Proceedings of the Institution of
Civil Engineers
Engineering History and Heritage
162
February 2009 Issue EH1
Pages 19–27
doi: 10.1680/ehh2009.162.1.19
Paper 800016
Received 12/08/2008
Accepted 10/11/2008 Sara Wermiel
Historic Preservation
Keywords: Consultant, Jamaica Plain,
buildings, structures & design/ Massachusetts, USA
columns
Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920
S. E. Wermiel PhD
This paper traces the early history of steel columns in US
buildings including the development of steel sections and
examples of buildings in which they were used. A common
misconception is addressed: that the frames of early
skeleton-frame buildings in the USA were made entirely of
steel. In fact, some of the first skeleton frames contained no
steel at all. In the 1890s, the era of US pioneer skyscrapers,
the part of a building’s frame least likely to be made of steel
was the columns. At this time, steel columns had to be
fabricated from various rolled shapes and the extra labour
involved was a factor in their high cost. There were many
forms of steel columns and professional opinion differed
regarding which sections offered the most strength and
best connections at the least cost. Many contingent factors
encouraged designers to use steel columns or choose
alternatives, or to select one section rather than another. A
key point is that structural steel was not a precondition for
the development of skeleton-frame construction.
Moreover, the diverse ways designers used materials show
how experimental frame design was in the early days of
skeleton-frame construction. Eventually, by the second
decade of the twentieth century, all-steel frames became
the norm for tall buildings.
1. STRUCTURAL METAL IN BUILDINGS
BEFORE STEEL
In the USA, metal building frames appear initially in the 1850s,
coincident with introduction of solid wrought, also called rolled,
iron beams or joists. Buildings with interior metal frames built
between the 1850s and the 1880s typically had masonry bearing
walls, cast-iron or wrought-iron girders, wrought-iron floor
joists and cast-iron columns. Failures of British cast-iron
structures, however, had already made American engineers wary
of the material. In 1860, the deadly collapse of Pemberton Mill, a
large textile mill in Massachusetts, caused in part by poorly
made cast-iron columns, confirmed their misgivings. After this,
several American engineers attempted to design posts made of
wrought iron, to avoid the manufacturing flaws that bedevilled
cast-iron columns.
The first commercial wrought-iron post, the so-called Phoenix
column, was patented in 1862, so 1862 marks the beginning of
the history of rolled metal columns in the US (Figure 1).
Produced by the Phoenix Iron Company of Phoenixville,
Pennsylvania, the columns were intended for use in bridges as
Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920
well as in buildings. They were made of rolled segments of a
circle with flanges flaring at the ends; the segments were riveted
together through the flanges. Some early Phoenix columns still
survive in Philadelphia, specifically in the machine shop (1863–
1864) and rolling mill (1865–1866) at the former Frankford
Arsenal, and in the pump room at the Fairmount water works
(columns installed in 1874) (Figure 2). Yet most posts in metal-
framed buildings continued to be made of cast iron. Compared
with castings, which by the 1850s were available from foundries
in most large cities, Phoenix columns were more expensive and,
being a proprietary product, less readily available.
In the 1870s, US engineers began to abandon cast iron for
bridges. What made cast iron undesirable for bridges—in
particular, its poor resistance to vibration—did not, however,
affect non-industrial buildings, where columns were not
regularly subject to vibrations or to heavy, moving loads.
2. BEGINNINGS OF THE STEEL INDUSTRY
IN AMERICA
Meanwhile, the US steel industry came into being. In the 1850s in
England, Henry Bessemer developed his pneumatic steel-making
process, by which uniform metal could be mass-produced using a
converter. The US experimented with the Bessemer process, and in
1864–1865, at two sites, made the first steel using converters
adapted from the device Henry Bessemer described in his original
patents.1 English manufacturers aggressively marketed rails made
of the new steel to American railroad men, and US iron
