Steel gives masonry a run for the money

For millennia, the only way to build to build a strong building was to pile up lots and lots of stone or brick, forming massive masonry walls that could hold up the weight of the floors and roof. This ancient approach worked well enough as long as buildings weren't more than six stories tall or so. If they were, the lower walls had to be made impractically thick in order to carry the weight of all that masonry above them -- the more stories, the thicker the walls.

By the late 19th century, when American engineers and architects began contemplating structures of 10, 15 or even more stories, the limitations of masonry construction reached a critical point.

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