William Holabird

William Holabird ( born September 11, 1854 in Amenia, New York, † July 19, 1923 in Evanston, Illinois ) was an American architect.

Together with Martin Roche, he was a representative of the Chicago School. When Tacoma Building (Chicago, 1886-89 ) they brought the steel framework as a basis for high-rise buildings, an improvement over the use of metal reinforcements in the construction of the Home Insurance Building by William Le Baron Jenney (Chicago, 1884-85 ).

Holabird attended the Military Academy at West Point, but these broke in 1875 and moved to Chicago. He worked as a technical draftsman for Jenney, then for Burnham and Root. In 1880 he started his own business along with Ossian C. Simonds; this turned then, however, the landscape architecture. 1881 Roche joined the company. An innovation of the two was the glass facade, as in their Marquette Building (1894, Chicago ). This also planned by them Gage Building (1898, Chicago ), with a facade of Louis Sullivan, was awarded the 1962 Chicago architectural landmark. The two led the Chicago - style, even after the advent of other styles on, among other things, the Republic Building (Chicago, 1905).