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Skyscrapers, Part One: A Guy and a Birdcage · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
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Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's give a shout out to our own
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Speaker 1: towering super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: EO EO.
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Speaker 3: I just want to point out that before we started
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Speaker 3: this episode, we were talking about the topic and Noel
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Speaker 3: gwent Skyrim, and so we're starting this recording about five
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Speaker 3: minutes later than we were originally going to because we
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Speaker 3: talked about White Run and Iron Daggers, sure, the towers theory,
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Speaker 3: all that kind of funn and Nolda sat there and
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Speaker 3: was like, why did I do this?
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Speaker 1: So that's Noel Brown, that's me, and we're all still
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Speaker 1: playing Skyrim. And I think it was the phrase sky
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Speaker 1: that got all of us started today.
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Speaker 2: Uh.
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Speaker 1: Previously on Ridiculous History, we discussed the idea of skyscrapers.
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Speaker 1: What's the what's like the tallest building you guys have
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Speaker 1: been in geez.
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Speaker 2: I think when I was a kid, I went to
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Speaker 2: the Sears Tower in Chicago, which I think is a
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Speaker 2: is a kind of one of the biggies, or at
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Speaker 2: least it was for a while.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's so it's going to look so
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Speaker 1: strange to future historians, like you fast forward.
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Speaker 2: I think about this often. We've talked about on the show.
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Speaker 1: You fast forward several centuries or millennia, and imagine that
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Speaker 1: you are an historian walking through the ruins of a
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Speaker 1: modern city or what we call modern city today, and
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Speaker 1: you see a bunch of interstates or the ruins of interstates,
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Speaker 1: and you see a bunch of weirdly foul like buildings,
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Speaker 1: you know, like you would you would walk around and
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Speaker 1: you would say, the people of this city, they had
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Speaker 1: a sophisticated aqueduct system, and they worshiped the penis.
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Speaker 2: They were obsessed with dogs z they would obsist with dogs.
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Speaker 3: I mean, I will say the one we have in Atlanta,
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Speaker 3: so we have I mean, it's the Bank of America
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Speaker 3: buildings how I've always referred to. But it's like it's
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Speaker 3: like it's like a really tall one. And I've always
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Speaker 3: referred to as like the giant cigarette, because it's just
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Speaker 3: like this is the one thing and it's right at
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Speaker 3: the top, but it's just like a cigarettes cigarette. Yes,
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Speaker 3: it is very phallic in nature, and maybe we're projecting
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Speaker 3: a bit, but we can be honest when we say
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Speaker 3: skyscrapers are so cool and they are so very ridiculous, right,
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Speaker 3: they're kind of weird looking.
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Speaker 2: They're weird looking. I mean, I guess they make sense,
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Speaker 2: you know, in these you know, very densely populated urban
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Speaker 2: air areas where real estate is it's such a premium
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Speaker 2: and there's really nowhere to put stuff except up, right, Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 2: it is.
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Speaker 1: That's a great point, because it makes sense to build
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Speaker 1: up and maybe to build down instead of to build out.
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Speaker 1: And if you canna afford it, right, if you could
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Speaker 1: afford it, yeah, usually the basement apartments are cheaper than
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Speaker 1: the penthouses so far.
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Speaker 2: But SCOTTSCA flooding right, oh yeah. Also, remember when New
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Speaker 2: York was having all that crazy flooding and the subways
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Speaker 2: and stuff. A lot of the cool hipster types with
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Speaker 2: recording studios and basements in Bushwick lost all their vinyl
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Speaker 2: and all their crazy you know, consoles and vintage mics.
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Speaker 2: Because that water it flows downhill, aka into your basement
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Speaker 2: studio or apartment.
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Speaker 1: And this this may be apocryphal, but I heard back
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Speaker 1: in the day that New York City will flood if
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Speaker 1: it does not constantly have underground water pumps.
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Speaker 2: Have you guys heard that like that? It certainly makes sense.
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Speaker 1: The subways will be inundated. They rely on this underground
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Speaker 1: machinery to keep things dry. But you know, they're still
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Speaker 1: going with it. New York City. Maybe a fad, but
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Speaker 1: hopefully a fad that continues, and New York City and
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Speaker 1: Chicago as will find. It's really continuing an ancient human
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Speaker 1: architectural trend. When we're talking about skyscrapers, we're talking about
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Speaker 1: this human urge to build the biggest, tallest thing.