manufacturers wanted a piece of this business. Once arguments
over patent rights had been settled, Bessemer steel mills sprouted
up in the US. There were seven Bessemer steelworks in 1872. At
this point, 75% of the steel made in the US, slightly more than 100
000 gross tonnes, was produced using the Bessemer process. Steel
output rose steadily: in 1880, it had increased ten-fold and
reached about 3?7 million gross tonnes in 1890.2
Around the same time the Bessemer process was introduced,
Cooper and Hewitt of Trenton, New Jersey began to experiment
with the open-hearth method of making steel. An advantage of
the open-hearth process was that it allowed manufacturers more
control over the characteristics of the steel produced. Open-
hearth technology developed slowly; the higher cost of open-
hearth steel compared with Bessemer steel slowed the spread of
the technology. Thus, through the mid-1880s, most of the steel
made in the USA was Bessemer steel, and practically all of it was
rolled into rails.3,4
Wermiel 19
 Figure 1. Phoenix column sections, 1873 (Album of Designs of the Phoenixville Bridge-works, 1873) 10525.4mm
Some engineers experimented with using steel in structures. One
of the first was James B. Eads, who specified steel for parts of
his bridge over the Mississippi River at St Louis (1869–1874).
Completed in 1874, it has three arched spans, each over 152 m
long, and its tubular arches were made of ‘chrome’ steel
produced in crucibles, not the new Bessemer steel (most of the
rest of the spans were of wrought iron).5–7 The first railway
bridges made of Bessemer steel were completed in 1879: the
Chicago and Alton Railway bridge at Glasgow, Missouri, and the
Chicago and North Western Railway bridge at Kinzie Street in
Chicago (neither extant: the extant bascule railroad bridge at
Kinzie Street dates from 1907–1908. ).8,9 This was about a dozen
years before steel columns were first used in buildings. Bridge
Figure 2. Iron and brick fireproof floor with Phoenix columns,
Frankford Arsenal machine shop, built 1863–1864 (photo-
graph: Sara Wermiel)
20 Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920
engineers did not, however, indiscriminately embrace steel.
Railway managers complained that US Bessemer steel rails did
not wear well, and indeed, Bessemer steel had a tendency to
fracture without warning. Engineers were hesitant to use it for
structural purposes.
With the end of a railroad boom and falling demand for rails in
1884, steel manufacturers sought to diversify into products
other than rails. It was at this time that steelmakers began to
build open-hearth steel works. They turned to open-hearth steel
to make steel products that engineers and architects would
accept. Already in 1879, even though very little was produced in
the USA, engineer George Morison specified open-hearth steel
for parts of his Plattsmouth, Nebraska railroad bridge (the bridge
also contained wrought iron).10,11
The merits of open-hearth compared with Bessemer steel were
the subject of many articles in the technical press at the end of
the nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, a consensus
had emerged: only open-hearth steel should be used for
structural purposes. As Harry Campbell, manager of the
Pennsylvania Steel Company and a leading metallurgist, wrote
in 1903, ‘Most American metallurgists and engineers…agree that
open-hearth steel of a given composition is more reliable, more
uniform, and less liable to break in service than Bessemer steel
of the same composition.12
Over time the prices of Bessemer and open-hearth steel
converged, until by the turn of the century, they were roughly
equal. The composition of production at steel mills shifted, with
Wermiel
the proportion of steel made by the open-hearth method
growing rapidly. Open-hearth steel made up roughly 20% of all
steel made in the USA during the late 1890s. In 1907, output of
open-hearth steel overtook Bessemer, after which Bessemer steel
steadily declined as a share of total US steel production.
Moreover, a growing share of open-hearth steel was used to
make structural shapes; in 1899, less than one-third of the steel
used for structural purposes was made by the Bessemer
process.13 Structural steel was called ‘engineering’ or ‘mild’
steel, meaning its carbon content was low; however, the term
‘mild’ had no precise definition.

