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Fig. i. Early photograph of the old City Hall, Kansas City, Missouri (photo: Kansas City View Company).

Pioneer Caisson Building Foundations: 1890 DONALD L. HOFFMANN

Mr. Hoffman attended the University of Chicago and for the last nine years has been on the staff of the Kansas City Star. He has con- tributed articles to the Star, Skylines and Midwest Architect, and the Prairie School Review on progressive American architecture since 188o, and is currently making a study of the buildings and writings of John Wellborn Root. -Editor, American Notes.

Historians of the Chicago School of architecture, and they are fast

becoming a crowd, have been consistently unaware of the fact that caisson foundations,' a most satisfactory solution for heavy buildings on poor soil, were pioneered not in Chicago in 1893 but in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1890.

Chicago rightfully lays claim to giving birth to the steel-framed office tower. That extraordinary structural revolution took place in the Loop, where the wet silt and deep-reaching soft clay made foundations a matter of paramount concern. It is noteworthy that H. H. Richardson, at work in Chicago on his great Marshall Field Wholesale Store (1885-1887), called on John Wellborn Root to discuss soil and foundation problems, Root having led the Chicago architects in using raft foundations of steel rails imbedded in con- crete.2 The use of caissons for achieving stable foundations for

buildings of any height or weight, by sinking the piers to hardpan clay or bedrock, evolved slowly in Chicago.

Caissons were not in use in Chicago at the time of Burnhamn & Root's magnificent Monadnock Block (1889-1891), which, over

the years, has settled more than 20 inches,3 or the huge Auditorium

(1887-1889) by Adler & Sullivan, the tower of which has settled more than two feet.4 Of the Auditorium foundations and the trials which they caused for Dankmar Adler, an outstanding engineer, Frank Lloyd Wright has poignantly written:

He had been greatly worried over the risks he had taken to please his clients ... In the affair of the addition of the banquet hall over the trusses spanning the Big Auditorium movement had not yet stopped. The settlement of the side-walls into which the steel canti- lever beams were set (carrying the cast-iron box-fronts between them like something between the points of a pair of closing shears) would sometimes crack the cast-iron shells of these box-fronts with reports like cannon going off. The tower itself was still settling, causing cracks in adjoining portions of the building. There never was real danger. Collapse was impossible but the continuous move- ments caused some damage and more talk. This situation Adler had to bear. No doubt a great humiliation to him.5

Though the engineer William Sooy Smith6 had designed a

group of wells for housing the hydraulic stage lifts in the Audi- torium,7 Adler wrote in 1891 that spread foundations were not the last word and that pile foundations, which had been used for early Chicago grain elevators, should be considered.8s And though cais- sons may have been contemplated for Adler & Sullivan's project for the I.O.O.F. Temple in I89I,9 they were not actually used in

Chicago until 1893, and then under only one wall of the Stock

Exchange by Adler & Sullivan.10 Historians have assumed that caisson building foundations, just as so many other features of

skyscraper construction, were pioneered in Chicago, first appear- ing under the Stock Exchange.11 The old City Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, was forgotten (Fig. I).

I. A caisson being a hollow shaft, shell, or series of stacked drums sunk to hardpan clay or bedrock for receiving a foundation pier. Loosely used, caisson refers to any such cast-in-place type of pier; more accurately, it refers only to the shell, which becomes a part of the pier.

2. Harriet Monroe, John Wellborn Root, A Study of His Life and

Work, Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1896.

3. Ralph B. Peck, History of Building Foundations in Chicago, Ur- bana, University of Illinois, 1948, p. 44.

4. Peck, History, p. 40. 5. Frank Lloyd Wright, Genius and the Mobocracy, New York,

Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949, pp. 69, 70. 6. Brig. Gen. William Sooy Smith (1830-1916) designed for the

Wagoshance lighthouse at the western entrance to the Straits of Mackinac what was probably the earliest (1867) pneumatic caisson to be sunk in this country. See Isham Randolph's obituary of Smith, Journal of the Western Society of Engineers xxII, 1917, P. 38.