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Speaker 2: All the time. Isn't that interesting the way what once
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Speaker 2: was very much a spiritual pursuit, or at the very
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Speaker 2: least you could even argue an attempt to to you know,
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Speaker 2: kind of play God right and build up into the
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Speaker 2: heavens like the Tower of Babel. Wasn't that almost considered
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Speaker 2: blasphemous to attempt to dare build something that would attempt
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Speaker 2: to touch the heavens or to reach into the celestial realm.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like if God wanted us to be
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Speaker 1: that high in the atmosphere, God would have made us
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Speaker 1: taller exactly. So, I mean, it's nuts, right, because we
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Speaker 1: have seen throughout history, throughout cultures when people can build
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Speaker 1: big stuff, they do, and historically very tall or very
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Speaker 1: large structures were the flex of religious or political leaders,
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Speaker 1: you know, for a long long time. The biggest building
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Speaker 1: ever or the tallest, I should say it was the
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Speaker 1: Great Pyramid of Giza. It was built, as we know
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Speaker 1: to you know, built as a grave basically for the
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Speaker 1: pharaoh Kufu. And it was I almost said, at its
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Speaker 1: height it was around four hundred and seventy six feet tall.
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Speaker 2: That was huge.
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Speaker 1: For like four thousand years, that was the tallest building.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, you know, I was just kind
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Speaker 2: of trying to check myself about this, the apocryphal nature
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Speaker 2: of the Tower of Babel story, which I think can
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Speaker 2: be looked at a little bit more as a metaphor
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Speaker 2: and allegory of like man trying to contend with the
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Speaker 2: boundaries set by God. Right. But there's an interesting little
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Speaker 2: post on a Reddit thread that says, and then they said, come,
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Speaker 2: let us build ourselves a city and a tower with
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Speaker 2: its top in the heavens, and let us make a
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Speaker 2: name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face
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Speaker 2: of the whole earth. God took this as pride and arrogance.
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Speaker 2: Man was simply trying to unite and stick together with
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Speaker 2: one language and one common goal. God punished Man and
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Speaker 2: forced him to live up to his name and worship him. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Humans tried to do something cool and God took that personally.
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Speaker 2: Last that story.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that's I think in the in the legends,
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Speaker 1: in the folklore, that is the origin of linguistic fragmentation.
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Speaker 2: That's right, right.
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Speaker 1: So the we also, I think we talked about it earlier.
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Speaker 1: We also know that the definition of a tower or
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Speaker 1: a tall building has changed. It's escalated over time.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Ten, things tend to do that, don't they. You
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Speaker 2: got to kind of outdo your predecessors once, right, that
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Speaker 2: the tomb of Faroh Cufu, for example, well with cows
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Speaker 2: within the Great Pyramids of Giza, were one hundred and
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Speaker 2: forty five meters high, which is around four hundred and
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Speaker 2: seventy six feet tall by days standards. That's a pittance.
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Speaker 2: As the Brits might say, Yeah, it's fine, you know
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Speaker 2: what I mean, It's perfectly fine, sacred geometrical space. Yes, right,
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Speaker 2: we also know that.
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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I always think about the first
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Speaker 1: time I saw the Tower of London, and it's fine.
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Speaker 2: We're such bummers. Well, no, it is interesting too though,
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Speaker 2: because I mean a lot of times, building for height
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Speaker 2: when it came to these types of towers was about defense.
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Speaker 2: It was about getting one up on your enemies and
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Speaker 2: about having a bird's eye view, being able to see
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Speaker 2: folks coming from as far away as possible, and you know,
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Speaker 2: having them to fight through a whole bunch of floors
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Speaker 2: of guards and soldiers and what have you in order
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Speaker 2: to get to the big boss.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we should do an episode on why castles aren't
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Speaker 1: built the way they are. You know, when the holes
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Speaker 1: to shoot arrows, what are those things called it?
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Speaker 2: There's a name for them. Okay, I got a couple
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Speaker 2: of names, arrow loops being one of them, because they
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Speaker 2: were these strategic spots where you know, archers would be
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Speaker 2: able to post up and have some coverage, right, or
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Speaker 2: cover as we call it in video game parlance. And holes, yeah, man,
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Speaker 2: give me them murder holes. That's nasty, also known as
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Speaker 2: crenels and oh gosh, how do I even pronounce this?
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Speaker 2: Machia colliations, machio machia machio collations, let's call it that. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: I like murder holes.
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Speaker 1: The murder holes rule so it's the we know, as
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Speaker 1: you were saying, that a lot of these larger buildings
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Speaker 1: were created entirely for defense and then secondarily for status.
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Speaker 1: The Tower London, for us playing along at home, is
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Speaker 1: about eighty nine feet tall, and that used to be
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Speaker 1: a big deal historically. Yeah, not to sound like a jerk,
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Speaker 1: The Tower of London is a compound. It is impressive,
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Speaker 1: It is historically significant. They are perhaps most famous nowadays
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Speaker 1: for the infamous at times non consensual residents of the tower,
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Speaker 1: and of course the ravens.
