Tribune Tower
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Tribune Tower, Gothic Revival 36-floor office building, located at 435 N. Michigan Ave., in downtown Chicago, which opened in 1925 as headquarters for the Chicago Tribune.
In 1922, on the occasion of its 75th anniversary, the newspaper announced an international competition for a new downtown headquarters. The competition sought “for Chicago, the most beautiful building in the world,” and it offered $100,000 in prize money, $50,000 to the winner. Although the competition attracted more than 260 entries from 23 countries, most of the designs emanated from the U.S. and Europe. Most American entries understood the profitability of the site and maximized the amount of rentable office space in their designs. Many of the European entries, however, sacrificed business practicality for a more monumental form. Austrian architect Adolf Loos, for example, proposed a giant Doric column, which may have been a pun on the columns printed in the newspaper. Italian architect Saverio Dioguardi proposed a large classical arch resembling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. However, the winning entry—designed by New York architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells—filled the permitted occupiable building envelope with floor after floor of office space within a structural steel frame.
Hood and Howells’ winning Gothic Revival tower used architectural ideas borrowed from the past. The lower office block is sheathed in Indiana limestone with vertical piers and horizontal spandrels characteristic of Art Deco; embedded in its walls are stones from historic monuments and battlefields from around the world—including Bunker Hill, Omaha Beach, Westminster Abbey, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Forbidden City, and the Kremlin. The building’s crown recalls a Medieval European tower, imitating the Butter Tower of the 13th-century Rouen Cathedral in France. Inside, visitors encounter a Hall of Inscriptions. Carved into the lobby walls are quotations from Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, praising and exalting freedom of the press.
While some critics had hoped the winning design would point toward the future of American architecture, Hood and Howells’ design appealed to the newspaper owners’ sense of nostalgia, history, and moral purpose. The architects even inserted some playful elements into the design, including, at the center of the building’s three-story entry arch, carved stone depictions of Robin Hood and a baying dog, punning visually on their last names. The Tribune Tower is one of four towers, along with the Wrigley Building and two buildings across the Chicago River, that frame the Michigan Avenue Bridge, all built in the 1920s and considered to be among the most iconic and important architectural compositions in the downtown area.