7. Peck, History, p. 53. 8. Dankmar Adler, "Tall Buildings," Inland Architect and News

Record xvII, 1891, p. 58. It is also noteworthy that in "Tall Buildings in Chicago," Railroad Gazette xxuIi, 1891, pp. 759-762, piles are recommended for foundations of "extremely high buildings."

9. Hugh Morrison, Louis Sullivan, Prophet of Modern Architecture, New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1935, p. 164.

io. "The wells . . . were made of oak poling boards about 3 ft. long supported inside with steel hoops." See Engineering News xxx, 1893, p. 165. A foundation plan of the Stock Exchange, showing that most of the building rested on piles, and only eight caissons were employed along the west wall, adjacent to the Chicago Herald Building, appears in Peck, History, p. 54.

II. Morrison, Louis Sullivan, pp. 169, 170, declares that "these were the first caisson foundations used for building in Chicago, and apparently the first anywhere." Frank A. Randall, "Development in Types of Chicago Building Construction," Journal of the Western Society of Engineers XLIX, 1944, p. 120, writes that "the first caissons used under a building were installed in 1893 under the west party wall of the Stock Exchange" and that the Methodist Book Concern

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Fig. 2. Caisson being lowered into place for the City Hall, drawing from the Star, 19 Sep- tember 1892 (courtesy State Historical Society of Missouri).

On 31 July 1889 the citizens of Kansas City approved a $5oo,ooo bond proposal, three-fifths of which was designated for construc- tion of a city hall on the west side of Market Square. In a paper prepared for the twenty-fourth annual convention of the Ameri- can Institute of Architects, and dated 6 October 189o, S. E. Cham- berlain, city superintendent of buildings, described the unusual foundation problem at Market Square: with a fill of fifty feet under about two-thirds of the building and a solid clay bank under the remaining third, to those that know the possibilities of failure to obtain a uniform bearing for a foundation at a reasonable cost, it is not quite so nice . . . for some time this ravine at this point was used as a "public dump," making altogether a most unsatisfactory site to erect a large building upon.

Piles were suggested, Chamberlain continued, but because they might have dry-rotted in such soil, they were rejected as a solution.

I finally concluded that a system of piers for the whole substructure would solve the problem . . . The cylindrical form of piers was

finally adopted, and of a uniform size so that the excavation could be done with a large augur operated by steam power, and a three- sixteenth inch (in thickness) caisson could be made to follow the augur (Fig. 2) ... The piers are sunk to rockbed to oolite limestone ... The whole system, in essence, is the direct transmission of the en- tire weight to the solid bedrock by so arranging the interior con- struction that the whole weight is subdivided, each subdivision being carried by an isolated pier ... I am pretty thoroughly convinced that the system of isolated piers as here used is the most economical, sub- stantial and lasting of any that could be employed under a large building on such a site.12

Chamberlain reported that the substructure of the foundation al- ready was completed, and the foundation and basement story would be completed by I November 189o. Thus, the rather sophisticated caisson foundations of the City Hall unquestionably preceded by three years those few caissons used under the Stock Exchange in Chicago. The city began moving its offices from rented space into the new City Hall on 24 October 1892. A few weeks before this event, the Kansas City Star, a newspaper with a reputation for thorough reporting of the local scene, had published an exhaustive history of the new building.13 The source on construction details was Louis Curtiss, then assistant superintendent of buildings.14

"Someone suggested that piles be driven and that brought a bright idea to the assistant superintendent, Louis Curtiss," the Star reported. "What was the matter with caissons? For many years they had been suitable foundations for the piers of bridges. They had never been used under a building though, and herein lies the great feature of the city hall of Kansas City. It is the first building so far as known to architects and engineers to be built on caissons."