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Speaker 2: Of course, I mean oftentimes those non consential residents were
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Speaker 2: big time you know, political dissidents, prisoners, and again they
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Speaker 2: were high profile prisoners who would probably have people coming
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Speaker 2: for them to rescue them, right or to help stage
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Speaker 2: their grand escape, which would be very difficult to do
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Speaker 2: in such a vertical prison as that.
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Speaker 1: And so for most of this period of history, all
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Speaker 1: these folks were trying to build the biggest, the tallest
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Speaker 1: structure ever and they never topped the Great Pyramid for
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Speaker 1: four thousand years, around about four thousand years, it was
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Speaker 1: the tallest thing humans had ever made. The record was
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Speaker 1: only broken in the thirteen hundreds with the construction of
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Speaker 1: Lincoln Cathedral, which is almost five hundred and twenty five
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Speaker 1: feet tall or one hundred and sixty meters for everybody
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Speaker 1: outside of the US and Namibia.
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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, with this this close to
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Speaker 2: the construction of the Great Pyramids, you started seeing it
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Speaker 2: being overstepped by kind of very small orders of magnitude, right, yeah, yeah, now.
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Speaker 1: This technology would allow, right yeah, Just so now we're
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Speaker 1: seeing now we're seeing something similar to setting Olympic records. Right,
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Speaker 1: people are beating each other in very small increments.
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Speaker 2: And we're back to that now because it's got we
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Speaker 2: once again come full circle almost where much high you're
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Speaker 2: gonna start having logistical problems where things are going to
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Speaker 2: collapse under their own weight, right for sure.
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Speaker 1: We also in full disclosure, folks, we're wondering whether this
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Speaker 1: will be a two part episode. But whether it's one
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Speaker 1: part or two parts, I pose the following question, should
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Speaker 1: an antenna count toward the height of the tallest skyscraper?
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Speaker 1: That's obviously where we're going, But Samon, no, absolutely not.
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Speaker 2: I think I think no, I think it's a bit
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Speaker 2: of a cheat, a bit of a lazy move there. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: I am tempted to agree. So a burrito is not
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Speaker 2: a sandwich. What about hot dog tbd?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that one's hard. I mean, I think it's kind
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Speaker 3: of just its own thing. But I mean it is
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Speaker 3: meet between two pieces of bread, but the bread is combined,
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Speaker 3: so who.
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Speaker 2: Knows it's joined together on one side, open on the other.
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Speaker 2: Whereas to me, I think a wrap should be a
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Speaker 2: categor glory of edible confection. I mean, I guess that's redundant.
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Speaker 2: Confection is inherently edible, so we also have uh. But
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Speaker 2: the the lore like a seared slaughterfish, though, did you
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Speaker 2: make that in a wrap? That'd be good?
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Speaker 1: The lore of food in Skyrim is amazing. One time
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Speaker 1: I spent an entire weekend just cooking in that game.
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Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I've been balancing my time between
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Speaker 2: Skyrim and Fallout four and the food game and Fallout
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Speaker 2: four is not very appetizing, especially when compared to Skyrim,
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Speaker 2: which you can you know, you can make some tasty
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Speaker 2: stuff in Skyrim, but you're you're you're lucky if the
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Speaker 2: food in Fallout doesn't give you rad poisoning.
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Speaker 1: It's so weird that the one like one of the
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Speaker 1: most rare things in Skyrim is milk.
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Speaker 3: I mean, no, you don't want to eat some grilled
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Speaker 3: rad roach. Nah man giant cocky retail so good?
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Speaker 1: Uh So, everybody right in and when you give us
13:58
Speaker 1: a review, please say you enjoy the tangents.
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Speaker 2: Will tell us what your favorite RPG recipes are. There
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Speaker 2: we go. I like that.
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Speaker 1: We also know that people were just trying to get higher.
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Speaker 1: Like if you go to Tibet you see the palace
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Speaker 1: of the Dhali Lama, which is built high up in
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Speaker 1: the mountains. You see in Grecian culture, the monasteries of Athos.
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Speaker 1: In each of those cases, they weren't trying to make
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Speaker 1: the tallest building. They were trying to build a building
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Speaker 1: in the tallest or the highest place so that they
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Speaker 1: could get as close to Heaven as possible. It's crazy ambitious.
