William Le Baron Jenney
William Le Baron Jenney was an architect and engineer whose ideas helped transform Chicago into the birthplace of the modern skyscraper.
Known as the “Father of the Skyscraper,” Jenney was born on September 25, 1832, in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. His path to architecture was somewhat unusual. He developed an early interest in engineering and attended Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School before traveling to Paris to study at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. He graduated in 1856 with training in engineering and architecture. Interestingly, he graduated one year after another engineering legend, Gustave Eiffel, who famously built Paris’s Eiffel Tower.
Jenney’s education in Paris exposed him to new ideas about engineering, materials, and construction. Those ideas would later become extremely important in Chicago, where rapid population growth and rebuilding created an urgent demand for new types of buildings.
He is buried in Section S, Lot/Pathway 11, Space 2.