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When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
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Tribune Tower
One of the coolest skyscrapers in the United States is this neo-Gothic tower from the great city of Chicago, which just so happens to be celebrating its 100th year of existence in 2025. You just don’t see a lot of skyscrapers built in this style – and my guess as to why is that it’s difficult to build them this way. Just look at the incredible ornamentation on the facade… even very high up in the air. Tribune Tower’s aesthetic gives itself and its surrounding a sense of antiquity that isn’t real and also a muted but still present class that any great city should desire.
The story of the tower’s construction is really interesting. It was the result of a contest to build the world’s mot beautiful building. What you see above is the winning architectural submission. Did they succeed? If you’re a fan of neo-Gothic architecture, it’s certainly a strong contender.
On the inside of the Tribune Tower, engraved on the lobby floor is a quote that speaks right to the heart of how I feel about architecture.
“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our fathers did for us.”
― John Ruskin
Tribune Tower is a building for which Chicagoans can be proud of the labor of their fathers. For more on the building…
The Tribune Tower is a 463-foot-tall (141 m), 36-floor neo-Gothic skyscraper located at 435 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The early 1920s international design competition for the tower became a historic event in 20th-century architecture. Built for Chicago Tribune owner Robert R. McCormick, since 2018 it has been converted into luxury residences and in 2023 won a Driehaus Prize for architectural preservation and adaptive reuse from Landmarks Illinois.
In 1922 the Chicago Tribune hosted an international interior and exterior design competition for its new headquarters to mark its 75th anniversary, and offered $100,000 in prize money with a $50,000 first prize for “the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world”. The competition worked brilliantly for months as a publicity stunt, and the resulting entries still reveal a unique turning point in American architectural history. More than 260 entries were received.
Other Tribune tower entries by figures like Walter Gropius, Bertram Goodhue, Walter Burley Griffin, Bruno Taut, and Adolf Loos remain intriguing suggestions of what might have been, but perhaps not as intriguing as the one surmounted by a Mount Rushmore-like head of an American Indian. These entries were originally published by the Tribune Company in 1923 under the title Tribune Tower Competition and later in The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s by Katherine Solomonson, 2001.
In the 1980 book entitled The Tribune Tower Competition published by Rizzoli, authors Robert A. M. Stern, Stanley Tigerman as well as Bruce Abbey and other architects jokingly submitted “late entries” in Volume II of the work.
By 1922 the neo-Gothic skyscraper had become an established design tactic, with the first important so-called “American Perpendicular Style” at Cass Gilbert‘s Woolworth Building of 1913. This was a late example, perhaps the last important example, and criticized for its perceived historicism. Construction on the Tribune Tower was completed in 1925 and reached a height of 462 feet (141 m) above ground. The ornate buttresses surrounding the peak of the tower are especially visible when the tower is lit at night.
As was the case with most of Hood’s projects, the sculptures and decorations were made by the American artist Rene Paul Chambellan. The tower features carved images of Robin Hood (Hood) and a howling dog (Howells) near the main entrance to commemorate the architects. The top of the tower is designed after the Tour de beurre (″butter tower″) of the Rouen Cathedral in France, which is characteristic of the Late-Gothic style, that is to say, without a spire but with a crown-shaped top.
Rene Paul Chambellan contributed his sculpture talents to the buildings ornamentation, gargoyles and the Aesops‘ Screen over the main entrance doors. Rene Chambellan worked on other projects with Raymond Hood including the American Radiator Building and Rockefeller Center in New York City. Also, among the gargoyles on the Tribune Tower is one of a frog. That piece was created by Rene Chambellan to represent himself jokingly as he is of French ancestry.
In 1999, during a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin presented a rock brought from the Moon, which was displayed in a window in the Tribune gift store (it could not be added to the wall, as NASA owns a large majority of the Apollo Moon rocks, and this one was merely on loan to the Tribune). The rock was removed in 2011 due to an outdated display. A new rock display is planned but has not been installed as of 2018. A piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center has been added to the wall. Tiles from the Sydney Opera House were added in 2006.
Buildings influenced by the Tower
Several buildings around the world make reference to the design of the Tribune Tower, most notably in Australia: the spires of the Grace Building in Sydney and the Manchester Unity Building in Melbourne. Additionally, the architects of One Atlantic Center located in the Midtown section of Atlanta were influenced by the building which is most evident in the shaft of the building as well as the base.
Freedom Museum
On April 11, 2006, the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum opened, occupying two stories of the building, including the previous location of high-end gift store Hammacher Schlemmer. The museum closed this location on March 1, 2009, and redirected its efforts to become an online museum.
Open House Chicago
Tribune Tower has participated in Chicago Architecture Foundation‘s event Open House Chicago every year, starting in 2011. This annual opportunity allows visitors to tour the interior of the building for free.
Condo conversion
The Chicago Tribune, the building’s main tenant since it opened, moved out in June 2018, in order for the building to be converted to condos. The conversion of the building is set to cost more than $500 million. The conversion has run into some legal troubles regarding the sign: the Chicago Tribune contends that the sign is their intellectual property, so it can not remain on the building, but the developers stated that they had a contractual agreement to buy the sign for one dollar. Col. Robert R. McCormick’s former iconic office on the 24th floor will be turned into offices. In the former parking lot for Tribune Tower, there are plans to build Tribune Tower East, a super-tall skyscraper that would become the city’s second-tallest.
The building’s plaza has a bronze sculpture by Bela Pratt depicting Nathan Hale, commissioned by McCormick in 1940. It is a replica of one commissioned by Yale University in 1899; Pratt’s widow gave permission for the copy. The statue was dedicated on June 4, 1940, with an event that included musical performances and an address by Professor William Warren Sweet, attended by high school Reserve Officers’ Training Corps members. It depicts Hale with wrists and ankles bound. The pedestal states that it is “Dedicated to the reserve officers of America” and the statue’s base has Hale’s famous quote “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
In popular culture
The snipers in the 2011 film Transformers: Dark of the Moon are shooting from the 26th floor of the Tribune Tower just below the buttresses.
On November 21 and 28, 2007, in episodes entitled “One Wedding and a Funeral” and “The Thing About Heroes” of the television series CSI: NY, historical pieces stolen from the building led Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) to his hometown of Chicago. Upon further investigation of the man stalking him, Taylor found a dead body in an office of an unused floor in the building. The episodes were filmed entirely on location in Chicago.
Here below is a great video which shows a lot of the architectural detail of the building. If the goal at construction was to build the most beautiful building in the world, it’s fair to argue that the tower is at least in the conversation.