3. USE OF STEEL IN BUILDINGS

Before the 1880s, the main reason for using a metal frame in a
building—specifically, metal posts and beams—was to make the
structure non-combustible or, in the term of the day, fireproof.
A development in the building industry, however, triggered a
demand for structural steel: the introduction of skeleton-frame
construction, in which a metal frame carried a building’s floors
and roof as well as the walls. Freed from the limitations of load-
bearing walls, this system allowed buildings to be built to
unprecedented heights.

The progenitor of skeleton-frame construction was the well-

known Home Insurance building in Chicago, designed by
William Le Baron Jenney and built 1884–1885. In order to
increase the window area in the building’s two street façades,
Jenney reduced the dimensions of the wall piers by reinforcing
them, above the second storey, with square, cast-iron columns.
Cast-iron lintels and, at four levels, spandrel beams, carried
masonry spandrels, mullions and window frames that filled the
space between the piers. The piers carried some of the floor and
roof loads (and the party walls were load-bearing), so this
building did not have a skeleton frame. Nevertheless, the iron
framework in the building’s street façades was regarded as novel
when it was built and the Home Insurance building received
much publicity. It inspired architects to experiment with
supporting loads, including the outer walls, on the frame alone.
They succeeded in creating skeleton frames around 1890.
Contemporaries quickly recognised that the exterior part of such
a building was no longer a wall in the traditional sense but an
enclosure, and coined the term ‘curtain-wall’.14 Thus skeleton-
frame construction came into being.
Coincidentally, the Home Insurance building was the first US
building to contain steel beams. Demand for steel rails was
falling while it was under construction, so Carnegie Steel
Company, which had the contract to supply iron beams for the
building, offered to send steel beams in place of iron to finish
out the contract. Jenney agreed, and thus the upper floors
contained steel beams, while the lower floors had wrought-iron
beams. This illustrates how easily steel could be swapped for
rolled-iron beams. Although steel beams were stronger for a
given section, they were the same shape as iron beams.
No easy substitution was possible with columns, however. The
only wrought-iron column used in buildings to any extent was
the Phoenix column, which had a generally cylindrical section.
Steel compression members used in bridges were in most cases
unlike the cylindrical or rectangular cast-iron columns com-
monly used in buildings. The methods of connecting girders and
beams to the columns, or column to column vertically, were
Figure 3. Rand-McNally building, Chicago, built 1890 (Fireproof
Building Construction; Prominent Buildings Erected by the George A.
Fuller Company, 1904)
different, and in buildings, columns might support girders
attached on four sides, an uncommon occurrence in a bridge.
Moreover, unlike compression members in bridges, building
columns had to be fireproofed, which increased their bulk. Cast-
iron columns were familiar, readily available from urban
foundries and cheaper than steel.
Constructors began to use steel columns around 1890, in
combination with steel girders and beams, and so by 1891
perhaps several dozen American buildings had all-steel frames.
These were mainly commercial buildings, located in a few large
cities; Chicago probably had more steel-framed buildings at an
early date than any other city. Some of the pioneer examples of
‘Chicago construction’ underway or completed in 1890–1891
are the Rand-McNally, Caxton, Pontiac, Monadnock (north half),
Masonic Temple, Fair Store, Ashland Block, Venetian and
Northern Hotels (Figure 3). Another early building containing
steel columns was the Society for Savings building in Cleveland,
Ohio.
At this time, New York city had no entirely steel-framed,
skeleton-construction buildings. There, the pioneer skyscrapers
had frames with cast- and wrought-iron members and were built
with a variety of structural systems: bearing walls, cage
construction and skeleton frames. The first buildings in New
York to have steel columns, although they were not, or not
entirely, skeleton framed, include the Hotel Savoy (1891–1892),
Hotel New Netherlands (1892–1893) and Home Life Insurance

Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920 Wermiel 21
 Figure 4. Special forms of columns showing, from left to right, the Keystone octagonal, Phoenix, Larimer and
Gray columns (Joseph K. Freitag, Architectural Engineering, 1904)

Company building (1892–1894). The Hotel Savoy’s many
windows and flat roof unsettled some contemporaries; a New
York Times editor called the building an eyesore, ‘a mere sash
frame with projecting bay windows, and its outline is that of a
tall box’.15–17
4. FORMS OF STEEL COLUMNS USED IN
BUILDINGS, CIRCA 1890–1891
A great variety of column forms became available in the early
1890s and there was much debate over which section was better
for buildings. Engineering and cost considerations were not the
only ones to influence which form was used.
The sections available around 1890 included the so-called
‘special’ columns—ones either controlled by patents or made of
shapes manufactured by a limited number of mills—and ‘built-
up’ columns, made of angles and other shapes rolled by most
mills. The special columns at this time were the Keystone
octagonal, Phoenix and Larimer columns (Figure 4). Both the
Keystone and Phoenix were made of rolled sections riveted
together. The Phoenix column came in several diameters,
formed of typically four to eight segments. The Larimer column,
made by Jones and Laughlin Company of Chicago, was made
from two I-beams bent in the middle of the web, and riveted
together with a divider between them. The column could be
strengthened with plates, either riveted to the I-beam flanges or
held in place with special ‘clip-fasteners’ and rivets (Figure 5).
Phoenix columns could also be strengthened by adding filler
bars between the sections. Of these three forms, the most widely
used was the Phoenix column. In 1886, Phoenix Iron Company
began constructing two open-hearth steel furnaces and three
years later poured its first steel. After this it could offer
customers wrought-iron or open-hearth steel columns. The
other two sections were little used. The only known building in
which Keystone columns were used (in part) was an addition to
the Home Insurance building in Chicago (personal commu-
nication, Conrad Paulson, Principal, WJE, Chicago, 2008,
providing information about the columns in the Home Insurance
building). A building with Larimer columns is the Newberry
Library (1892) in Chicago.18
Around 1891 another special section column was introduced:
the Gray column (Figure 4). Invented by James H. Gray, a
former employee of the architectural firm Adler and Sullivan, it