An account from Curtiss followed, explaining that ninety-two caissons were employed, each 412' in diameter and made up from cylindrical sections of V6/" boiler plate "to prevent the collapse of earth surrounding the excavation." The caissons were not filled with concrete, but with vitrified brick laid in hydraulic cement, each brick capable of resisting a crushing pressure of 130 tons and the cement a pressure of ioo tons to the square foot. The caissons were capped with cast-iron webbed plates, and were connected by a double row of fifteen-inch I-beams. The I-beams were surround- ed with quarter-inch boiler plate, upon which the basement walls were laid. The piers under the north wing, tower, chimney, and entrance had to carry extra loads because of the heavier superstruc- ture in those places, and they were reinforced with Z-bar col- umns15is extending from the bedrock up to the top of the second Building of 1899 in Chicago "is the first building, to mly knowledge,

that is supported entirely on caissons." Peck, History, p. 55, writes that "the first use of caissons under an entire new building probably occurred in 1899 at the Methodist Book Concern." Frank A. Ran- dall, History of the Developmnent of Building Construction in Chicago, Urbana, University of Illinois, 1949, p. 19, repeats his earlier asser- tions, adding that "steel cylinders were used for forms in the lower part of the caissons" under the Electric Building of 1903 in Chicago, thirteen years later than metal cylinders in Kansas City.John D. Ran- dall, A Guide to Significant Chicago Architecture of1872 to 1922, privately published, 1958, p. 23, writes of the Stock Exchange, "caissons were first used here under the west wall." Finally, Carl Condit, The Rise of the Skyscraper, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1952, p. 105, cites "Adler's invention of caisson foundations for the Stock Ex- change Building in 1893" and, p. 199, states "on the west wall the Stock Exchange rests on the first true caisson foundations for build- ings"; in The Chicago School of Architecture, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. 71, 123, 129, and 137, Condit repeats the same assertions, and again in "The Structural System of Adler and Sullivan's Garrick Theater Building," Technology and Culture v, p. 531, n.

12. S. E. Chamberlain, "City Hall Foundations, Kansas City," Proceedings of the 24th Annual Convention of the American Institute of Architects, October 22, 23, and 24, 18go, Chicago, 1891, pp. 90, 92. The paper was read, however, by E. F. Fassett, another Kansas City architect. Among the Chicagoans at the convention were Dankmar Adler and John Wellborn Root.

13. The Kansas City Star, 19 September 1892, p. 8. 14. See Fred T. Comee, "Louis Curtiss of Kansas City," Progres-

sive Architecture xLIv, no. 8, August 1963, pp. 128-134. Comee fails to mention any connection between Curtiss and the City Hall.

15. Charles Louis Strobel (1852-1936), consulting engineer, origi- nated the Z-bar column, which offered the advantage of bringing the load close to the center of gravity of the column, and introduced it in the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad (now called Chou- teau) bridge in Kansas City, in 1886. See "Tall Buildings in Chica- go," Railroad Gazette xxIIi, 1891, p. 761.

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Fig. 3. City Hall in the early 1930s, a few years before demolition (photo: Anderson Photo Co.).

story, where they helped carry extra girders. Each caisson was capable of carrying a load of 200 to 400 tons. The weight of the entire structure was calculated at 55,000,000 pounds. The caissons ranged from about 12 to 50 feet in depth, the average being 37 feet.

Major bridges in America, such as the Eads Bridge in St. Louis (1867-1874) and the Brooklyn Bridge (1869-1883), had been built with caissons. Yet the idea of applying that form of pier to heavy buildings on land was slow to appear. It is curious that though Chamberlain's paper of 1890 was quickly published in the Inland Architect and News Record, the Building Budget, and the Anierican Ar- chitect and Building News,16 the Chicago architects and engineers gradually developed caisson foundations in their own way, even- tually adopting the so-called "Chicago method" of using vertical boards and steel hoops, rather than metal cylinders. Why the im- port of Chamberlain's paper escaped their notice is puzzling.

