The Museum’s online series The Modern Concrete Skyscraper continues with a look back into the early 20th century with a talk by structural engineer and historian Tyler Sprague on the unique development of concrete skyscrapers in the Pacific Northwest. In the early 1900s, as Seattle grew into a significant urban center for the region, its early high-rises were made of imported structural steel. At the same time, however, advances in reinforced-concrete construction that came about through the increased production of a local, high quality cement in the North Cascades created a low-cost, high-performance building material that Northwest architects and engineers began to apply to high-rise design.