1.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
2.
Skyscraper
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A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building having multiple floors. When the term was used in the 1880s it described a building of 10 to 20 floors. Mostly designed for office, commercial and residential uses, a skyscraper can also be called a high-rise, for buildings above a height of 300 m, the term supertall can be used, while skyscrapers reaching beyond 600 m are classified as megatall. One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel framework that supports curtain walls and these curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than of those made of reinforced concrete. Modern skyscrapers walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterized by surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure, and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, a relatively big building may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes well above its built environment and changes the overall skyline. The maximum height of structures has progressed historically with building methods and technologies, the Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world. High-rise buildings are considered shorter than skyscrapers, the first steel-frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, Illinois in 1885. Even the scholars making the argument find it to be purely academic and this definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicagos Monadnock Building. What is the characteristic of the tall office building. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and it must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line. Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high-rises but some other tall structures, the word skyscraper often carries a connotation of pride and achievement. A loose convention of some in the United States and Europe draws the limit of a skyscraper at 150 m or 490 ft. The tallest building in ancient times was the 146 m Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt and it was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the 14th century AD Lincoln Cathedral being conjectured by many to have exceeded it
3.
Eliel Saarinen's Tribune Tower design
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The winning entry, the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower, was built in 1925. Saarinens entry came in place yet became influential in the design of a number of future buildings. In 1921–22, the prominent Tribune Tower competition was held to design a new headquarters for the Chicago Tribune, first place was awarded to a design by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, a neo-Gothic building completed in 1925. Saarinen was awarded $20,000 for second place, his design was never constructed, many observers felt that Saarinens simplified yet soaring setback tower was the most appropriate entry, and his novel modernist design influenced many subsequent architectural projects. Saarinen was an architect but had never before designed a skyscraper. To arrive at his design, he took as a starting place the upward sweep of Gothic architecture. He said that through logical construction each portion of the design was made to reflect the goal of verticality. He was 49 years old when he submitted the design, the year he moved from Finland to the Chicago area. In the U. S. he contributed to a design for the Chicago lakefront, and he lectured at the University of Michigan. Instead, others found success by incorporating his vision, pflueger, George W. Kelham, Hubbell and Benes, Holabird & Roche, Alfred C. Finn, and James Edwin Ruthven Carpenter, Jr. as well as later architect César Pelli, respected Chicago architect Louis Sullivan offered high praise to Saarinens design, and said that his building indicated the future direction for the old Chicago School. Sullivan named Saarinen his stylistic successor, Chicago architects Thomas Tallmadge and Irving Kane Pond were also very vocal in their praise for Saarinen. Pond said Saarinens design was by far the best contest entry, that it was devoid of the superficial adornments featured on the winning entry, Tallmadge projected that Saarinens design would be transformative for American skyscrapers. He said that under Saarinens hand, the spirit of the skyscraper, rid of its inhibitions, leaps in joyous freedom to the sky. Skyscraper Museum director Carol Willis, and art consultant Franck Mercurio, curator at the Field Museum in Chicago, Mercurio argues that Goodhues design is a better example of modernism because it has less ornamentation. Goodhues entry gained him honorable mention but no cash award, the following buildings have been observed to be influenced by Saarinens 1922 design. The Chicago Tribune Competition, Skyscraper Museum
4.
