Autobiography of a Skyscraper

The magnitude of error in building a skyscraper is staggeringly large. Flaws in engineering take on exponential importance with every level you go up. The cost of mistakes can easily multiply into tens of millions of dollars. If a piece of plywood isn’t secured properly and flies off the deck, someone down below might end up dead. That’s the horror of the business. It’s also the beauty.


Autobiography of a Skyscraper—documenting in both words and pictures the making of 1000M, a 74-story gleaming tower in the heart of Chicago—is the story of the most dynamic workplace one could ever imagine. From the financiers who secure the many hundreds of millions of dollars needed for construction to the installers who jump atop the window frames from nearly a thousand feet up in the air, hundreds of people work together in the miracle of organization that is building a skyscraper. It is an orchestra, where no matter how small the part, everyone must play in tune and together.


The conductor of this particular orchestra is Francis Greenburger, a real estate titan with nearly half a century of investing in and developing properties around the world. However, just as 1000M was built by a wide array of skills, so Autobiography of a Skyscraper weaves the personal accounts of many of those involved into a single narrative of how a tower rises. Unlike traditional books on architecture and construction, it marries instructive and technical elements with the intimacy and pace of a memoir.


Architecture or urban planning buffs will be given a wide lens into understanding the impact of their work. For the casual reader, they will see the extent to which there’s a gripping story behind every building in the sky. Autobiography of a Skyscraper will not only serve as a written record of this significant architectural addition to Chicago, but also as a blueprint for real estate developers, financial institutions, architects, city planners, designers, construction workers, and anybody else interested in what it takes to change a city’s skyline.