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Speaker 1: That's where the idea of skyscrapers comes from. I mean,
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Speaker 1: if we want to learn about the origin of the
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Speaker 1: modern skyscraper today, which are in all major cities, then
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Speaker 1: we have to head back to the eighteen hundreds.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to buy over to Britannica, who said
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Speaker 2: that the increase in urban commerce in the United States
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Speaker 2: and the second half of the nineteenth century augmented the
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Speaker 2: need for city business space, and the installation of the
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Speaker 2: first safe passenger elevator in the how It department store
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Speaker 2: in New York City in eighteen fifty seven made practical
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Speaker 2: the erection of buildings more than four or five stories tall.
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Speaker 2: The earliest skyscrapers rested on extremely thick masonry. They were chunky,
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Speaker 2: but donkeys.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because they read into some problems of material science. Right.
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Speaker 1: You see a pyramid and you realize the shape of
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Speaker 1: a pyramid is entirely due to the fact that every
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Speaker 1: single brick is carrying the weight of every other brick
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Speaker 1: atop it. So you have to build this masonry extremely
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Speaker 1: thick so that you can have a third, fourth, or
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Speaker 1: fifth floor.
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Speaker 2: It's the foundation that everything's builts on. And you know,
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Speaker 2: foundations are obviously still important in modern skyscrapers. But one
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Speaker 2: thing anyone who's been up in one of these things
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Speaker 2: will notice is that they kind of sway. It's weird.
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Speaker 2: They're built to be flexible because they are their center
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Speaker 2: of gravity is such that, you know, if they are
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Speaker 2: completely rigid, a little stiff breeze could cause some real,
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Speaker 2: you know, fun functional problems. So they are built to
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Speaker 2: kind of flex. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And in some parts of the world, Japan in particular,
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Speaker 1: architects figured out how to build skyscrapers that will shift
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Speaker 1: on their foundation a little bit during earthquakes.
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Speaker 2: That's part of it. I'm sorry, Yeah, I should have
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Speaker 2: mentioned earthquakes. For sure. It's much less about the breeze
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Speaker 2: blowing over your building than it is about these kind
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Speaker 2: of geologic events, because you know, a little tremor if
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Speaker 2: a building is super rigid, that's gonna be bad times.
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Speaker 2: You got to go with the flow. But it is
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Speaker 2: a little unnerving to feel that if you're up in
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Speaker 2: the tippy tippy top of one of these things and
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Speaker 2: you you do kind of get the sense that you're
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Speaker 2: swaying a little bit, and they can feel a little
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Speaker 2: spooky at the top.
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Speaker 1: It's like being on a boat, right, And then you
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Speaker 1: get back down to the surface and you think, is
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Speaker 1: the world moving or am I dizzy?
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Speaker 2: Uh?
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Speaker 1: We also have to know this entire origin of modern skyscrapers.
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Speaker 1: You know, for like several thousand years, people were doing
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Speaker 1: their best and everything kept falling down over time except
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Speaker 1: for the Great Pyramids. And then the origin of the
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Speaker 1: modern skyscraper really goes back to one. Dude, he had
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Speaker 1: a weird day, he went kind of nuts. He changed
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Speaker 1: the course of architecture.
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Speaker 2: And then how it goes. Yes, yeah, I guess so yeah,
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Speaker 2: New York minute, everything can change.
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Speaker 1: New York minute, a Chicago second. It's between eighteen eighty
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Speaker 1: four nineteen forty five. The skyscraper boom begins in eighteen
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Speaker 1: eighty five when a guy named William le Baron Jenny
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Speaker 1: has his dream come true the Home Insurance Building in Chicago.
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Speaker 2: What a get the Home Insurance Building? Yeah? Yeah, it
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Speaker 2: was a big, big name.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah it was. It was ten stories tall and
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Speaker 1: its construction used metal in place of masonry. And then
18:34
Speaker 1: a few years later, in eighteen ninety, they added two
18:37
Speaker 1: more stories. They figured out the math and they were like, well,
18:40
Speaker 1: we can make it two stories taller, and they you know,
18:45
Speaker 1: it ended up being twelve stories tall. It was also
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Speaker 1: an insurance building, as you pointed out, so it's very
18:52
Speaker 1: important to the companies involved to make it look, you know, reliable,
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Speaker 1: because if you're an insurance company and your headquarters Topples,
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Speaker 1: should you be insuring homes?
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Speaker 2: Are you ensuring yourself? That's going to be a pretty
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Speaker 2: serious claim, you know, It's funny too, how skyscrapers, you
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Speaker 2: know that kind of dot these urban skylines serve as
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Speaker 2: these kind of flagship locations for these giant companies and
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Speaker 2: also kind of billboards for them. You know, that's a
19:27
Speaker 2: big part of it too, is people are competing for
19:30
Speaker 2: you know, eyeballs. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, like you pointed out the Sears tower, like Max
19:36
Speaker 1: said earlier, the Bank of America building, these things are
19:40
Speaker 1: very much advertisements, incredibly important, incredibly expensive advertisements. Apparently the
19:48
Speaker 1: story is this the origin of modern skyscraper technology dates
19:54
Speaker 1: to this time when our guy, Jenny, an engineer, he
20:00
Speaker 1: was looking at his wife who placed a heavy book
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Speaker 1: on top of a small bird cage, and he was
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Speaker 1: surprised that this small metal bird cage supported such a
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Speaker 1: heavy toe.