Figure 5. Larimer column, from an 1892 patent. The original column is strengthened with plates,
two (D) riveted to flanges of the I-beams and (right) two more added (E), held to the I-beams
with special ‘clip-fasteners’ (F) and angles riveted to side plates (US Patent Office)

22 Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920 Wermiel

Figure 6. Built column sections, 1890s (Carnegie Steel
Company, Pocket Companion, 1896)
was made of rolled shapes and angles. Large mills could make
the Gray column, but had to pay a royalty for it. Gray columns
were used in some prominent buildings, including the tower of
Philadelphia City Hall (finished circa 1894), Adler and Sullivan’s
Guaranty building in Buffalo, New York (1895–1896) and
several Chicago buildings, including the Reliance (reconstruc-
tion, 1895) and Fisher (1896) buildings, both designed by D. H.
Burnham and Company with Edward Shankland, engineer19–21
(also personal communication, Carl Baumert of Keast and Hood
Company, 2008, regarding information on Philadelphia City
Hall and personal communication, Harry Meyer of
HodgsonRuss, 2008, regarding information on the Guaranty
building). While beams could be easily connected to it, the
section was not well designed for resisting wind pressure.22
Built-up columns included the plate and angle; the channel and
plate or lattice; and the Z-bar. The former two were old forms,
originally used as girders. As columns, they came in many
variations: their overall cross-sections and strength could be
increased by adding plates (Figure 6).
The manner of connecting beams to posts changed with the
introduction of steel columns. With cast-iron posts, beams
typically rested on top of the post or on brackets cast on the
sides. Even frames that were all wrought iron sometimes had
beams resting on top of posts. As all-steel frames evolved,
Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920
however, angles and shelf brackets began to be used with built-
up columns. For Phoenix columns, beams were connected to
filler bars that projected from between column sections.
5. EXPERIMENTAL EARLY DESIGN OF
SKELETON FRAMES
At the start of the 1890s, both the materials and construction
system of the tall, fireproof building were new and there was no
settled practice for designing a frame. In 1891, Corydon Purdy—
a civil engineer who worked in Chicago, and one of the first
engineers to set up a practice as a consulting engineer for
buildings—wrote a lengthy article, published in Engineering
News, about how to design the steel structure of a skeleton-
frame building. On the question of columns, Purdy acknowl-
edged that many tall buildings had cast-iron columns, including
the pioneer Chicago elevator buildings: the Rookery (1885–
1888), Auditorium (1886–1890) and Manhattan (1890–1891).
Steel was coming to be used more commonly, however, and
Purdy named 16 buildings in Chicago, recently completed or
under construction, with all-steel frames. He urged that cast iron
be prohibited in very tall buildings because of its drawbacks
compared with steel. For example, cast iron fails suddenly, while
steel columns bend before breaking. Also, steel could be riveted
but cast iron must be bolted, and given the inevitable play in
bolt holes, it was impossible to achieve a stiff structure with cast
iron. Steel, he observed, was used in buildings that were
‘extremely high’ and those that needed to be braced.23–26
If an architect or engineer decided to opt for steel, however,
what sort of columns should he use? This was a point on which
information was badly needed. Purdy listed a number of factors
a designer should consider when deciding among the various
column sections
(a) availability
(b) workmanship of finished columns
(c) means of applying loads close to the axis of the column
(d) convenience for connections
(e) convenience for providing against eccentric loading
(f) relation of size to section of small columns
(g) fireproofing capabilities.
He recommended the Z-bar column, even though he acknowl-
edged some disadvantages, specifically its large section once
fireproofed. The Z-bar column, he wrote, was one of the most
widely used types in Chicago buildings, which is not surprising,
as Purdy was the engineer for many of them.
