Railway Exchange Building (Chicago)

Last updated
Railway Exchange Building
Railway Exchange Building - Chicago (51575329179).jpg
The Railway Exchange Building in 2021
Loop Chicago.PNG
Red pog.svg
Location224 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Coordinates 41°52′42.10″N87°37′28.58″W / 41.8783611°N 87.6246056°W / 41.8783611; -87.6246056
Built19031904 [1]
Architect D. H. Burnham & Company
F. P. Dinkelberg
Architectural style Chicago
NRHP reference No. 82002530
Added to NRHPJune 3, 1982

The Railway Exchange Building, also known as Santa Fe Building, is a 17-story office building in the Historic Michigan Boulevard District of the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It was designed by Frederick P. Dinkelberg of D. H. Burnham & Company in the Chicago style. Dinkelberg was also the associate designer to Daniel Burnham for the Flatiron Building in New York City.

Contents

The building is recognizable by the large "Motorola" logo on the roof, which is visible from Grant Park across Michigan Ave and from Lake Michigan. It is also notable for the round, porthole-like windows along the cornice. The center of the building features a lightwell, which was covered with a skylight in the 1980s. [2]

Architecture

The formal entrance to the building is located on Jackson Boulevard, which in 1904 was a more important street than Michigan Avenue. The impressive entrance is believed to have been required by Daniel Burnham, head of the architectural firm and the building's main stockholder. The firm moved its offices to the fourteenth floor, and Burnham's descendants continued ownership in the building until 1952. [3] This Chicago School of Architecture building with Beaux Arts detailing is organized as a classicization of John Wellborn Root's Rookery. A street-level, two-story enclosed court designed in a symmetrical Beaux-Arts style was surmounted by an open lightwell which was surrounded by a ring of offices. By the formal arched entrance on Jackson Boulevard, a large staircase led to shops and a second-floor balcony. White-glazed terracotta sheaths the exterior façade and interior court and the lightwell is lined with white-glazed brick. Classical designs were used for the ornamental dentils, balusters, and column capitals. The building is completely steel-framed. [3] In July 2012, the Santa Fe sign was replaced with an illuminated Motorola sign when Motorola Solutions began a lease on one floor of the building. The Santa Fe letters were given to the Illinois Railway Museum. [4] After a four-year restoration, the sign was put on display at the museum in 2016. [5]

The building is significant as a historic site because Daniel Burnham and his staff made the 1909 Plan of Chicago in a penthouse on the northeast corner of the roof. [3]

Tenants

The building was originally built as a railway exchange for the Santa Fe railway. Burnham & Company had offices on the 14th floor. [6] Though the firm's successor, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, has moved, a number of architectural organizations still practice there, including the Goettsch Partners, VOA Associates, Harding Partners, and the Chicago offices of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and landscape architecture and planning firm, Design Workshop. [2]

The building was purchased by the University of Notre Dame in 2006. [7] The university's Mendoza College of Business began holding classes there in 2008. [8]

From 2009 to 2018, visitors enjoyed the 320-square-foot Chicago Architecture Foundation scale model of central Chicago in the building's atrium. [An expanded model — with accompanying light show and interpretation — is now at 111 East Wacker Drive, where the CAF moved in 2018; CAF simultaneously changed its name to the Chicago Architecture Center or CAC. CAC continues to update the expanded city model to reflect architectural changes in the downtown area. [9] ]

In 2011, Anacostia Rail Holdings moved its corporate headquarters to the Railway Exchange Building. [10]

Position in Chicago's skyline

The Railway Exchange Building appears (unlabelled) in front of Three First National Plaza in the image below:

Chicago skyline labelled.jpg311 South Wacker111 South WackerChase Tower77 West WackerIBM PlazaAon CenterBlue Cross and Blue Shield TowerPark TowerHarbor Point

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Burnham</span> American architect and urban designer (1846– 1912)

Daniel Hudson Burnham was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the Beaux-Arts movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ever produced."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Sullivan</span> American architect

