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It usurped the Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center complex in 1973 to become the tallest building in the United States. Though the succeeding One World Trade Center has surpassed the height of Willis Tower to reclaim the title for Lower Manhattan, the previously named Sears Tower continues to serve as Chicago's skyscraper king and one of the most impressive buildings on the planet. The 108-storey black behemoth of bundled tubes is donned with a pair of white antennae atop its 443-metre-high roof. The signature structure, boldly designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, has endured as the city's primary architectural landmark, as Chicago's vertical growth continues to sprout modern interpretations of rectilinear office block typologies.
Like the John Hancock Center across the Chicago River to the north, the Willis Tower features a high-altitude observation deck — the tallest in the United States in fact. Visitors can see the land of four states — Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan — on a clear day. Opened on June 22, 1974, the Skydeck is located on the 103rd floor, 412 metres above the streets of Chicago. To up the ante of the popular attraction, which receives over one-and-a-half million visits every year, a group of retractable glass boxes were installed on the west facade. Jutting out of the building, 'The Ledge' provides visitors with unmatched and unobstructed views towards the more mid-rise urban fabric of the city and directly below to South Wacker Drive.
From here, Interstate 290 can be spotted stretching west, while Interstate 90 runs in a north-south direction at the bottom of the image below. Other landmarks in this direction include the University Of Illinois At Chicago and the United Center, home of the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls and the National Hockey League's Chicago Blackhawks.
The view directly south yields glimpses of several mature Chicago neighbourhoods, including Chinatown and Near South Side. The extra-observant will be able to spot Guaranteed Rate Field — home of Major League Baseball's Chicago White Sox — occupying a large lot abutting I-90.
Panning towards the turquoise hues of Lake Michigan, the 57-acre Museum Campus comes into view. The public park and the surrounding area contains some of Chicago's most notable attractions: Soldier Field, home of the National Football League's Chicago Bears; the Shedd Aquarium; the Adler Planetarium; the Field Museum of Natural History; the man-made Northerly Island; and McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America.
Just to the north is the immensely popular Grant Park, "Chicago's front yard." The centrepiece of the 319-acre urban playground is Buckingham Fountain, designed in a rococo wedding cake style and gifted to the city before its dedication in 1927. The northwestern segment of Grant Park, previously occupied by parkland, rail yards, and parking lots, became the immensely popular Millennium Park in 2004. Behind only Navy Pier, it is the second most visited attraction in Chicago, and features a number of unique public art pieces and green spaces. The Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Pedestrian Bridge invoke the Canadian-American architect's signature stainless steel and swooping curve aesthetic.
Chicago's skyscraper-rich downtown comes into focus as we shift our gaze to the northeast. The 346-metre Aon Center became the tallest marble-clad building in the world when it was completed in 1974. A complete resurfacing of the building was conducted in the early 1990s, replacing the worn and cracked marble with a visually similar sheathing of white granite. Designed by Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the 423-metre Trump International Hotel and Tower is the second tallest building in the city. The glass curtain wall of the 98-storey structure stands in contrast to the more opaque facades of the neighbouring towers. The nearby neo-Gothic Tribune Tower and the clock face of The Wrigley Building are also identifiable from the observation deck. So too are the corncob-shaped twins of the Marina City complex, the first project in the United States to utilize a tower crane in its construction. The 100-storey structural expressionist John Hancock Center anchors the skyline to the north, employing a distinctive X-braced exterior that has made the office and residential skyscraper a worldwide architectural icon.
The confluence of the North, South, and Main branches of the Chicago River has seen some intense development activity in recent years. The first phase of the three-tower Wolf Point complex, the 52-storey River Point project, and the Goettsch Partners-designed 150 North Riverside have all arisen from plots of land bordering the river. The pyramidal tower roofs of the 1930-built Merchandise Mart, once the largest building in the world, are clearly visible in the image below.
The Willis Tower has remained one of Chicago's premier destinations because of its ability to provide stunning vistas of the city's varied architectural assets. The birthplace of the skyscraper — the innovator of the steel-frame method of construction — is the envy of urbanists worldwide. With a current collection of six supertalls, and another on the way in the Vista Tower, the vertical enormity of Chicago's skyline is only rivalled nationally by New York City.
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