The First Reimforced Skyscraper 13

represent a highly remunerative long-term investment, characteristics

that it retains to the present time. Á number of talents took a hand in
designing and erecting the structure. The architects were Elzner and
Anderson, and the structural engineer was Henry N. Hooper, the
head of the engineering staff of the Ferro-Concrete Construction Com-
pany, which acted as the contractor for the concrete structure. The
reinforcing system designed by Hooper was based on the Ransome
patents. The general contractor was the William H. Ellis Company, a
Cincinnati firm, as were the architects and engineers.*?

In its general functional character the Ingalls is a typical commercial

building, with a bank, stores, and former ticket offices located in the
two-story base and the general business offices above (Pl. 1). The over-
all dimensions in plan are very nearly 50 X 100 feet; the sixteen stories
and one basement rise 210 feet above grade, or 235 feet above the under-
surface of the foundations. A number of steel-framed buildings in New
York and Chicago were considerably higher at the time, but no con-
crete frame exceeded half the height of the Ingalls. Concrete was
chosen as the structural material chiefly on the ground of economy: it
oftered the equivalent of a steel frame in load-bearing capacity and
other physical properties, while the structural cost of $400,000 (exclu-
sive of mechanical equipment) was somewhat lower than that of steel
construction.

The structural frame of the building is a virtual monolith of solid

columns, footings, foundation walls, girders, beams, floor and roof
slabs, and spandrel panels, the last of which functioned as part of the
load-bearing system above the level of the third floor. Monolithic ac-
tion was secured as nearly as possible by carefully bonding freshly
poured concrete to partly set concrete at the joints left from successive
daily operations. The reinforcing throughout all framing members and
all foundations consists of Ransome's square-twisted steel bars, so lo-
cated as to take all tensile and shearing stresses, thus allowing the con-
crete to develop its full compressive stress. In the case of the columns,
however, the compressive action of the concrete is supplemented by
groups of heavy round rods, four to a column." The framing system
was designed for the following loading factors: floor loads of 200

19 For the design of the Ingalls Building, see “A Tall Concrete-Steel Office Build-
ing,” Engineering Record, XLVII, No. 21 (May 23, 1903), 540-43; “Sixteen-Story
Concrete-Steel Office Building at Cincinnati, O.,” Engineering News, L, No. 5
(July 30, 1903), 90-95; and A. O. Elzner, “The First Concrete Skyscraper,” Archi-
tectural Record, XV, No. 6 (June 1904), 531-44.
20 For details of the column reinforcing, see below, pp. 18-19,