20:15
Speaker 2: Oh.
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Speaker 1: He was also, by the way, the a classmate of
20:19
Speaker 1: Gustave Eiffel, the guy who built the Eiffel.
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Speaker 2: Tower, heard of him. Yeah, so that makes sense because
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Speaker 2: I guess the kind of configuration of the way the
20:28
Speaker 2: bent kind of metal times, I guess, in the structure
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Speaker 2: of a bird cage not that dissimilar from the kind
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Speaker 2: of metal girders that support the frames of modern skyscrapers.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, It's all about weight distribution, is it not. And
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Speaker 1: it seems like I Felt was also super into this
20:50
Speaker 1: idea because he would later build the Eiffel Tower. Essentially,
20:53
Speaker 1: our buddy Jenny saw this bird cage supporting a heavy
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Speaker 1: book and he thought the most American thing ever.
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Speaker 2: He thought, hell yeah, but bigger, ah yeah, supersized right, supercisely. Indeed,
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Speaker 2: some other factors played a little bit of a role
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Speaker 2: in the development of the modern skyscrapers. Natural disasters, or
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Speaker 2: I guess you know, man made perhaps in this case,
21:19
Speaker 2: the Chicago Fire. The Great Chicago Fire burned more than
21:23
Speaker 2: three square miles of what at the time was a
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Speaker 2: mostly wooden part of the city in eighteen seventy one.
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Speaker 2: I mean things were you know, I think that's a
21:35
Speaker 2: lot of times how wooden structures or entirely wooden structures
21:38
Speaker 2: got phased out. It is usually due to them catching
21:41
Speaker 2: on fire and burning to ash and then thinking there
21:44
Speaker 2: must be a better way. So there was a bit
21:47
Speaker 2: of a golden if kind of pyric opportunity to build
21:52
Speaker 2: more durable buildings. Oftentimes we see innovation come from great
21:57
Speaker 2: moments of destruction, much like the way Japan had two
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Speaker 2: major cities destroyed by atomic bombs wielded by the Americans
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Speaker 2: of course, or I guess the Allies, and it gave
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Speaker 2: them this opportunity, you know, through hallacious suffering and misfortune
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Speaker 2: and destruction to rebuild in an image that they were
22:21
Speaker 2: able to kind of choose right, and it really bred
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Speaker 2: all of this insane innovation, and we to this day
22:27
Speaker 2: looked to Japan as kind of these leaders in futuristic everything, technology, architecture, ideas, toilets. Dude,
22:36
Speaker 2: I recently became a cost Co member and they sell
22:39
Speaker 2: those Toto washlets there for a very deep discount. Only
22:44
Speaker 2: issue is I got to get an outlet installed next
22:47
Speaker 2: to my toilet, so that's got to come first. But boy,
22:49
Speaker 2: oh boy, am I looking forward to that circular stream
22:52
Speaker 2: that you can and it can be cool. It can
22:54
Speaker 2: be it can go clockwise counterclockwise. The world is your oyster.
22:59
Speaker 2: Everybody check out episode on bidets. Japan, as we know,
23:03
Speaker 2: is pooping in the future. There's not a better way
23:08
Speaker 2: to say it. We also know to your point about
23:11
Speaker 2: disaster creating opportunity for innovation, we know that Chicago and
23:17
Speaker 2: the northern part of the United States in general was
23:21
Speaker 2: benefiting from the post Civil War economy, right, there was
23:26
Speaker 2: a great northern migration. There were tons of jobs.
23:31
Speaker 1: There was a lot of demand for industry because you know,
23:37
Speaker 1: the lower half of the country collapsed. And so let's
23:40
Speaker 1: go to an excellent article by The Guardian called the
23:44
Speaker 1: World's First Skyscraper. A History of Cities in fifty Buildings,
23:49
Speaker 1: Day nine. Spoiler, folks, it's a series. The journalist is
23:54
Speaker 1: named Colin Marshall, and we especially loved this quote. Colin writes,
24:01
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, when the New York Home Insurance Company
24:05
Speaker 1: wanted a new Chicago headquarters in the city's cleared out
24:09
Speaker 1: kay burned down downtown, they wanted this fire proofed, but
24:14
Speaker 1: they also wanted it tall, with a maximum number of
24:17
Speaker 1: small offices above the bank floor. And so Jenny does
24:22
Speaker 1: a pitch, and this guy's pitch is pretty innovative. He says, Look,
24:27
Speaker 1: I saw this bird cage one time and it held
24:30
Speaker 1: a heavy book, so I kind of want to do that.