Aon Center (Chicago)
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With 83 floors and a height of 1,136 feet, it is the third tallest building in Chicago, surpassed in height by the Willis Tower and the Trump International Hotel and Tower. The building is managed by Jones Lang LaSalle, which is headquartered in the building. Aon Center formerly had the headquarters of Aon and Amoco, Aons US operations are headquartered here. The Standard Oil Building was constructed as the new headquarters of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, when it was completed in 1974 it was the tallest building in Chicago and the fourth-tallest in the world, earning it the nickname Big Stan. The building employs a tubular steel-framed structural system with V-shaped perimeter columns to resist earthquakes, reduce sway, minimize column bending and this construction method was also used for the former World Trade Center towers in New York City. When completed, it was the worlds tallest marble-clad building, being sheathed entirely with 43,000 slabs of Italian Carrara marble, the marble used was thinner than previously attempted in cladding a building, this quickly proved to be a mistake. On December 25,1973, during construction a 350-pound marble slab detached from the façade, in 1985, inspection found numerous cracks and bowing in the marble cladding of the building. To alleviate the problem, stainless steel straps were added to hold the marble in place, later, from 1990 to 1992, the entire building was refaced with Mount Airy white granite at an estimated cost of over $80 million. The buildings facade now somewhat resembles that of the former World Trade Center due to the flow of the columns. The Standard Oil Building was renamed the Amoco Building when the company changed names in 1985, in 1998, Amoco sold the building to The Blackstone Group for an undisclosed amount, estimated to be between $430 and $440 million. It was renamed as the Aon Center on December 30,1999, in May 2003, Wells Real Estate Investment Trust, Inc. acquired the building for between $465 and $475 million. In recent years, the top floors of the building have been lit at night with colors to reflect a particular season or holiday, orange is used for Thanksgiving, green or red for Christmas, and pink during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The lighting commonly matches the nighttime lighting on the antenna of Willis Tower, the John Hancock Center, in the plaza, there is a sounding sculpture by Harry Bertoia
5.
Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago)
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The Trump International Hotel and Tower, also known as Trump Tower Chicago and Trump Tower, is a skyscraper condo-hotel in downtown Chicago, Illinois. The building, named after businessman and current President of the United States, Donald Trump, was designed by architect Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Bovis Lend Lease built the 98-story structure, which reaches a height of 1,388 feet including its spire and it is next to the main branch of the Chicago River, with a view of the entry to Lake Michigan beyond a series of bridges over the river. When topped out in 2009, it became the fourth-tallest building in the US and it surpassed the citys John Hancock Center as the building with the highest residence in the world, and held this title until the completion of the Burj Khalifa. The design of the building includes, from the ground up, retail space, a parking garage, the 339-room hotel opened for business with limited accommodations and services on January 30,2008, then full accommodation and services on April 28. A restaurant on the 16th floor, Sixteen, opened in early 2008 to favorable reviews, the building topped out in late 2008 and construction was completed in 2009. As of 2015, the hotel is three in Chicago with an elite five-star Forbes Travel Guide rating. It hosts a restaurant that is one of three five-star Forbes-rated restaurants in the city and a spa that is one of six that is at least a four-star Forbes-rated in the Chicago area in 2015. Sixteen is one of five restaurants in Chicago with at least a Michelin Guide two-star rating in 2016, the tower sits at 401 North Wabash Avenue in the River North Gallery District, part of the Near North Side community area of Chicago. The building is across the Chicago River from the Chicago Loop and it is a block away from the southern end of the Magnificent Mile portion of Michigan Avenue. The restaurant, Sixteen, has a view of the Chicago Rivers entrance to Lake Michigan. The design of the building incorporates three setback features designed to provide continuity with the surrounding skyline, each reflecting the height of a nearby building. The third setback, on the east side, relates to 330 North Wabash building, however, some views distort the alignment of the second setback. The setbacks and rounded edges of the building combat vortex formation, the body of the building is raised 30 feet above the main Wabash entrance and 70 feet above the Chicago River. The buildings Permasteelisa curtain wall uses clear low-emissivity coated glass and a curved wing-shaped polished stainless-steel mullion system that projects 9 inches from the glass line and it incorporates a brushed stainless steel spandrel panels and clear anodized aluminum. The building has 2,600,000 square feet of space, rises to 98 stories. These include studio apartments, a mixture of suites with one to four bedrooms, the tower also features a luxury hotel condominium with 339 guest rooms. The building includes, from the ground up, retail space, a garage, a hotel
6.
