 The Home Insurance Building was a tall, 10-story skyscraper designed by William Le Baron Jenney, who had been trained as an engineer in France and was a leading architect in Chicago.Jenney's design was unusual in that it incorporated structural steel into the building's internal metal frame alongside the traditional wrought iron.This frame took the weight of the floors of the building and helped to support the weight of the external walls as well, proving an important step towards creating the genuine non-structural curtain walls that became a feature of later skyscrapers.