Purdy’s lengthy article drew criticism from Foster Milliken of
Milliken Brothers, a New York structural iron and general
contracting firm.27 Milliken, whose firm had published a manual
on using Phoenix columns in buildings, argued that column
sections with more material on the outside, such as the hollow
forms, were stronger. This put the Phoenix column at the top,
followed by the Keystone column; the Z-bar and Larimer
sections ranked low. He wrote that the ‘Z’ shape was extremely
difficult to roll, and Z-bar columns were difficult to make
straight. Moreover, from the standpoint of eccentric loading and
because they could be obtained in longer lengths, Phoenix
columns were better. They could be obtained as readily as Z-
bars, he claimed, and with filler bars, connections to them could
be conveniently made. Milliken also objected to the live load
Wermiel 23
 values Purdy assumed for floors. Purdy described the 1892 Fair
Store, with live loads of 6?2 kN/m2 or less on all but one of its 16
floors, as an extraordinarily strong building. Milliken considered
these loads unimpressive; a strong building supported loads of
9?8 kN/m2, and he wrote that loads of 29?4 kN/m2 were not
uncommon. These higher loads would affect column choice. He
believed the reason Z-bar columns were used widely in Chicago
was because the mills ‘pushed’ them, whereas in other cities,
Phoenix columns were preferred. Despite the pushing, some
Chicago buildings had Phoenix columns, made of iron or steel,
specifically, the Cook County Abstract and Trust Company
building (1892) and German Opera House/Schiller Theater
(1892).
Indeed, as Milliken intimated, factors apart from engineering
considerations determined what type of column was used, such as
which builder won a construction contract. The prominent
Chicago contracting firm George A. Fuller Company had an
arrangement with Carnegie Steel Company always to use Carnegie
steel in its projects.28 Fuller built many of the early Chicago
skyscrapers, and consequently these buildings had Carnegie’s Z-
bar columns—not because the column style was the best
necessarily, but because it was what Carnegie Steel Company
supplied. Fuller used Phoenix columns, however, when it
constructed the Old Colony building (1893–1894) in Chicago,
when a strike at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Works prevented
delivery of the Z-bar columns, and he built the Athletic
Association building around the same time with Phoenix columns,
perhaps for the same reason. Other fabricators secured business for
their companies by providing framing plans to architects in
exchange for being awarded the steel contracts.29
The framework of the Manhattan Life Insurance building in New
York city (completed in 1894) reflected the pragmatic mix of
materials and structural forms that characterised the early
skyscrapers. Rising 16 to 17 storeys, about 242 feet (74 m) to the
main roof, with an additional 100-foot (30?5 m) tower on its
Broadway façade, it broke height records in its day. On three
sides, the frame of the building carried all loads, including the
walls, while its main façade, on Broadway, was self-supporting.
It contained a variety of column sections. In the lower storeys
and through much of the interior, the columns were cast iron,
whereas along the periphery and the court, they were steel, in Z-
bar, plate and angle, and box sections.
6. TREND TOWARDS STEEL
Several factors influenced the trend towards steel. Volatile
economic conditions, especially during the depression that
began in 1893, made real estate investment attractive.30
Meanwhile, owners wanted taller and taller buildings, and
skeleton construction made erecting them practical. For tall,
skeleton-frame buildings, or ones that were tall relative to their
footprints, steel columns were preferable to cast iron. Another
factor was that building codes in major cities began to specify
higher live loads for floors, which called for stronger columns.
Tests reported in 1898 found that mild steel columns had ‘40 to
50 per cent greater (compressive strength per square inch) than
the corresponding quantities for cast iron, the same ratio of
length over diameter being taken in each comparison’.31
Moreover, cast-iron columns were difficult to make perfectly so