Kansas City was fortunate in having a bright young architect as assistant superintendent of buildings; for the evidence as to who really conceived of the City Hall caissons points to Louis Curtiss. Twice while Chamberlain was still living the Star unequivocally gave Curtiss credit for the foundations.17 Though Chamberlain was at least nominally in charge of the building plans, it is perhaps significant that he did not travel to Washington to present the pa- per on the foundations, the only novel feature of the building. "Mr. Curtiss drew the plans for the new building," John W. Tay- lor said at commemoration ceremonies held in the city hall, I March 1937. Taylor's father, William W. Taylor, was awarded the contract for excavation and foundation work,18 and Taylor

Fig. 4. City Market building today is founded on forty of the ninety-two caissons (photo: author).

then had clerical duties with his father's company. Taylor recalled:

This foundation is a series of brick piers built on solid rock. Steel beams are set on these piers and brick walls were built on the beams up to the level as shown on the plans. While excavating for these piers, it became necessary to install a system of steam syphons and pumps to keep water from interfering with the progress of the work. The foundation was completed and accepted by the city in the fall of 1890.19

Curtiss (1865-1924) was born in Canada. He told friends in later

years that he had been trained as an engineer at the University of Toronto.20 He was practicing in Kansas City as early as 1887. His later career confirmed his intense interest in structural problems. His best-known building, the Boley Store in Kansas City (1908- 1909), was an earlier manifestation of glass curtain-wall construc- tion than the well-known Hallidie Building in San Francisco, by Willis Jefferson Polk, though not as fully realized.21 The Boley Store may have been the first building in the United States with rolled steel columns.22 Surviving acquaintances of Curtiss remem- ber him as a recluse in his last years, working long hours on theo- retical structural and mathematical formulae, without actual com- missions.23

For the City Hall, Curtiss was fortunate in having the advice of Major Otis B. Gunn (1828-1901), an early railroad and bridge engineer who served as city engineer in 1889 and for the first five months of 1890. In a letter of 5 March 1890 to the board of public works, Major Gunn said he had made "some suggestions concern- ing the construction of the iron cylinders," and had recommended

16. Inland Architect and News Record xvI, 1890, p. 54; Building Budget, 31 October 1890, pp. 127-128; and American Architect and Building News xxx, 1890, p. 87. A synopsis of the paper also was published in Industrial Chicago, Chicago, Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1891, I, pp. 478-479.

17. Star, 19 September 1890, p. 8, and 24 August 1902, p. 15. 18. An ordinance confirming the contract with William W. Tay-

lor passed the lower house 5 April 1890, and the upper house 30 April 1890.

I9. Archives of the Native Sons of Kansas City, Ms. 20. The university now has no record of his enrollment. 21. It is interesting that Polk must have known Curtiss personally

when both were members of the old Kansas City Architectural Sketch Club. See Inland Architect and News Record Ix, 1887, p. 63.

22. "Heretofore the columns . . . were composed of steel plates riveted together. The columns now being used [in the Boley Store] are of rolled steel and in one solid piece, weighing 265 pounds to the foot. We are using the first consignment turned out in the United States. They are rolled at South Bethlehem, Pa.," H. A. Fitch, presi- dent of the Kansas City Structural Steel Company, in the Star, 4 Au- gust 1908, p. 9.

23. James S. Jackson and Harry G. Miller, Sr., conversations with the author.

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vitrified brick ("which can now be had of great strength at reason- able prices") instead of concrete.24 Gunn's son, Frederick C. Gunn

(1865-I959), an architect, once said he "had a hand" in the City Hall.25 He may have helped Curtiss with the drawings, as they were partners in private practice from 1890 until I900.26

The old City Hall was a rather impressive pile, in eclectic French Renaissance style. It probably was inspired in its general massing by the old Board of Trade Building in Kansas City (1886-1888), by Burnham & Root of Chicago.27 The City Hall deviated from

original plans because the construction superintendents changed with the political winds.28 As early as 1904 the City Hall was ac-

cused of not being functional.29 But the last council meeting was held in the building I8 October 1937 (Fig. 3). The building was

gradually demolished, and a new City Hall was constructed seven blocks south, nearer where the business district had shifted.