24:33
Speaker 1: But with your huge building also sold, someone said sold.
24:43
Speaker 1: But then, as we'll see, people were a little skeptical
24:47
Speaker 1: because this had not been done before. It wouldn't have
24:50
Speaker 1: to have all that thick masonry. I mean they put
24:54
Speaker 1: stonework around the metal structure like an exoskeleton. This was
25:02
Speaker 1: sort of a science experiment.
25:04
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing I'm always interested about, like early
25:07
Speaker 2: days of this type of insane architectural innovation, before the
25:13
Speaker 2: advent of like computer modeling, right, yeah, autocat, and also
25:18
Speaker 2: to test, you know, and model in like a computer environment,
25:22
Speaker 2: the types of tolerances that are needed, you know, to
25:25
Speaker 2: make sure those things can flex and bend and do
25:27
Speaker 2: what they need to do. A lot of this, I mean,
25:29
Speaker 2: of course, architecture was a long practiced you know field
25:34
Speaker 2: at this point, and then a lot of improvements and
25:36
Speaker 2: innovations have been made, but not the kind that I'm
25:38
Speaker 2: talking about. So there was a lot of kind of like, well,
25:42
Speaker 2: let's just build it and see what happens, right, right, right.
25:45
Speaker 2: I mean I think I'm grossly oversimplifying here, but there
25:48
Speaker 2: certainly was not the same you know assurance that we
25:53
Speaker 2: might have today of what how material is going to
25:56
Speaker 2: behave in the wild? Yeah, in the field.
26:06
Speaker 1: This building, according to Jenny's plans, it would not have
26:12
Speaker 1: to get thicker and darker and stuffier in order to
26:16
Speaker 1: achieve maximum height. In fact, it weighed far less than
26:20
Speaker 1: a similar building made entirely of stone would have weighed
26:24
Speaker 1: because it used iron and it used steel. And to
26:28
Speaker 1: your point, now, there were skeptics in the planning stages,
26:33
Speaker 1: and Jenny's a bit ballsy about this. One member of
26:37
Speaker 1: the planning committee said, well, your ideas intriguing. Would we
26:44
Speaker 1: see the evidence of an earlier structure that proves this
26:48
Speaker 1: idea will work? Where is there such a building, they asked,
26:54
Speaker 1: and he was like, well, this is going to be
26:56
Speaker 1: the first one.
26:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, nowhere is where? So there really is sort of
27:01
Speaker 2: a leap of faith inherent in this whole affair. You know,
27:06
Speaker 2: the skepticism was very valid because there was really no
27:11
Speaker 2: there were no examples, you know, in the wild to
27:13
Speaker 2: look to. So once ippened, then I guess they just
27:16
Speaker 2: decided to go with God and put their trust in Jenny.
27:20
Speaker 2: And so after construction began, the Home Insurance Company and
27:23
Speaker 2: the City of Chicago actually kind of got cold feet
27:27
Speaker 2: after the fact, and they temporarily shut down the project
27:31
Speaker 2: in order to do a little bit more investigation as
27:34
Speaker 2: to whether the building could actually stand up on its own.
27:38
Speaker 2: Kind of think that that might have been something they
27:40
Speaker 2: would have done before breaking ground, but it was a
27:43
Speaker 2: different time. You know, like a scale model.
27:46
Speaker 1: I love, love, love, I do too the scale models
27:50
Speaker 1: of anything. I'm a sucker for them. I think one
27:52
Speaker 1: of our mutually favorite parts of the film Hereditary was
27:57
Speaker 1: the almost the scale model instruction.
28:01
Speaker 2: And you know, in the development here in Atlanta where
28:05
Speaker 2: we used to have our offices Pont City Market, we
28:07
Speaker 2: talked about this down in the food hall or in
28:10
Speaker 2: kind of one of the atriums. When you walk in,
28:12
Speaker 2: they do have scale models or the whole development. And
28:14
Speaker 2: I guess today that's more of a nostalgic thing to
28:19
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, for a show piece. I don't
28:21
Speaker 2: think they're necessarily relying on it and the way they
28:24
Speaker 2: would have back in the day. But it's a good question, Ben,
28:26
Speaker 2: because you can to a degree model some of this
28:30
Speaker 2: stuff by just building it at a much smaller scale,
28:34
Speaker 2: you know, sort of like making a cake recipe that's
28:37
Speaker 2: only for two servings versus like, you know, a giant cake.
