Out of Money, Power, and Necessity
Clients fund architects' projects as well as give some direction as to what they want to see in the design. With skyscrapers, these considerations become exaggerated in scale. In order to need such a large building the client must have some pretty lofty demands that a skyscraper can best fill. Often skyscrapers fill the need for space in a city, the economic demands, and the symbol of power the client hopes to cast.
In 1890 rapid urbanization was in full swing. Multiple American cities where reaching numbers of a half a million residents, numbers unprecedented for the country. Cities were developing quickly and due to limited real estate, the need for space was solved with the vertical dimension. Clients demanded buildings higher and drove the invention of safer and stronger technology forward.
In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire wrecked havoc on the city but if any peace was to come from the destruction, is that it freed up some real estate and cleared the path for a new kind of city. Businessmen snatched up plots of land at cheap prices and eventually the skyscraper was born. After some development, skyscrapers were deemed efficient and a good investment. Business employees could communicate more quickly when in the same building and building multiple middle floors rather than foundations and roofs was both cheaper and faster than a shorter building.
In the case of skyscrapers, the clients and patrons of the buildings are often better known then the architects who built them. Most people can deduce that the Chrysler Building was built for Mr. Walter Chrysler's car company but it would take a moment of research to find the architect behind it. For many clients the purpose of a skyscraper is to claim attention, to gain power and status by constructing a towering structure in their honor. The taller building, the greater the status, and thus the competition to build the tallest tower has been going on since the early 1920s. The symbolism of a building scraping the sky pushes men higher, much like the allure of the Tower of Babel.