had a higher factor of safety than steel—in other words, they
were made bulkier just to offset possible manufacturing
24 Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920
defects.32 Thus, a slimmer steel column could safely carry the
same load as one made of cast iron. Architects hiring civil
engineers to design the structural work in buildings, which
became more common in the 1890s, also led to an increase in
steel in buildings, because engineers preferred steel and distrusted
cast iron. Two of the earliest all-steel-framed buildings—the
Rand-McNally and the Caxton buildings in Chicago, completed
1890—had frames designed by Corydon Purdy.
Perhaps the most important reason for the general uptake of steel
by architects and engineers, however, was the falling price of steel
following the opening of a new Carnegie steel mill at Homestead
in 1892 and depression after the panic of 1893.33 Although steel
prices rose again as the economy recovered, they remained
moderate. Proponents of using steel argued that the savings that
could be realised elsewhere in a project, from the more economical
proportioning of frame members, offset its higher initial cost. At
one time, foundries were fairly ubiquitous, whereas steel had to be
brought from Pennsylvania, where about 85% of all structural
shapes were made in the early years of the twentieth century.34
But as architects and engineers opted increasingly for steel, iron
foundries declined and then disappeared from the urban land-
scape, which eliminated one of cast iron’s main advantages,
namely the proximity of foundries to the job sites.
In the early twentieth century, two new types of column became
available. One was steel pipe columns, such as the Lally column—a
metal pipe filled with concrete. These were used in smaller
buildings such as factories, garages and apartment houses.35 The
most important new section, however, was the H-beam—a solid,
H-shaped section with flanges as wide as the web, which could be
used for beams, girders and columns. A great advantage of the H-
beam used as a column was the lower cost of fabrication. Early H-
beams had drawbacks, in that their length was limited and heavy
girders could not be connected to them. In 1897, a more
substantial H-section column was rolled on a mill patented in the
US by Henry Grey. The first operating mill built according to
Grey’s ideas was located in Luxembourg, and German wide-
flanged beams or columns apparently were exported to the US by
1906.36 Around this time, Bethlehem Steel Company acquired
exclusive American rights to produce the H-section, and Grey
oversaw the installation of his mill at the plant, which took place
from 1906 to 1908.37 The first columns were shipped in 1908. One
of the first buildings to have them was the Boley Store (1908–
1909) in Kansas City38 (Figure 7). The solid H-section column
came to be called the Bethlehem section or, confusingly, Grey
beam (but here Grey is spelled with an ‘e’ rather than an ‘a’ as in
Gray column). With this product, Bethlehem Steel became an
important supplier of structural shapes.
Consensus on what type of column was best for various
circumstances was still lacking in the early twentieth century. In
selecting columns, designers had to take into account the same
factors Purdy listed in 1892, such as eccentric loading in a
design, ease of fabrication, convenience of connections and
availability. With respect to availability, the special sections
(Phoenix, Larimer, Gray) were at a disadvantage because of
limited sources of supply or the extra cost of using a patented
section. Over time, the special shapes, except for the H-column
(rolled with a patented process), were abandoned. In its 1923
Pocket Companion, the Carnegie Steel Company wrote that
several sections including the Z-bar were no longer used.39 In
Wermiel
 wrapped tightly and while this minimised a column’s bulk, it added
little protection. A textbook on fireproofing of steel buildings
BETHLEHEM ROLLED H COLUMNS.
recommended that steel columns have a double wrapping of lath
and plaster, with an air space between the layers.40 This
1.742" arrangement proved its worth in the great San Francisco
earthquake and fire of 1906: a building protected in this way, the
16"