Willis Tower
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The Willis Tower, built as and still commonly referred to as Sears Tower, is a 108-story,1, 450-foot skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The building is considered an achievement for its architect Fazlur Kahn. The Willis Tower is the second-tallest building in the United States, more than one million people visit its observation deck each year, making it one of Chicagos most popular tourist destinations. The structure was renamed in 2009 by the Willis Group as part of its lease on a portion of the towers space, the buildings official address is 233 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60606. In 1969, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicagos Loop. Sears asked its counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow to suggest a location. This latter site was decided upon, and preliminary inquiries determined that the necessary permits could be obtained, the next step was to acquire the property, a team of attorneys from the Arnstein law firm, headed by Andrew Adsit, began buying the property parcel by parcel. Sears purchased 15 old buildings from 100 owners and paid $2.7 million to the City of Chicago for the portion of Quincy Street that divided the property. Their team of architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan designed the building as nine square tubes, all nine tubes would rise up to the 50th floor of the building. At the 50th floor, the northwest and southeast tubes end, at the 66th floor, the northeast and the southwest tubes end. At the 90th floor, the north, east, and south tubes end, the remaining west and center tubes continue up to the 108th floor. The Willis Tower was the first building to use Khans bundled tube structure and this innovative design was structurally efficient and economic, at 1,450 feet, it provided more space and rose higher than the Empire State Building, yet cost much less per unit area. This structural system would prove influential in skyscraper construction. It has been used in most supertall buildings since then, including the worlds tallest building, to honor Khans contributions, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois commissioned a sculpture of him for the lobby of the Willis Tower. The latter floor areas had to be designed to a plate, with a high window-space to floor-space ratio, to be attractive. Smaller floorplates required a structure to yield sufficient square footage. The height was restricted by a limit imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration to protect air traffic, the financing of the tower was provided by the Sears company. It was topped with two antennas to permit local television and radio broadcasts, Sears and the City of Chicago approved the design, and the first steel was put in place in April 1971
7.
35 East Wacker
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It was built from 1925 to 1927, and was co-designed by Joachim G. Giaver and Frederick P. Dinkelberg. It was once considered to be the tallest building in the world outside of New York City, for its first 14 years, the building had a car lift that served the first 23 floors and facilitated safe transfers for jewelry merchants. Currently, the French-American Chamber of Commerce in Chicago is a tenant, and the showroom of architect Helmut Jahn is atop the building inside the dome, the building is currently being renovated, with the facade being maintained, but the interiors converted into a more modern configuration. Both the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the City of Chicago have recognized the project with awards. Mercury Records Feeding America The building is featured in scenes of the 2005 film Batman Begins. The 2011 film Transformers, Dark of the Moon features a climax set atop the building, in 2012, episode 2 of the first season of United States of America on the American History Channel featured the buildings historic elevator, made by the Otis Elevator Company. The building is shown in the TV series The Good Wife as the location of the law firm Lockhart/Gardner, emergency Call Ambulance, Arcade racing videogame - the player drives by this building in the third case. In the game however, a gas station that has no relation to reality, is located at the bottom of this building
8.
311 South Wacker Drive
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311 South Wacker Drive in Chicago, USA, is a post-modern 65-story skyscraper completed in 1990. At 961 feet tall, it is the seventh tallest building in Chicago and it was once the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. Until 2015,311 South Wacker was also the tallest building in the world only by its street address. The lower level of the garden was designed for a possible connection via underground passageway to Chicago Union Station. The building also contains three levels of underground parking, the building contains both retail and commercial tenants. The lobby is a two-level 85-foot -tall glass-ceilinged winter garden and it used to have palm trees, still has a fountain, and is supported by a steel structure influenced by the Chicago L tracks and bridges. It was envisioned as a link or pedestrian station serving as a connection from the nearby Union Station through a disused streetcar tunnel under the South Branch of the Chicago River. Raymond Kaskeys bronze sculpture Gem of the Lakes looks over the garden from the Wacker entrance, the top of the building is a 105-foot -tall translucent cylinder, surrounded by four other smaller cylinders, which was inspired by the massing of the Tribune Tower. This makes it among the most visible Chicago skyscrapers at night, the five cylinders on top are lit at night by 1,852 fluorescent tubes, and a lantern at the top changes colors for various holidays and special events. 311 South Wacker is surrounded to the northwest by an area, commonly used as a lounging and public lunch area during warm months. This park is used to host local farmer markets, musical events, to the southwest is a parking lot. This land was originally to be occupied by two towers that were never developed due to office market conditions
9.
