Commercial Buildings

Although there have always been marketplaces, the concept of creating a distinctive building designed solely for business or commercial use was not common until the 19th century.

By the 20th century, American businessmen in particular had developed a taste for building prominent commercial buildings, many of them skyscrapers. From their beginnings in Chicago, skyscrapers achieved world attention and fame when New York interests competed to build the highest in the world, including the Woolworth Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed modern commercial office buildings, and even utopian visionaries such as Hugh Ferriss and Tony Garnier included distinctive commercial buildings in their futuristic schemes.