28:40
Speaker 2: Can you do that? Sure you can't. Well, you just
28:44
Speaker 2: have the ingredients. I'm just saying, like, you know, if
28:46
Speaker 2: it's just the theory, well ratio, So in theory, if
28:49
Speaker 2: you're like making a recipe and you make like a
28:51
Speaker 2: single serve. Maybe cake's a bad example, but like a
28:53
Speaker 2: single serving of let's say, chicken pad tie, you can just,
28:58
Speaker 2: you know, multiply all of those ingredients by an order
29:02
Speaker 2: of magnitude to get a massive, scaled amount of that dish.
29:07
Speaker 2: In theory, you can do the same thing with construction, right. Yeah,
29:11
Speaker 2: And if the small one tastes good and you follow
29:13
Speaker 2: the same order of operations and you multiply it by
29:17
Speaker 2: the same factors, then in theory, the big one should
29:20
Speaker 2: taste exactly the same, but just be way, way, way
29:22
Speaker 2: more of it. Again, not an architect grossly oversimplifying here,
29:26
Speaker 2: but I think that sort of holds water.
29:28
Speaker 1: Hey, I learned something new today. I cannot believe that
29:34
Speaker 1: I just now have been taught the idea of cooking
29:38
Speaker 1: what I'll call lonely cake.
29:40
Speaker 2: Lonely cake. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if
29:43
Speaker 2: there's a pan that's designed for just making a single
29:46
Speaker 2: slice of cake. But you certainly could make a smaller
29:49
Speaker 2: version of a of a cake.
29:51
Speaker 1: And we also know that cupcakes exist. Okay, there's no
29:55
Speaker 1: reason to post that at us, because that's that's what
30:00
Speaker 1: it is, right, is a cupcake only a lonely cake?
30:03
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It is. You could theoretically make a single cupcake
30:07
Speaker 2: if you wished, if you did the math right.
30:09
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And so that's what they're arguing. The City
30:13
Speaker 1: of Chicago and the Home insurance Company, weirdly enough, based
30:18
Speaker 1: in New York, they halt this project, as you said,
30:22
Speaker 1: because they want to figure out whether the math will
30:26
Speaker 1: work before they get too into the weeds. So our
30:30
Speaker 1: engineer here, Jenny, he does a plot twist. He has
30:35
Speaker 1: another great realization. He is building this structure based on
30:43
Speaker 1: an iron frame, and he says, hang on, there's a
30:48
Speaker 1: new metal in town.
30:50
Speaker 2: It's called steal steal. Yeah. Even the name just kind
30:55
Speaker 2: of fills you with grandeur, doesn't it. I don't know
30:58
Speaker 2: why steal yourselves against the steel. Yeah.
31:03
Speaker 1: Thanks to the Bessemer process, the Carnegie Phipps Steel Company
31:08
Speaker 1: of Pittsburgh is able to help him build this skyscraper
31:13
Speaker 1: not of iron but of steel. And this sounds like
31:17
Speaker 1: a really cool idea to us in twenty twenty four.
31:20
Speaker 1: But the City of Chicago and the Home insurance company
31:24
Speaker 1: they freaked out again. They said, what what's this new?
31:30
Speaker 2: What's this new thing? What is this that you're twisting
31:34
Speaker 2: us with?
31:36
Speaker 1: It's a it leads us to something very weird, a
31:41
Speaker 1: moment in time that repeats. You can read a Life
31:45
Speaker 1: magazine retrospective on the origins of skyscrapers. It was published
31:50
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two and it talks in depth about
31:54
Speaker 1: how quote an aroused critic terrified his fellows at a
31:59
Speaker 1: protest meeting by impersonating the writhings of a steel beam
32:05
Speaker 1: exposed to a sudden change of temperature.
32:08
Speaker 2: Okay, a lot to unpacked there, An aroused critic impersonated,
32:14
Speaker 2: it's like did an impression of a steel beam, presumably
32:18
Speaker 2: by writhing around. Wiggly guys. Yeah, they're called the wiggly guys. No,
32:26
Speaker 2: I think we actually determined on the show in real
32:28
Speaker 2: time that they are, in fact or were called sky dancers. Oh,
32:32
Speaker 2: they were designed for the Atlanta Olympics, so we got
32:38
Speaker 2: like a skin in the game as far as the
32:40
Speaker 2: wiggly guys are concerned. But to me, they will always
32:42
Speaker 2: be the wiggly guys. M yeah, I've never seen them
32:46
Speaker 2: not wiggling. Well, if they're deflated, they're just real sad.
32:50
Speaker 2: Nothing sadder than a deflated wiggly guy or a deflated
32:54
Speaker 2: bouncy castle. It's just it just represents sadness and despair
32:59
Speaker 2: and disappoint you know, squandered opportunity.
33:02
Speaker 1: I can deal with a deflated sky dancer or wiglymen,
33:08
Speaker 1: but I cannot. I cannot conscience a deflated bouncy castle
33:13
Speaker 1: or bouncy house.
33:14
Speaker 2: It just means the party's over, y'all, It's time to
33:16
Speaker 2: go home.
33:17
Speaker 1: I feel like that. I means your parents are getting
33:20
Speaker 1: divorced or something. It's ill omen.
33:22
Speaker 2: What I think so too. I think so too, especially
33:25
Speaker 2: a whole gaggle of bouncy houses. If you've been to
33:28
Speaker 2: like a festival, you know, a funfair, and then you
33:32
Speaker 2: know the day is over when all of a sudden
33:34
Speaker 2: they all just start slowly shrieked. To actually watch them
33:37
Speaker 2: deflate is even sadder than it just coming upon them
33:40
Speaker 2: already fully deflate. Oh agreed, It's like the wicked Witch
33:43
Speaker 2: of the West. I don't want to think about this.
33:45
Speaker 2: I know, let's move on pressing. It is sad.
33:48
Speaker 1: But also this guy in the early days of the
33:51
Speaker 1: Home Insurance building, the first modern skyscraper there in Chicago,
33:56
Speaker 1: this guy really was doing a wigliman, And say, what
34:01
Speaker 1: happens if this strange material steel is exposed to very
34:07
Speaker 1: hot or very cold temperatures. History would go on to
34:11
Speaker 1: prove this joke did not age well, like.
34:15
Speaker 2: Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams. Is that the expression
34:19
Speaker 2: of thought made it rhyme more rights, Yeah, did not
34:23
Speaker 2: particularly age well really quickly. The best simmer process. This
34:26
Speaker 2: is news to me. I actually spent some of my
34:30
Speaker 2: youth in Alabama, in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a big
34:35
Speaker 2: forge city, a big steel production city, And there is
34:38
Speaker 2: a city in Alabama named Bessemer, and I did not
34:41
Speaker 2: realize that that is where this came from. So you
34:44
Speaker 2: learned something, We learned something together, and I believe the
34:46
Speaker 2: best process is much like again neither a architect nor
34:51
Speaker 2: a metallurgist, but it's sort of the equivalent of like
34:54
Speaker 2: ameliorating steel or tempering you know when you see you know,
34:58
Speaker 2: folks forging sol words or weaponry and they're like pounding
35:02
Speaker 2: it and they're heating it and cooling it. It's a
35:04
Speaker 2: way of like strengthening it, hardening the material. If I'm
35:07
Speaker 2: not mistaken. Yeah, harder, faster, stronger. Is that the song?
35:13
Speaker 2: Isn't there a song that goes harder faster? Yeah, it's
35:16
Speaker 2: a it's a daft punk song.
35:18
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well we've got our fingers on the pulse,
35:22
Speaker 1: and it turns out that Jenny was correct in his
35:27
Speaker 1: mad plan to build the most phallic looking building. WHOA,
35:34
Speaker 1: hold the phone, Wait, hold the elevator, hold that door.
35:37
Speaker 1: This is a two part episode.
35:39
Speaker 2: There was just too much fun stuff to get into
35:41
Speaker 2: regarding the history of skyscapers. And you know, well, I'm
35:44
Speaker 2: sure people died in the pursuit of these obnoxiously ostentatious structures.
35:49
Speaker 2: I say obnoxiously. I think we're all fans. We didn't, really,
35:52
Speaker 2: this wasn't a very death rich episode.
35:54
Speaker 1: No we we skipped over the part where the engineers
35:58
Speaker 1: were accused of spin in the face of God.
36:01
Speaker 2: Well we touched on it briefly with the Tower of
36:04
Speaker 2: Babel and all of that. But yeah, who news skyscrapers,
36:07
Speaker 2: what a legacy, so huge. Thanks to you Ben for
36:10
Speaker 2: the research on this one. Looking forward to getting into
36:15
Speaker 2: parts two with you very soon.
36:18
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Thanks to super producer mister Max Williams. Thanks
36:22
Speaker 1: to Jonathan Strickly aka the Quizitor. Thanks to Eaves, Jeffco, Christophrasiotis,
36:28
Speaker 1: Alex Williams who composed this bang it.
36:31
Speaker 2: Soundtrack Poppin' and banging. Indeed, we'll see you next time, folks.
36:44
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
36:48
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.