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Merchandise
Mart - 1935
Copyright
2005 David R. Phillps
When opened in 1930, the Merchandise Mart or the Mart,
located in the Near North Side, Chicago, Illinois, was
the largest building in the world with 4,000,000 square
feet (372,000 m2) of floor space. Previously owned by
the Marshall Field family, the Mart centralized
Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating
vendors and trade under a single roof. Massive in its
construction, and serving as a monument to early 20th
century merchandising and architecture, the art deco
landmark anchors the daytime skyline at the junction of
the Chicago River branches. With upper levels bathed in
colored floodlight, the structure stands out against
darker downtown buildings in night views. The building
continues to be a leading retailing and wholesale
destination, hosting 20,000 visitors and tenants per
day.
History
The Chicago Merchandise Mart In 1926, a westward
extension of double-deck Wacker Drive increased
development on the south riverbank. In 1927, Marshall
Field and Company announced its plans to build on the
north bank opposite Wacker Drive. Owned by Marshall
Field & Co., the Merchandise Mart opened on May 5, 1930,
just east of Chicago's original trading post, Wolf
Point. Bordered by Orleans, Wells and Kinzie Streets,
the site was a former Native American trading post and
the site of Chicago and North Western Railway's former
Wells Street Station, abandoned in 1911 in favor of the
Chicago and North Western Passenger Terminal. With the
railroad's air rights, the site was large enough to
accommodate "the largest building in the world".
Removing the train yard supported the Chicago Plan
Commission's desire to develop and beautify the
riverfront. The building realized Marshall Field’s dream
of a single wholesale center for the entire nation and
consolidated 13 different warehouses. Later managed by
Sargent Shriver, the building was owned for more than 50
years by the Kennedy family through Merchandise Mart
Properties, Inc. until 1998, when MMPI was acquired by
Vornado Realty Trust for $450 million in cash and a
$100-million-plus stake in Vornado. In early 2007, the
building was valued at $917 million.
Building
The Merchandise Mart was designed by the Chicago
architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White
to be a "city within a city". Second only to Holabird
& Root in Chicago art deco architecture, the firm had a
long-standing relationship with the Field family.
Started in 1928, completed in 1931, and built in the
same art deco style as the Chicago Board of Trade
Building, its cost was reported as both $32 million and
$38 million. The building was the largest in the world
in terms of floorspace, but was surpassed by The
Pentagon in 1943, and now stands twenty-fifth on the
list of largest buildings in the world. