A lintel can be a load-bearing building component, a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamental structural item often found over portals, doors and windows. Often steel sections either straight or curved fulfill these functions. In fact, certain building codes, like Chicago’s, require that the lintels be steel sections.
An example where steel lintels are at once structural and ornamental can be seen in the Siegel home, North America’s largest single-family residence.
Chicago Metal Rolled Products provided steel tube bending of 75 lintels for this home. 6 x 6 x 3/8 square tubes were rolled to various radii including 30 parts to a very tight 3 foot radius–an example of minimum radius bending. The Orlando, Florida, residence consists of 88,000 square feet of conditioned space and over 800 tons of structural and miscellaneous steel fabrication and erection.
