File:Chicago Board of Trade Building, LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, IL (52901199896).jpg

Built in 1925-1930, this Art Deco-style skyscraper was designed by Holabird and Root for the Chicago Board of Trade, which was founded in 1848 as an exchange for merchants in the rapidly developing city of Chicago, and replaced an earlier building that stood on the same site from 1885 until 1929. The previous building was the tallest in the city of Chicago from 1885 until 1895, when structural issues forced the truncation of the clock tower, with the present building taking up that mantle upon its completion in 1930, standing 44 stories and 604 feet (184 meters) tall, being the city’s tallest building until the completion of the Richard J. Daley Center in 1965. The tower forms a visual terminus along the northern section of LaSalle Street, which shifts a half-block west at Jackson Boulevard, highlighting the building as viewed down the skyscraper canyon from the north.

The building gets smaller as it rises, with a tower at the south end of the historic building, two shorter wings extending to the north, and a six-story base that covers the entire half-block footprint of the building. The exterior of the building is clad in limestone, with polished granite cladding at the base, the words “Chicago Board of Trade” engraved above the central bays of the north facade, flanked by decorative sculptural reliefs of bulls, tall window bays on the base with glass and metal spandrels, metal trim at the windows, and a central light court above the sixth floor with a parapet featuring sculptural reliefs surrounding a clock at the front. Above the base, the building is U-shaped, with two wings that rise thirteen stories above the base with vertical columns of one-over-one double-hung windows in the central bays with recessed metal spandrel panels that rise from decorative carved relief panels at the base, mechanical penthouses flanking the central light court atop the roof of each wing, low-slope roofs enclosed by parapets, and metal fire escapes mounted to the east and west facades of the building. Above this rises the building’s main tower, which features multiple setbacks, tapering as it rises, metal spandrel panels between windows in the central bays, decorative pilasters, and a hipped roof clad in standing seam metal, and crowned with an aluminum statue of the Roman Goddess of Grain, Ceres, created by John H. Storrs, which has no facial features. The building was expanded to the south in 1980 with a 23-story Postmodern-style addition, which was designed by Helmut Jahn, and is clad in glass curtain walls with a hipped roof, limestone panels, and arcades on the east and west facades of the ground floor, which is connected via an elevated multi-story walkway to the adjacent 1995 five-story annex, designed by Fujikawa Johnson, which is similar in appearance to the 1980 addition. Inside, the building houses offices, trading floors, with an intact Art Deco-style multi-story lobby with glossy polished black and white marble wall cladding, brass screens, railings, and trim, and a large light fixture down the middle of the ceiling, which was once the largest light fixture in the world.