engineering

New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago)

New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) rather than just read about it. In short: The New York Life Insurance Building is a 14-story building at 39 South LaSalle Street in the Loop neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. Designed by William Le Baron Jenney, it was completed as a 12-story structure in 1894 at a cost of $800,000, equivalent to $29,769,231 in 2025.

Key takeaways

New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The New York Life Insurance Building is a 14-story building at 39 South LaSalle Street in the Loop neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. Designed by William Le Baron Jenney, it was completed as a 12-story structure in 1894 at a cost of $800,000, equivalent to $29,769,231 in 2025. In 1898, Jenney designed a 92 ft (28 m) addition to the east of the original structure. This expanded the Monroe Street facade to 233 ft (71 m). The addition contained 13 floors and an additional floor was added to the first structure. The expansion also added an entrance on Monroe Street and enlarged the lobby. In 1903, a fourteenth floor was added bring the building to its current height. The building is faced with brick and terra cotta trim in the classical style. Prior to the additions, a cornice and parapet encircled the top, however these were removed to accommodate the expansion. The lobby retains its Georgia gray marble cladding and mosaic tile floor. Light fixtures are deco and appear to be from the 1920s. The building received preliminary landmark status in 2002, but in 2006, Preservation Chicago considered the building one of Chicago's most threatened. In June of that year a company submitted an application to the Chicago Plan Commission including plans to renovate the structure and build 29 South LaSalle, an adjacent 51 story office building. Later that month, the building was declared an official Chicago landmark, amended in 2009. In August 2014, KHP Capital Partners announced it purchased the structure and would convert it to a 293-room Kimpton hotel that will include a rooftop restaurant, meeting rooms, and retail space. The hotel, officially named The Kimpton Gray Hotel, opened in 2016.

Gallery

See also List of Chicago Landmarks List of early skyscrapers

References

External links Media related to New York Life Insurance Building, Chicago at Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago)

In research: New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1894 establishments in Illinois, Buildings and structures completed in 1894, Chicago Landmarks, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) in simple terms?

Why does New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago) matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on New York Life Insurance Building (Chicago).