Louis Henry Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism." He was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School. Along with Wright and Henry Hobson Richardson, Sullivan is one of "the recognized trinity of American architecture." The phrase "form follows function" is attributed to him, although the idea was theorised by Viollet le Duc who considered that structure and function in architecture should be the sole determinants of form. In 1944, Sullivan was the second architect to posthumously receive the AIA Gold Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribune Tower</span> Neo-Gothic skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois

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. Built between 1923 and 1925, the international design competition for the tower became a historic event in 20th-century architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicago Union Station</span> Intercity and commuter terminal in Chicago

Chicago Union Station is an intercity and commuter rail terminal located in the West Loop neighborhood of the Near West Side of Chicago. The station is Amtrak's flagship station in the Midwest. While serving long-distance passenger trains, it is also the downtown terminus for six Metra commuter lines. Union Station is just west of the Chicago River between West Adams Street and West Jackson Boulevard, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. Including approach and storage tracks, it covers about nine and a half city blocks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Whitney Building</span> Residential/hotel in Detroit, Michigan

The David Whitney Building is a historic class-A skyscraper located at 1 Park Avenue, on the northern edge of Downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Grand Circus Park Historic District. The building stands on a wedge-shaped site at the junction of Park Avenue, Woodward Avenue, and Washington Boulevard. Construction on the 19-floor structure began in 1914.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monadnock Building</span> Historic skyscraper in Chicago

The Monadnock Building is a 16-story skyscraper located at 53 West Jackson Boulevard in the south Loop area of Chicago. The north half of the building was designed by the firm of Burnham & Root and built starting in 1891. At 215 feet, it is the tallest load-bearing brick building ever constructed. It employed the first portal system of wind bracing in the United States. Its decorative staircases represent the first structural use of aluminum in building construction. The later south half, constructed in 1893, was designed by Holabird & Roche and is similar in color and profile to the original, but the design is more traditionally ornate. When completed, it was the largest office building in the world. The success of the building was the catalyst for an important new business center at the southern end of the Loop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbide & Carbon Building</span> Skyscraper in Chicago

The Carbide & Carbon Building is a 37-story, 503 feet (153 m) landmark Art Deco high rise built in 1929, located on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It is clad in black granite, green and gold terra cotta, with gold leaf and bronze trim. It was converted to a hotel in 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reliance Building</span> United States historic place

The Reliance Building is a skyscraper located at 1 W. Washington Street in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The first floor and basement were designed by John Root of the Burnham and Root architectural firm in 1890, with the rest of the building completed by Charles B. Atwood in 1895. It is the first skyscraper to have large plate glass windows make up the majority of its surface area, foreshadowing a design feature that would become dominant in the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holabird & Root</span> American architectural firm

The architectural firm now known as Holabird & Root was founded in Chicago in 1880. Over the years, the firm has changed its name several times and adapted to the architectural style then current — from Chicago School to Art Deco to Modern Architecture to Sustainable Architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graham, Anderson, Probst & White</span>

Graham, Anderson, Probst & White (GAP&W) was a Chicago architectural firm that was founded in 1912 as Graham, Burnham & Co. This firm was the successor to D. H. Burnham & Co. through Daniel Burnham's surviving partner, Ernest R. Graham, and Burnham's sons, Hubert Burnham and Daniel Burnham Jr. In 1917, the Burnhams left to form their own practice, which eventually became Burnham Brothers, and Graham and the remaining members of Graham, Burnham & Co. – Graham, (William) Peirce Anderson, Edward Mathias Probst, and Howard Judson White – formed the resulting practice. The firm also employed Victor Andre Matteson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heyworth Building</span> Building in Chicago, Illinois, United States

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicago Architecture Center</span> American nonprofit cultural organization

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historic Michigan Boulevard District</span> Historic district of Chicago, Illinois, United States

