Chicago: Palmolive Building, now 919 North Michigan Avenue, 1927-29 by Holabird and Root
The thirty-seven storey, 468 feet high Palmolive Building is a limestone tower with six symmetrical setbacks and indentations that telescope upwards to a flat roof. The receding setbacks create an elongated effect that is heightened by continuous channels of windows and vertical piers, which minimize the effect of horizontal breaks created by the setbacks. In the daytime the elegant appearance of the building is attributed to the graceful way in which the setbacks fold into one another. At night, when the building is illuminated the effect is reversed as the bright coloured floodlights dramatically contrast one vertical cliff against another.
At the time of completion the building was topped by a 150-foor mast carrying a powerful beam for aerial navigation. After serving as a navigation tool for over thirty years, the beacon was partially shielded in 1968 because it disturbed tenants in nearby high rises, particularly the 100-storey John Hancock Center (1965-70) where apartment-dwellers caught the beam dead in the eye. The beacon was extinguished in 1981 long after it had become obsolete as a navigation tool and had, instead, become a constant source of irritation to area residents.
The Palmolive was part of a design tradition that evolved after passage of the 1923 Chicago zoning law, which paved the way for setback skyscrapers. The architects produced an impressive and cohesive body of works in the late 1920s and early 1930s that included such elegant limestone setback towers as 333 North Michigan Avenue and the Chicago Board of Trade. The Palmolive is undoubtedly one of their most sophisticated designs. According to Robert Bruegmann in “Chicago History”, “the building can perhaps be considered the firm's most exemplary work of the late 1920s. Here, because there was an ample site and no tall neighbors to block the view, the architects created a nearly perfect expression of the high setback skyscraper”.
Extract taken from "The Sky's the Limit" (1990) edited by Pauline A Saliga.
Chicago: Palmolive Building, now 919 North Michigan Avenue, 1927-29 by Holabird and Root
The thirty-seven storey, 468 feet high Palmolive Building is a limestone tower with six symmetrical setbacks and indentations that telescope upwards to a flat roof. The receding setbacks create an elongated effect that is heightened by continuous channels of windows and vertical piers, which minimize the effect of horizontal breaks created by the setbacks. In the daytime the elegant appearance of the building is attributed to the graceful way in which the setbacks fold into one another. At night, when the building is illuminated the effect is reversed as the bright coloured floodlights dramatically contrast one vertical cliff against another.
At the time of completion the building was topped by a 150-foor mast carrying a powerful beam for aerial navigation. After serving as a navigation tool for over thirty years, the beacon was partially shielded in 1968 because it disturbed tenants in nearby high rises, particularly the 100-storey John Hancock Center (1965-70) where apartment-dwellers caught the beam dead in the eye. The beacon was extinguished in 1981 long after it had become obsolete as a navigation tool and had, instead, become a constant source of irritation to area residents.
The Palmolive was part of a design tradition that evolved after passage of the 1923 Chicago zoning law, which paved the way for setback skyscrapers. The architects produced an impressive and cohesive body of works in the late 1920s and early 1930s that included such elegant limestone setback towers as 333 North Michigan Avenue and the Chicago Board of Trade. The Palmolive is undoubtedly one of their most sophisticated designs. According to Robert Bruegmann in “Chicago History”, “the building can perhaps be considered the firm's most exemplary work of the late 1920s. Here, because there was an ample site and no tall neighbors to block the view, the architects created a nearly perfect expression of the high setback skyscraper”.
Extract taken from "The Sky's the Limit" (1990) edited by Pauline A Saliga.