Dome

Side view along the east elevation, depicting treatment at base; "The four initial floors of the fourteen-storey Reliance Building, designed by Charles B. Atwood of Daniel Burnham's office and the structural engineer E.C. Shankland, were erected in 1890. This being the first comprehensive achievement of the system now known as Chicago construction, was repeated innumerable times in Chicago in the building boom that lasted from 1890 to 1893. It consisted of a riveted steel-frame superstructure, hollow-tile flooring on steel joists, plaster fire-proofing, perimeter bay windows filled with plate glass, steel-trussed wind bracing and bedrock concrete caissons sometimes extending for as much as 125 feet beneath the footing." p. 63 Source: Frampton, Kenneth; Modern architecture, 1851-1945, New York: Rizzoli, 1983 (0847805069) (accessed 12/6/2007)