The Tribune Tower is a , 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 an 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.
The tower was the home of the Tribune and the related Tribune Media, Tribune Broadcasting, and Tribune Publishing. WGN Radio (720 kHz) originated broadcasts from the building until June 18, 2018. CNN's Chicago bureau was also located in the building. It is listed as a Chicago Landmark and is a contributing property to the Michigan–Wacker Historic District. One of its predecessors, the first "Tribune Tower", had been built in 1868 and was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
History
Design competition 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.
The winner was a neo-Gothic design by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, with buttresses near the top.
The entry that many perceived as the best, by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, took second place and received $20,000. Saarinen's tower was preferred by architects like Louis Sullivan, and was a strong influence on the next generation of skyscrapers, including Raymond Hood's own subsequent work on the McGraw-Hill Building and the Rockefeller Center. The 1929 Gulf Building in Houston, Texas, designed by architects Alfred C. Finn, Kenneth Franzheim, and J. E. R. Carpenter, is a close realization of that Saarinen design. César Pelli's 181 West Madison Street Building in Chicago is also thought to be inspired by Saarinen's design.
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.
Archival materials regarding the competition and the building are held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Post-opening
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.
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.
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 was reported 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 East Tower, a super-tall skyscraper that would become the city's second-tallest.
In 2025, the investment firm North American Real Estate bought the Tribune Tower's retail space.
Architecture 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.
The building's lobby also serves as a hall of inscriptions, with quotations about liberty and the freedom of the press taken from the work of Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Euripides, Voltaire, Daniel Webster, and others, carved into the walls. This includes Thomas Jefferson's “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that can not be limited without being lost.”
Collection of famous building fragments
Prior to the building of the Tribune Tower, correspondents for the Chicago Tribune had brought back rocks and bricks from a variety of historically important sites throughout the world at the request of Colonel McCormick. Many of these fragments have been incorporated into the lowest levels of the building and are labeled with their location of origin.
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 . A piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center was added to the wall. Tiles from the Sydney Opera House were added in 2006.
List of fragments by site of origin There are 149 stones and rocks embedded in the building's walls, not counting the moon rock which is kept inside. These include fragments taken from sites in each of the 50 U.S. states and from every continent.
Africa Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt Leptis Magna, Libya
Antarctica A rock collected during Operation Highjump
Asia Banteay Srei, Cambodia Ta Prohm, Cambodia Forbidden City, Beijing, China (three pieces) Winter Palace, Beijing, China Great Wall of China Unspecified temple, Henan, China Taj Mahal, Agra, India Tower of David, Jerusalem, Israel Golden Castle, Osaka, Japan Unspecified shrine in Tokyo, Japan Petra, Jordan Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Palestine Corregidor, Luzon, Philippines Cuartel de Santa Lucia, Manila, Philippines Fort San Antonio Abad, Manila, Philippines Fort Santiago, Manila, Philippines Hwaseong Fortress gate, Suwon, South Korea Roman ruins, Birecik, Turkey Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey Süleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey
Europe St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, Austria Elsinore Castle, Helsingør, Denmark Hans Christian Andersen Museum, Odense, Denmark Montsec American Monument, Battle of Saint-Mihiel site, France Omaha Beach, Normandy, France Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France Reims Cathedral, Reims, France Butter Tower, Rouen Cathedral, France (inspired the shape of the building) City Hall, Saint-Lô, France City Hall, Aachen, Germany Medieval portal, Aachen, Germany Berlin Wall, Germany Mosaic Hall, Reich Chancellery, Berlin, Germany Cologne Cathedral, Germany (two pieces) Wartburg, Eisenach, Germany Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, Koblenz, Germany City Palace, Potsdam, Germany Ludendorff Bridge, Remagen, Germany Parthenon, Athens, Greece Mount Pentelicus, Greece General Post Office, Dublin, Ireland Battle of Anzio site, Italy Stabian Baths, Pompeii, Italy Colosseum, Rome, Italy Sibyl's Cave, Italy Powder Tower, Riga, Latvia Schreierstoren, Amsterdam, Netherlands Pieterskerk, Leiden, Netherlands Trondheim Cathedral, Norway Wawel Castle, Kraków, Poland Santa Maria Island, Azores, Portugal Taynitskaya Tower, Kremlin, Moscow, Russia Birka Viking settlement, Sweden Old City Hall, Stockholm, Sweden Stockholm Palace, Sweden Chillon Castle, Switzerland St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, Kyiv, Ukraine Clementine Hall, Vatican City St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City (two pieces)
United Kingdom Palace of Westminster, London, England (two pieces) Westminster Abbey, London, England Flodden Field, Northumberland, England Cannonball from Pevensey Castle, England Walls of Londonderry, Northern Ireland Edinburgh Castle, Scotland Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey, Wales
Latin America Fortress walls of Cartagena, Colombia Miraflores locks, Panama Canal, Panama Santo Domingo Monastery and Church, Panama City, Panama
North America Séminaire de Québec, Quebec City, Canada
United States Tawasa people village, Alabama (visited by Hernando de Soto) Denali, Alaska Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona DeSoto Landing, Desha County, Arkansas Petrified wood from the Redwood National and State Parks, California Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Holy Trinity Church (Old Swedes), Wilmington, Delaware Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida Andersonville Prison, Georgia Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho Birthplace of Tribune founder Robert R. McCormick, Chicago, Illinois Douglas Hall, Old University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Union Stock Yards, Chicago, Illinois World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Springfield, Illinois Lincoln Tomb (pre-1901 structure), Springfield, Illinois Grouseland, Vincennes, Indiana Joliet–Marquette Expedition landing site, Louisa County, Iowa John Brown Cabin, Osawatomie, Kansas Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky Battle of New Orleans site, New Orleans, Louisiana Birthplace of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Albion, Maine Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland Massachusetts Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Battle of Bunker Hill site, Charlestown, Massachusetts Fort Brady, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan Rock from near the Kensington Runestone, Minnesota Shirley House, Vicksburg battlefield site, Mississippi Mark Twain Cave, Hannibal, Missouri Battle of the Little Bighorn site, Montana Chimney Rock National Historic Site, Nebraska Washoe County Courthouse, Reno, Nevada Fort William and Mary, Portsmouth, New Hampshire