No one cares.

Not gonna lie, I sometimes say 'renders' because I know it irritates you. People aren't gonna stop making the mistake. We all know what he's talking about so its best to just say "Thanks for the renders" and call it a day. This is the internet after all. Nobody came for a grammar lecture ;)

Guess I'm just gonna shoot myself then. There's no hope

Got to see the lobby during OHC. It's quite stunning!

https://i.imgur.com/r4QbqxS.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uIjVnXI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bvCGohC.jpg

Raw space under construction behind the lobby. You can see some of the iron structure exposed. Sorry about the glare!
https://i.imgur.com/njLnM19.jpg

Tremendous shots!

Stunning! What a amazing gem. Hope this reno keeps the OPO going for another century. Thanks for the pictures!

Buildings like OPO or merch mart should be around for many more centuries. I would hope this renovation lasts longer than 100 years given how much nicer the infrastructure we build in 2018 is than it was in 1918...

Does anyone know how MM and OPO compare to ESB in terms of SF? Which building is the largest Art Deco building?

I believe

The Mart - 4 mill sf
Old Main - 2.8 mil sf
ESB - 2.5 mill sf

Merch Mart was the largest building on Earth by square footage until the construction of the Pentagon more than a decade later. It remained the largest privately owned building on Earth for a couple of decades...

It is a giant building, like I said earlier, a true pyramid of our age. It has almost as much SF as the Sears tower (which, as I have said before, remains the largest supertall by floor area by a significant margin).

MM is also interesting from the perspective of it's commercial success, for such an immense structure it has been pretty much fully utilized, sought after space since the day it was built.

I recall hearing that the Mart accounted for something like 10% of the total office space in central Chicago when it first opened in 1930. Not sure if this is accurate, but it sounds like it could be believable. Anyone else hear this as well?

I drove under this beauty heading west at dusk tonight and the 5th floor tenant space was lit up like a Christmas tree! Thanks to the massive plate glass windows, you can clearly see all the unique LED fixtures spanning the length of the building. After 20+ years of a dark monolith, seeing it come to life has nearly brought a tear to my eye. I cannot wait for them to complete the additional floors.

It's interesting that the Aon Center is also the 4rd largest office building by floor area in the world just behind the Mart. 3 of the top 4 largest office building by floor area in the world are in Chicago. I wonder why Chicago built all these mega huge single office buildings? It seems like it would be very difficult to fill up that much space when they were built. I'm still curious to see how the Post Office will fill up, although I hope it does since it's an awesome building, and is looking good already with the renovation.

Well... this city used to follow Burnham's spirit in making no small plans. Not saying we are completely straying from his light, but we definitely used to swing for the fences much more

Most of these record-setting buildings were built for industries where Chicago absolutely dominated. Take the OPO for example. Chicago was the king of logistics just before the industry got mechanized. The OPO wasn't an office building, it was a mail sorting facility, and not just for Chicago but for the whole US since long-distance mail flowed by rail at the time. (In most cities you will find the grand old post office next to the train station).

The architects planned for mail volume to grow in the future (which did continue to grow steadily until 2001) but they did not foresee how the USPS would virtually abandon rail and switch to trucking, nor did they foresee the mechanization that would allow more mail to be sorted in less space with fewer workers.

Today there is
A) less mail flowing through Chicago, since the interstate system does not bottleneck at Chicago like the railroads did
B) less mail flowing through Chicago, since the USPS is back down to 1980 levels of mail volume and sinking fast
C) the mail handling that does take place is mostly in the suburbs, where USPS has large facilities close to interstate highways.

Well yes I know the Post Office was originally a big Post Office. I was referring to the Sears, Merchandise Mart, and Aon Center that are in the top 5 largest offices buildings in the world. For the Sears I understand that it was just sheer hubris and make no little plans type of thing. Why was the Aon Center so big? I'm saying lots of other cities have big industries and companies as well, but yet 3 of the top 5 largest offices buildings in the world are in Chicago.

The Mart wasn't originally primarily an office building, and I was always under the understanding that it didn't do well when it opened, which was why Marshall Field sold it for half the cost of construction to the Kennedy's just fifteen years later. Am I incorrect?

Yes, most buildings of this scale suffered immediately after construction. The WTC was massively vacant for a decade after construction despite being a massively subsidized office project offering below market rents.

Merch Mart was, as the name implies, intended to be a giant wholesale market with a pseudo warehouse component to it. That wasn't the best business to deliver a few million feet to in 1930 which I suspect has a lot more to do with Merch Marts early struggles than anything else. The building quickly filled up as the economy recovered in the post war boom years.

Given how successful it has been recently I think it's high time for a full exterior restoration. As beautiful as it is the building suffers from a lot of cracked limestone and terra cotta pieces which will only get worse over time if they aren't replaced. They also removed a good deal of original ornamentation including the Indian chief heads that originally graced the upper floors. A complete restoration would only serve to jack the value of the building up even more.

It's an artifact of two things: one being the structural layout of the city, two being the economics of the city from 1900-1975. Chicago has a much different layout than similar economic centers like NYC during that period, there was a lot more space here and much larger blocks of it. Combine that with the fact that Chicago was leading the way as a center of new business creation and you had a lot of booming companies growing very quickly with very ambitious plans. Standard Oil (Aon) had just as much hubris as Sears. These were companies that were outright dominant during the early 20th century and they had a need for huge blocks of space and assumed they were king of the world. In Standard Oil's case they at one point in time controlled 88% of the oil market in the United States and had to be dissolved as a monopoly. It shouldn't be surprising that such a company would want to anchor and get naming rights to a gargantuan office building larger than pretty much anything else on earth.

Merch mart is another prime example, you had the preeminent retailer in the world at the time deciding to buy an old railyard and building THE wholesale trading hub of North America. When you are that dominant with that kind of wealth you aren't much concerned with making the very last dollar, you can afford to show off and plow money into a white elephant that will act as a legacy for hundreds of years or more. Given how they built with reinforced concrete in the 1920's and it's warehouse use, Merch Mart is likely the biggest "brick shithouse" in the entire city of Chicago. I have a feeling that might be the only thing left standing in the event of a nuclear attack here. The floor plates are probably like 12" of coffered concrete. If you are a measly meat bag human you can at least rely on something like that far outliving you and your descendants basically until no one remembers who is related to you anymore. That's why I described it as a "true pyramid of our age", its one of the few modern era buildings built to last 1,000 years.

Candy anyone?
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loca...6rYj3OMkGdPV5o