mahogany. All the halls are wainscoted seven feet high with veined Italian marble, but the remainder of the marble work will require a more detailed description under a proper heading.

A description of such a building cannot be complete without some allusion to the architecture. It would be an injustice to the progressive originality of a designer to attempt to show that a building filling all the modern demands for utility is subservient to any of the historical styles. Style cannot dominate the design of any such structure, and the most that an architect can do is to consistently follow a style of decoration most in harmony with the general arrangement of the exterior which the construction itself has dominated. In such a building proportions of doors and windows cannot be considered, any more than the proportions of the whole. The task is therefore the more difficult to combine the necessity for covering the structural parts with some form of artistic expression. This is seen in the details of the exterior terra cotta work, the entrances and the corridors of the first and second stories, where motives taken from the fifteenth century Gothic of Rouen and Bruges have been used with good results. All the minuter details of the interior in the ornamental iron, mosaics, hardware and gas fixtures have been similarly carried out. The terra cotta of the fronts tells what it is and does not presume to imitate stone. It is of a pale salmon color and has a spattered surface which adds much to its effect.

The contract for this building in every detail, even down to the door mats, has been executed by the Guaranty Construction Company of Chicago. The officers of this company are George M. Moulton, president; Theodore Starrett, vice-president, and W. D. Richardson, general manager. Its owner is Lucius G. Fisher, of Chicago. The illustrations, which we are now enabled to make complete, tell more than words what it is, and how it was built. Some of these photographs are part of its history which otherwise might pass into oblivion; they are dated and the reader is asked to note these dates. The interest in them grows with the knowledge that these contractors have accomplished some things that have not before been done. To make this clear a sort of time-table is necessary, which we will preface with the statement that from the day that the contract was signed, June 27, 1895, to the day the first tenants moved in, April 23, 1896, was nearly ten months-but the actual working time from the day the superstructure was started until the final completion of the building, was only a trifle over six months and a half. This time-table is as follows:

1895

1896.
January 2,— Complete detail drawings for interior marble work
received.
April 23.— First tenant moved in.
May 1.— Marble and mosaic contracts completed and building ready for all tenants.

An examination of the above will show that even in this ten-month building there were delays. The first was due to the failure to receive structural steel, in September, 1895. But it also shows that the whole steel skeleton above the first floor was set between October 12 and November 12. October has thirty-one days. In this time five days were entirely lost by bad weather, when men could not work in the open air. So nineteen stories, including the attic, were set in twenty-six days.

But during that time there was a period when thirteen stories were set in fourteen days. During the whole time of building no overtime or night work was done, the same being specified in the contract, thus reducing the cost to the owner. The principal work was done during a fall and winter which were exceptionally severe, while the early spring was of little assistance to the contractors, because then the work was nearly all inside. If it is asked, “How could this be done?” we can ouly say that careful attention to details and intelligent division of labor have led to the result. There could be no mistakes under such a system. But there was a second cause of delay, and that was due to the fact that changes made in the first-story corridors by the owner led to the redesigning of the whole of that part of the work, and all of the materials had to be got out after January 1.

But while the main part of the work and the responsibility for the whole rested with the Guaranty Construction Company, they could not have accomplished this result without the hearty coöperation and prompt work, not admitting the possibility of any mistakes or the rejection of any imperfect materials or workmanship, on the part of their many sub-contractors.

A full description of the work must necessarily include these—without which any description of the building would be incomplete.

First in importance was the steel skeleton and beam work. The entire structure is supported on skeleton steel columns, which are riveted together so as to be continuous from the bottom to the top. These came together, just as they were fitted in the shop, in such a perfect way as to contribute more than anything else to the rapidity of the construction. After the first story was set, the material was delivered as fast as the contractors could handle it. As it is the intention of Mr. Shankland, one of Mr. Burnham’s partners, to publish a description of the constructive steel work, and how it was handled, it will not be necessary here to go into the details of this part of the contract. It is only necessary now to say that within a week of this writing the strength of the isolated Fisher building has withstood a very severe test in a sixty-three-mile gale.

Next in importance is the fireproof work, all of which was done by the Pioneer Fireproof Construction Company. In the midst of many of the new and untried systems of so-called fire-proofing, which seek adoption more by reason of their pretended cheapness than any other, the old methods of the Pioneer Company, which have been used in the best fireproof buildings that have been erected within the last fifteen years, have been used. The floors are of their latest patterns of end pressure flat arches, the lightest they have yet made, and the material is the same throughout, being the hard-burned fire-clay tile from their own clay beds at Ottawa. This tile gives reliable fireproofing not only through the nature of the material used, but the multiplicity of hollow spaces, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that this is the most important measure of fire-protection. The worst that can happen to a hollow tile is the chipping off of the first face exposed to fire, which only results in the revelation of another web to offer new resistance, while the loss of the first does not destroy the stability of the work. It is interesting to note here that upon inquiry we have found that the material of this kind used in the Fisher building aggregates 206 carloads, weighing 3,620 tons-and it is the largest quantity of any one material used in its construction.