The Historic Michigan Boulevard District is a historic district in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States encompassing Michigan Avenue between 11th or Roosevelt Road, depending on the source, and Randolph Streets and named after the nearby Lake Michigan. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 27, 2002. The district includes numerous significant buildings on Michigan Avenue facing Grant Park. In addition, this section of Michigan Avenue includes the point recognized as the end of U.S. Route 66. This district is one of the world's best known one-sided streets rivalling Fifth Avenue in New York City and Edinburgh's Princes Street. It lies immediately south of the Michigan–Wacker Historic District and east of the Loop Retail Historic District.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Institute of Chicago Building</span>

The Art Institute of Chicago Building houses the Art Institute of Chicago, and is part of the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The building is located in Grant Park on the east side of Michigan Avenue, and marks the third address for the Art Institute. The main building was built for the joint purpose of providing an additional facility for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and subsequently the Art Institute. The core of the current complex, located opposite Adams Street, officially opened to the public on December 8, 1893, and was renamed the Allerton Building in 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willoughby J. Edbrooke</span> American architect

Willoughby James Edbrooke (1843–1896) was an American architect and a bureaucrat who remained faithful to a Richardsonian Romanesque style into the era of Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States, supported by commissions from conservative federal and state governments that were spurred by his stint in 1891-92 as Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Franklin Pierce Burnham was an American architect. He is best known for his collaborations with Willoughby J. Edbrooke, especially the 1889 Georgia State Capitol. Burnham was also named the Kenilworth Company Architect for Kenilworth, Illinois, and thus designed several of the planned community's original structures. After 1903, Burnham focused his works on California, including a series of twelve Carnegie libraries. Five of his buildings are today recognized by the National Park Service on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Georgia State Capitol, a National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peoples Gas Building</span> United States historic place

The Peoples Gas Building at 122 South Michigan Avenue on the corner of Adams Street in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois.

Frederick Philip Dinkelberg was an American architect best known for being Daniel Burnham's associate for the design of the Flatiron Building in New York City. Other important projects he worked on include, Chicago's Railway Exchange and the Jewelers' Building, and Philadelphia and New York's Wanamaker's Department Stores.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phenix Building (Chicago)</span> High-rise office in Chicago, Illinois

The PhenixBuilding was an office building in Chicago designed by the noted Chicago architectural firm of Burnham and Root. It was built by the Phenix Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Brooklyn, New York and occupied the block fronting Jackson Boulevard between Pacific Avenue and Clark Street. When completed in 1887, the building was seen as "the latest addition to Chicago's magnificent architectural structures". It was later owned by the Western Union Telegraph Company, who sold the building to the manufacturer and philanthropist Frederick C. Austin (1853-1931) in 1922. Austin donated it to Northwestern University in 1929 with the understanding that the income derived from it would "provide scholarships for the training of business executives". The building was demolished in 1957 and replaced by what today is known as the TransUnion Building, a twenty-four story office building designed by A. Epstein and Sons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burnham Baroque</span>

Burnham Baroque is an architectural style developed by American architect Daniel Burnham at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century. It relies heavily on a stripped Classicism with Baroque and Beaux-Arts inflections. It was popular primarily during the first three decades of the 20th century, particularly among designers of railroad stations.

References

  1. Santa Fe Building : 224 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60604, United States :: Chicago Architecture Info
  2. 1 2 "Santa Fe Building, Chicago, Illinois (D.H. Burnham & Company) - American Architecture". Archived from the original on 2007-11-17. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
  3. 1 2 3 Clarke, Jane H., Saliga, Pauline A. and Zukowsky, John. The Sky’s the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, New York: Rizzoli International, 1990. With updates by John Cramer of the Society of Architectural Historians.
  4. "Local museum lands Santa Fe sign". Chicago Tribune. July 24, 2012. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  5. Dahlman, Steven (August 26, 2016). "Former sign on top of Santa Fe Building installed at railway museum". Loop North News. Retrieved October 31, 2016.
  6. Railway Exchange Building
  7. Notre Dame buys Santa Fe Building
  8. "Notre Dame to host open house wednesday in Chicago for executive MBA". Archived from the original on 2010-06-24. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
  9. "A model city: Chicago displayed in miniature". Chicago Tribune. June 8, 2009. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  10. "About Us". Anacostia Rail Holdings . Retrieved 2015-05-01.