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| Welcome to the Modern Era -- The first tall building in Chicago in 21 years (JWB, 2008) |
Four years later on this date, December 8, 1955, the new Midwest
headquarters for Prudential opened for business.
The new building would be the fourth and largest regional
office, a decentralization effort intended to bring the firm closer to the
people it served. Following the first
such regional office in Los Angeles, completed in 1949, along with offices in
Toronto and Houston, the Prudential building in Chicago was projected to house
7,000 employees.
Prudential paid just under five million dollars for the site,
signing an agreement with the Illinois Central and the Michigan Central
Railroads, a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad, for the 16 acres overlooking Grant Park.
Speaking at a luncheon in the Palmer House that day, Carol M.
Shanks, president of Prudential, gave his reasons for choosing Chicago as the
site for its largest regional headquarters.
“Mid-America is the arsenal and the breadbasket of the nation,” Shanks
said. “Without it the United States
would be helplessly, hopelessly crippled.”
Helplessly, hopelessly crippled . . . kind of nice for a Chicagoan to hear.
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| The great railroad yards and terminals that filled the area east of Michigan Avenue from Monroe north to the river (Chicago Aerial Photo Services--U.I.C archives) |
C. F. Murphy, in his oral history, related the back-room dealing
that led up to the final agreement. “They [Prudential] were thinking about the
possibility of a location on the Near North Side exactly on the site of the
Water Tower Place. And then another
place out in Skokie. But when Leo (Leo
Sheridan, a Chicago realtor who was the exclusive agent for Prudential)
proposed air rights, they were most interested in that, but they said, ‘It’s a
knotty problem. We don’t want to be
connected with something that falls through.’
And so the thing was done in secret for a year and a half.”
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| Prudential and its presence at the head of Millennium Park (JWB, 2008) |
Carl Landefeld, who had worked for the great New York
architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, was given responsibility for the
design for the building, and the reaction to the first tall building tin Chicago since
1934 was not completely favorable, as hard as that might be to believe
today. In an October editorial The Chicago Tribune cautioned, “Instead
of 35 stories, it is now planned that the building shall have 42, with a
roughly corresponding increase in cubic content and occupancy. The wisdom of this is questionable . . . The
congestion resulting from so large an increase in office population at the edge
of the already congested Loop might be an unhealthy thing for the city.”
(Look for contemporary criticism about the proposed three-tower
project at Wolf Point, and you can see almost the same sentiments.)
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| JWB, 2009 |
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| Prudential Rising (Google Image) |
The three million dollar cost of the 30 automatic elevators in
the building would be the largest sum ever paid for elevator service,
surpassing the cost of the elevators in the Empire State building by $200,000.
Another “first” for the building was the result of the decision
to install escalators that would serve the building’s top two floors. Installing the highest escalator system in
the world at the time would allow the elimination of the “penthouse” normally
used for housing elevator machinery at the top of the building. Such a structure would have been out of place
atop the sleek lines of the modern new building.
On August 12, 1952 Mayor Kennelly and Valentine Howell,
executive vice-president of Prudential, hefted the first shovels of dirt atop what would become one of the 260 caissons that would be dug 105 to bedrock.
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| Prudential One and Prudential Two (JWB, 2008) |
A 30-inch pipe was constructed 18 feet below ground, running
underneath what is now the Hyatt Hotel and through it 8,500 gallons of river
water would be pumped to Prudential every minute. Disposal of the 5,100,000 gallons of river
water that would be used each day would be by way of a huge storm sewer running
beneath Stetson Avenue.
On July 29, 1953 the Fuller Construction Company was awarded the
contract for the general construction of the new tower. It was an appropriate choice. The company had begun in Chicago before
moving its headquarters to the Flatiron Building in New York City, a building
designed by Daniel Burnham’s firm.
On November 11, 1953 the first steel column, 60 feet long and
weighing 31 tons, was erected. The
American Bridge Division of United States Steel was the fabricator and the
erector of the steel in the new building.
By the end of April, 1954 the last caissons were completed. On November 16, 1954 the topping-off ceremony
was held.
Just into the new year of 1955 the first section of a 311-foot
television tower belonging to WGN was hoisted to the top of the building. The $300,000 antenna and transmitter gave the
Chicago a chance to broadcast with a 50,000 watt transmitter over the highest
antenna in the city, 914 feet above the ground.
In a way WGN began its rise to “super station” status with this move to
Prudential from Tribune Tower in early 1955.
At 3:00 p.m. on June 4, 1955 six furniture vans and 30 movers
began moving 2,600 pieces of office furniture and 400 Prudential employees from
their old headquarters in the Butler building on Canal Street to the fourth and
fifth floors of the new tower on Randolph.
Eighty crosstown trips competed the transfer over the weekend.
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| Alfonso Iannelli's great rock -- with the lettering of his choosing (JWB, 2008) |
The first tenant to move into the building, the western
advertising offices of Readers’ Digest
magazine, settled into its space in September of 1955, taking up temporary
space on the third floor before moving up to the nineteenth floor in the spring
of 1956.
In early October the last of the 2,617 windows was installed,
beating the arrival of cold weather by a month.
Each window was double-glazed with each pane in the system a
quarter-inch in thickness, hermetically sealed with a quarter-inch air space
between.
On December 8, 1955 the first new downtown skyscraper in 21
years was officially dedicated at a ceremony held in the auditorium and lobby
of the new building. Governor Stratton
and Mayor Richard J. Daley, according to The Tribune, said that the Prudential
project would be followed by “further large scale development of the remaining
77 acres of air rights over Illinois Central railroad adjoining the new
skyscraper.” Daley added that the
building represented “41 stories of faith in the future of Chicago.”
A time capsule was set in one of the lobby columns. Among its contents was a film showing the WGN
facilities. The capsule was sealed with
a chip off the rock of Gibraltar, which the British consul general, Robert W.
Mason, presented to Prudential at the ceremony.
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| Without the other Randolph Street buildings that Prudential heralded, this late 1950's postcard clearly shows how sleekly modern the new building seemed (Booth Library Postcard Collection--Eastern Illinois U.) |
Chicago has changed a lot over these past 57 years, but the
Prudential remains as a reminder of the first building to start the process
that would re-make the face of this great modern city.
Posts
15 comments:
Amazing building!!!
I certainly remember those "fast stairs" heading up to the observation deck. I still have pictures taken from the deck.
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I was stationed at Great Lakes NTC from March until December 1969. A girl I was dating that summer took me there for dinner one Saturday evening, the 'Top of the Rock'...a real treat for a Burlington, NC mill hill kid....watch the shadows of the buildings lengthen as the sun set and the sky turn a brilliant reddish orange....one of my favorite spots in Chicago that year.
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Was the time capsule opened in 2000? What was in it?
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My dad was an accountant for Price Waterhouse in the Prudential Building in the 50's and early 60's. I remember him taking me to his office one evening followed by dinner at my first fancy restaurant -- whatever it was -- on the top floor of the building.
I also remember the elevator ride being pretty breathtaking.
I remember a tv show broadcasting from the Prudential building that showed "little rascals" short films. There was a group of kids sitting on stage before the films were played that sang the theme song. My sister, brother and I were part of that group one time in the 50s. A big moment for three "colored" kids from the projects.
My first job at the age of 16, was selling souvenirs on the observation deck. I thought I had made it to the big time! Sailors were frequent visitors to the deck. At Xmas and Thanksgiving, I would invite one or two home for dinner with my family. Fond memories. Joanne
Anyone know when the original logo for the Prudential building was replace to the logo where the letters were slanted with the line on the bottom?
I know that's one's been replaced by the blue logo.
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