Mixed use · Magnificent Mile
875 North Michigan Avenue
875 N Michigan Avenue, Chicago1969
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill · Modernist
Light study
Noon
12:00
Flat light. Good for comparing materials, less kind to depth.
By day the black aluminum reads as a silhouette even in sun. At dusk the diagonals stay darker than the glass behind them, which is why the tower is still legible after the avenue lights come on.
The study applies a color treatment to the photograph. It is a way of looking, not a measured solar model.
Photo: Spatms · CC BY-SA 4.0 license · source file
The former John Hancock Center — SOM’s tapered, X-braced tower, and still the clearest diagram of structure on the Magnificent Mile.
875 North Michigan Avenue opened in 1969 as the John Hancock Center. Bruce Graham and Fazlur Rahman Khan, at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designed a tapered tube with bold diagonal braces, so the structure that holds the building up is also the thing you see from the sidewalk.
It is mixed use in the full Chicago sense: shops and an entry at the base, offices, residences above, and a public observatory — now 360 CHICAGO — near the top. One hundred stories, 1,128 feet to the roof, antennas higher still. The name changed in 2018; the black X did not.
The night photograph in this collection is the building as most people meet it: a dark truss against a city sky, framed by street trees. Residences the desk can introduce are in the book.
- Opened
- 1969
- Height
- 1,128 ft roof · 100 stories
- Use
- Mixed use
- Architect
- Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
- Engineer
- Fazlur Rahman Khan
- Earlier name
- John Hancock Center
Neighborhood
Streeterville
The tower is the north anchor of the Magnificent Mile and a Streeterville landmark at the same time. Michigan Avenue is retail at its feet; the lake is a ten-minute walk east. The X-brace is visible from the beach, the drive, and most of the near north skyline.
- Magnificent MileAt the door, along Michigan Avenue
- Water TowerA short walk south
- Oak Street BeachEast, toward the lake
Near north · lake to the east
- One Bennett Park
- The St. Regis Chicago
- Aqua Tower
- 860–880 Lake Shore Drive
- 875 North Michigan Avenue
- Marina City
Lake Michigan
875 North Michigan Avenue · Streeterville. Open the building from its pin.
The pin map above is ours. A street map of 875 North Michigan Avenue loads from OpenStreetMap only if you ask for it.
Sources
In the book
Also in the collection