333 North Michigan
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333 North Michigan is an Art Deco skyscraper located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. Architecturally, it is noted for its dramatic upper-level setbacks that were inspired by the 1923 skyscraper zoning laws. Geographically, it is known as one of the four 1920s flanks of the Michigan Avenue Bridge that are contributing properties to the Michigan–Wacker Historic District, the building was designed by Holabird & Roche/Holabird & Root and completed in 1928. It is 396 feet tall, and has 34 storeys and it was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 7,1997. It is located on the quarter mile stretch of Michigan Avenue between the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District and the Magnificent Mile. Designed by John Wellborn Root, Jr, the building was such a success that Holabird and Root took commercial residence there. The buildings long and slender design optimized use of natural lighting, the buildings interior represents Prohibition era modernism, especially its Art Deco Tavern club. The building is embellished by a marble base, ornamental bands, and reliefs depicting frontiersmen and Native Americans at Fort Dearborn. The Blackhawks Store is located on the level of Michigan Avenue. Fannie May is located on the level of Michigan Avenue. The Consulate-General of Pakistan in Chicago is in Suite 728, psychemedics Corporation, the worlds leading drug testing company using hair to detect drugs of abuse, is located in Suite 1026
10.
The Blackstone Hotel
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The Renaissance Blackstone Hotel is located on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo Street in the Michigan Boulevard Historic District in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. This 290-foot 21-story hotel was built from 1908 to 1910 and designed by Marshall, on May 29,1998, the Blackstone Hotel was designated as a Chicago Landmark. The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 8,1986 and it is also a historic district contributing property for the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. The hotel is famous for hosting celebrity guests including numerous U. S. presidents, the hotel is known for contributing the term smoke-filled room to political parlance. The hotel fell into disrepair that necessitated closure in 2000 and subsequent renovation and it reopened on March 6,2008 after a $128-million renovation and is managed by the Renaissance Hotels division of Marriott International. The hotel and the adjacent Blackstone Theatre were built on the site of Timothy Blackstones mansion by John and Tracy Drake, sons of Blackstones former business partner, John and Tracy Drake also developed the Drake Hotel. Their father had been a director of Blackstones Chicago and Alton Railroad, at the time of the opening, the hotel and theatre were located at the southern edge of the Chicago Theatre District at Michigan Avenue and Hubbard Court. The original construction was capitalized at $1.5 million, including a $600,000 to $750,000 bond issue by the Drake Hotel Company, in the 1920s, the Drake Hotel Company undertook some financing arrangements which included extending their debt to construct the Drake Hotel. They used the Blackstone Hotel as collateral for one loan in 1927, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 rippled into the hotel industry, leaving the Chicago Title and Trust Company with 30 Chicago hotels in receivership and causing the Drakes to default in 1932. The hotel ended up belonging to Metropolitan Life, which held the mortgage, metLife leased the Blackstone to hotelier Arnold Kirkeby in 1936, and Kirkeby bought the hotel outright in 1941. Kirkeby sold the hotel to Sheraton Hotels in the 1954 and it was renamed the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel, the hotel endured troubles in the 1960s and 1970s as the neighborhood surrounding the hotel declined. Sheraton sold the hotel to a group of businessmen in 1971. In 1995, the Blackstone was sold to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Blackstone Hotel has been dubbed The Hotel of Presidents. It was once considered one of Chicagos finest luxury hotels, the hotel has a special room designed for use by presidents which was separated from the rest of the hotel by hollowed out walls in which the Secret Service could operate. Washington became the hotels first African American guest, in 1920, Warren G. Harding was selected as the Republican candidate for the presidency at the Blackstone. Although the convention was being held at the Chicago Coliseum, a group of Republican leaders met at the Blackstone on the night of June 11 to come to a consensus. When Raymond Clapper of United Press reported on the decision-making process, the phrase entered American political parlance to denote a political process which is not open to scrutiny. During Kennedys visit he was informed of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the hotel closed in 2000 after Occupational Safety and Health Administration building inspectors found safety problems during a 1999 inspection