The entire exterior was built by the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company of Chicago, excepting ten stories of the north wall, which are of hollow building tile. But above this point they built the inclosure on the outside. There is little to add to our description above of the architecture of the building, which refers mainly to the terra cotta work. The precision and accuracy of the turning and fitting, as well as the uniformity of color, are things which we naturally expect to find. But in the carving of the enrichments of the large core moldings and finials we again see the spirit of the fourteenth century artists of France, not imitated, but reproduced with even greater effect (due to the use of plastic material used) than in the old stone carvings. But without the craftman’s art it would be valueless in any material. The new process of finely spattering the terra cotta before burning in has been used throughout.

The floors of all the offices contain 120,000 feet of thoroughly kiln-dried polished maple flooring. They are made of two-inch face strips, and if laid end to end would make a strip one hundred and forty miles long. They were furnished by the Rittenhouse & Embree Company, who claim to have the second largest plant in the West for the manufacture of hardwood flooring. Their dry. kiln capacity is 320,000 feet of lumber per week. From these cabinets on the various floors iron armored conduits of an approved type extend through the tile partitions, or are imbedded in concrete floors, to outlets for the connection of fixtures or switches in the different offices.

The general method of construction throughout the building is as follows: Heavy main risers extend in the main shaft from the basement to the top floor of the building, being divided into three sections by two heavy centers of drawn copper feeder, mounted upon slate bases and provided with fuse blocks containing fusible strips, at which point the riser may be cut into three parts in case of trouble. These cut-outs or centers are located upon the fifth and twelfth floors. From each of these centers heavy feeders extend to the basement in main shaft, and from the foot of this shaft directly to the east curb wall of the building, where they connect with the underground service of the Chicago Edison Company through large service switches of knife pattern, which combine the functions of service cut-outs and firemen’s switches, and make it possible to cut off the electric current from the entire building instantaneously. This practically covers the heavy conductors in the building, which are of such size and so arranged that either a two or three wire system of distributing current may be used.

Returning to the distributing system, at each floor short sub-mains extend from the main riser in the shaft to tap line cut-outs in the adjoining cut-out and meter cabinet. Here a separate cutout and meter are placed for each office or suite of offices, it being possible with very small expenditure of labor to place a single meter so as to indicate the entire consumption for any combination of offices which the pleasure of the tenants may dictate. From these cut-outs the tap line wires pass through the conduit directly to the fixture outlet. They are of duplex wire; that is, two conductors insulated from each other but contained within the same outer insulation and can be readily withdrawn and replaced with new conductors, in case of any trouble, without any cutting of plastering.

All tap line wire was manufactured by the Grimshaw Company and mains by the General Electric Company. All switches used throughout the building are of the flush pattern, those in the hallways and public places being provided with detachable keys. The system is complete from the underground service to the fixture outlets, fixtures having been provided by another contractor. The building, like most of the large office buildings in Chicago, will be supplied with current from mains of the Chicago Edison Company.

One of the many ornamentations worthy of special notice is the new pattern of door knobs and door trimmings, executed in cast iron, finished by the Bower-Barff process, with the monogram of the owner, and worked out and furnished by P. & F. Corbin, who furnished the hardware for the building.

Treatment of Elevator Inclosures.

It required many other adjuncts to make this building complete, and nothing was omitted.

Glass mosaic ceilings and side walls are the finish above the marble wainscoting of the first story corridors.

The whole of the tinting and house painting was done by Alfred Barker, of West Madison street, Chicago.

The inside finish above referred is all done in mahogany. The door panels are covered with quartering veneers which are matched so as to form patterns; the whole is stained and polished to resemble San Domingo mahogany.

The large toilet room and barber shop on the eighth floor is an interesting place to visit.

Each floor has a slop sink in a closet.

The ventilation, where necessary, is forced by electric rotary fans.

There are six latest improved passenger elevators, the doors of which are supplied with a system of opening and closing.

The mechanism is operated by compressed air. All the doors are double, opening in the center. The operator opens the doors by touching a button in the floor of the cab, and he is obliged to release it, thereby closing them as the cab moves away.

The Inland Printer, June and July, 1896

Inter Ocean, January 9, 1906

An annex to cost $400,000 will be built to the Fisher building, the work to be commenced in February and to be completed by Nov. 1. The site of the annex will be the ground immediately, north of the Fisher building with a frontage of fifty feet both on Dearborn street and Plymouth place, and an extension through from street to street of seventy and one-half feet.

The new building will be twenty stories in height, two stories taller than the present Fisher building. The two buildings will be connected on each floor, two of the six elevators at the north of the present building being taken out to afford the communication. Four new elevators will be put in the new building.

Plan Big Restaurant.*
It is expected that the entire eighteenth floors of both buildings will be devoted to a restaurant, while the two stories in the new building above that will be fitted up for clubrooms.

In architecture the two buildings will correspond, with the exception that no bay windows will appear in the new structure. The exterior will be terra cotta and the interior finished in mahogany.

The Thompson-Starrett company has signed a contract to turn over the building completed on Nov. 1.

Leases Are Negotiated.
Leases are being negotiated already for five floors of the annex. The present leases expire on Feb. 9, and the old buildings will then immediately be torn down.

Lucius G. Fisher, who owns the fee and the structure of the old building, last summer secured a ninety-nine year lease upon the land for the new bullding from Mrs. A. M. Bailey at an annual rental of $7,500. The cost of the old building with the value of fee is estimated at a million dollars, so that Mr. Fisher’s investment will represent an outlay of nearly a million and a half dollars. P. J. Weber, the architect who designed the present building, has made the plans for the annex.

A subway connection with the tunnel is contemplated.

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