File:Merchandise Mart, River North, Chicago, IL - 52908531940.jpg

English: Built in 1928-1930, this Art Deco-style building was designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White for Marshall Field and Company, and is known as Merchandise Mart, housing multiple retail and wholesale operations on the former site of a train yard, with the massive structure occupying an entire city block. The building consists of a bulky and boxy eighteen-story block, with a tower in the center of the facade facing the Chicago River extending beyond the primary roofline of the building an additional seven stories, making the building 25 stories and 340 feet (103 meters) tall. The building consolidated thirteen wholesale warehouses, and was the largest building in the world by floor area when it opened in 1930, holding the distinction until the completion of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia in 1943. The building was built with a concrete and steel structure, being built utilizing methods and materials previously reserved for larger infrastructure projects like hydroelectric dams. The building was purchased in the mid-1940s by the Kennedy family of Boston, whom owned it for over half a century, and utilized the proceeds from their ownership of the building to build their wealth and fund their political ambitions. In 1998, the building was sold by the Kennedy family to the Vornado Realty Trust.

The building features multiple octagonal towers, with a large tower in the center of the facade facing the Chicago River that features the tallest portion of the building, and smaller towers at the corners of the building and ends of the rooftop penthouse, which are topped with octagonal copper hipped roofs, and feature setbacks as they rise, increasing in frequency towards the top of the towers. The building’s facade is relatively vertical up to the fifteenth floor, with setbacks of the facade of the main block at the sixteenth and eighteenth floors, and similar setbacks of the corner towers, as well as the nineteenth floor of each tower. The building’s limestone facade is broken up by vertical window bays with one-over-one windows, with copper spandrel panels between windows on the fourth through fourteenth floors and sixteenth and seventeenth floors, as well as decorative pilasters, belt coursing, and sculptures. The base of the building’s facade features tall storefronts that have spandrel panels and are separated by fluted pilasters, and are as wide as two window bays on the upper floors. The window bays at the top of the building feature chamfered corners, with the building being crowned with decorative trim atop the parapets that enclose the large low-slope roof of the building, and trim around the base of the copper hipped roof on the towers. The building’s main entrance, at the base of the largest tower and facing the Chicago River, is recessed at the rear of a portico, and features a tall curtain wall above three revolving doors, with two lower alcoves to either side. The building’s main tower once featured 56 terra cotta busts depicting Native American chiefs, commemorating the site’s early heritage as a trading center, which were removed in a renovation in 1961. Inside, the building features approximately 7 miles of corridors, with a lobby featuring a high ceiling, fluted rectilinear marble columns, a terrazzo floor, decorative murals around the base of the ceiling, marble cladding on the walls with granite base, bronze Art Deco-style elevator doors, large showrooms for furniture and interior design firms, office space, and multiple restaurants. The building’s major common areas generally maintain their original character, with the showrooms having been modernized and adapted to different tenant needs over time.

The building has continued to adapt to new tenants over time, with a modern annex building known as 350 North Orleans, or the Chicago Apparel Center, being built on the block to the west in 1977, designed by the notable firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which is connected to the original building by an enclosed walkway over the street built in 1988 and designed by Helmut Jahn. The building underwent a major renovation in the 1980s that updated and modernized various building systems, and between 1989 and 1991, saw the restoration and rehabilitation of the facade and major interior common areas under the direction of the firm Beyer Blinder Belle. The building also has its own transit stop of the Chicago Transit Authority L, presently served by the Brown and Purple lines, one of only two commercial properties to have their own stop on the rapid transit system, with the building having housed the main offices of the Chicago Transit Authority from 1947 until 2004. The management of the building in recent decades has implemented many green energy and sustainable practices into the operations of the building, achieving the LEED existing buildings Silver certification in 2007. The building continues to house retail, wholesale, and office space, today still being one of the largest buildings in central Chicago.