The site of the old City Hall was used, in part, for the south wholesale building of the City Market (Fig. 4). The architect, oddly enough, was Frederick C. Gunn, then seventy-three years old. Sam J. Callahan was retained as structural engineer for the foundations for the market building and he saw that money could be saved by using the old caissons. They were not placed according to the loads of the new building, of course, so beams were laid across them and cantilevered out to carry the walls. The founda- tion plans30 show that today the south wholesale building is resting on forty of the ninety-two caissons that were the first in the world to serve under a building.

24. Letter reproduced in the Star, 19 September 1892, p. 8. 25. Star, 12 September 1949, p. 13. 26. Men Who Are Making Kansas City, Kansas City, 1902. 27. Burnham & Root won the commission in a national competi-

tion. See Building Budget, 31 July 1886; Inland Architect and News Record, July, August, September, October, and November 1886; and American Architect and Building News xx, 1886, pp. 13, 50-52.

28. "Talking about the building the other day Louis Curtiss, who really designed it at the outset, said it had lost all traces of its former self and he disowned it," Star, 19 September 1892, p. 8.

29. Frank Maynard Howe, "The Development of Architecture in Kansas City, Missouri," Architectural Record xv, 1904, p. 155.

30. Plans dated 5 September 1939, and filed under Public Works Buildings-12, city hall. Test borings showed rock elevations of 38.20 feet, 40.57 feet, and 42-39 feet, corroborating the 1892 state- ment that the average caisson length was 37 feet.

BOOKS

Paul G. Ruggiers, Florence in the Age of Dante, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964, 194 PP., I fig., $2.75. The Cen- ters of Civilization Series, vol. 15.

PeterJ. Murray, The Architecture of the Ital- ian Renaissance, New York: Schocken Books, 1963, 268 pp., i86 illus., $Io.oo.

Ruggiers' book is Volume I in the wel- come "Centers of Civilization Series" from the University of Oklahoma Press. The Series also includes C. A. Robinson Jr.'s Athens in the Age of Pericles, R. M. Kain's Dublin in the Age of William Butler Yeats and James oyce, G. Downey's Gaza in the Early Sixth Century, and E. Wagenknecht's Chicago, among others. Each author has made his material fit the small format and moderate length common to all volumes of the series. But perhaps none of the sub- jects would fit less easily into such limited

space and submit less readily to the author- ity of any one scholar than Florence in the Age of Dante. Yet Ruggiers, who is a pro- fessor of English, has made a concise narra- tive of political events in Florence between 12oo and 1400 (Chapter i) and an account, elucidated by telling examples, of home life, family life, and local customs and fash- ions during those two centuries (Chapters 4-6). He has put together biographies of the poets, scholars, chroniclers, and novel- listi, and spoken in clear sentences of their works and of their places in history (the seventh, eighth, and last chapters). He has added a helpful English bibliography.

The historian of art or architecture will object perhaps only to a few details of Rug- giers' otherwise adequate treatments of "Art and Craft" (Chapter 3) and of the topography, growth, and development of the city (Chapter 2). An example is the

sentence (on p. 68), "We assume that Ar- nolfo's designs [for the Duomo] were ad- hered to, since he did not live long enough to see the church completed," which is self- contradictory. Giotto, in another place (p. 71), is assumed to have been entirely re- sponsible for the frescoes in the Upper Church at Assisi, as if there were no argu- ment over this. Several other mistakes hap- pen to touch upon events from after 1400, e.g., a confusing sentence (p. 38) that has the church of S. Spirito already finished on Brunelleschi's designs "in the early fifteenth century" (the laying of the foundation of the present building was started only in 1436) and then rebuilt, again on Brunel- leschi's designs, after the fire of 1470 (which damaged the older church, still on the site, but presumably not the new building, still unfinished then). And it seems unnecessary that Ruggiers should write "Renascence"

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