6.875"
11-storey Kohl/Hayward building (1900–1901), was the only one
in the fire zone that avoided being completely burned out.41
1.13"
14.88"

0.60" 1.880" Terra cotta, or tile, was widely used for fireproof floors, column
H 14 b 230.8 lbs protection and other building purposes through the early
to twentieth century. The usual tile for fireproofing columns was
291.2 lbs
25–50mm thick. Special tiles were made for Phoenix and
Larimer columns, which gave a nice architectural finish. Blocks
1.242"
not only came in various shapes, but in differing compositions,
specifically, solid or porous terra cotta (Figure 8).
15"
6.875"

Concrete column protection became more common at the close

0.82"
14.57"

of the nineteenth century. Sometimes the inside cavities of

0.60" 1.380" columns were filled with concrete; this was recommended for
H 14 a
columns in exterior walls, to protect them from corrosion.
164.4 lbs
to
Several great fires in the early twentieth century engulfed steel
222.3 lbs buildings with tile or concrete floors and fireproofing, testing
the relative merits of the two systems. Concrete was found to
0.745"
hold up as well as tile, and it cost less. The use of tile for column
fireproofing gradually declined in the twentieth century.
14"
6.745"

Although columns are critical to the overall stability of a

0.51" building, column fireproofing was not always carefully designed
14"

H 14 0.60" 0.880" or installed. With respect to design, often an architect selected a

98.8 lbs
to
162.2 lbs
Figure 7. Bethlehem Steel Company’s heaviest rolled H-
columns, first offered in 1907 (George H. Blakeley, Dimensions,
Weights and Properties of … Structural Steel Shapes, 1907)
(10525.4mm, 1lb50.454 kg)
the 1920s, the common forms were the H-column; channel and
plate; plate and angle in the form of an ‘I’ or a box; and steel-
pipe columns.
7. FIREPROOFING
Beginning in the 1870s, architects realised that metal columns
in fireproof buildings had to be fireproofed; nevertheless, there
were few data on the performance of various column and
fireproofing assemblies in a fire. When they addressed fireproof
construction, municipal building codes specified acceptable
fireproofing materials; they did not say how long any material
should protect a member in a fire. While a general distrust of
cast iron led many to expect cast-iron columns to fail more
readily in a fire than steel, the opposite was true.
Systems of fireproofing changed during the 1890s as new
insulating materials were introduced. At the opening of the
decade, the principal systems were terra cotta tile and lath and
plaster. Later in the decade, concrete began to be used. Metal
lath and plaster was the cheapest method; it involved wire
netting, Bostwick lath or expanded metal lath wrapped around a
column then covered with plaster. Sometimes the lath was
fireproof floor system and then used the column protection
supplied by the floor manufacturer, whether or not that
company’s column protection was the best choice for a project.
Architects often skimped on protection, putting in too little
material truly to insulate the columns, or they accepted flimsy
material. Sometimes service pipes were enclosed within the
column fireproofing; these pipes could expand in a fire and break
the column fireproofing. This happened to a column in the Calvert
building, Baltimore, after the 1904 conflagration in that city:
expanded pipes broke the tile protection on columns, and one
column on the ninth floor buckled (Figure 9). Finally, sometimes
column protection was poorly attached. Poor design, poor quality
materials and poor installation of fireproofing, meant that
fireproof buildings were sometimes damaged in fires, leading
contemporaries to charge that there was no such thing as a
fireproof building. Rather, the problem was inferior execution.
8. CONCLUSION
To summarise the key points: neither beams nor columns made
of steel were used in buildings before 1884–1885. The earliest
all-steel frames date from around 1890–1891. Most structural
shapes were made of open-hearth steel. The fall in prices of steel
structural shapes after the panic of 1893 encouraged designers
to use them. Steel columns replaced cast-iron columns, not
wrought-iron columns, which were little used in buildings. Steel
columns came in a variety of sections and sizes; there was no
one best style. This changed with the introduction of the H-
column, which could be rolled in one piece rather than built. The
H-column became popular in the 1910s, although some built-up
sections continued to be used. Cast-iron columns, however, went
out of fashion for tall buildings by the 1920s. In 1906, the
prominent civil engineer William Sooy Smith wrote that steel

Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920 Wermiel 25
 Figure 8. Section of a channel and plate column with tile fireproofing, Crozer building,
Philadelphia, built 1896–1899 (The Architectural Archives/Kroiz Gallery, University
of Pennsylvania) (10525.4mm)

made the lightest, safest, cheapest and most durable edifices that
could be built. Steel, he concluded, was ‘the material par
excellence for the tall structures’.42
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank the Delaware Valley Chapter of the
Association for Preservation Technology for their invitation to
present the first version of this paper at their 2005 Symposium
‘History of Iron and Steel: Part II, Transition from Iron to Steel’.
The author is also grateful to David Guise and Donald Sayenga for
their comments on an early draft and to James Stewart for
information about the early use of steel in bridges. Thanks are
owed to William Whitaker, Collections Manager, The Architectural
Archives/Kroiz Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, for images of
the Crozer building, and to Drew Brown of the Philadelphia water
department and Jane Mork Gibson for information on the
surviving Phoenix columns at the Fairmount water works. The
reports and images produced by the Historic American Building
Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, available online
from the Library of Congress’s website, were invaluable.
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26 Engineering History and Heritage 162 Issue EH1 Introduction of steel columns in US buildings, 1862–1920 Wermiel

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What do you think?
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Wermiel 27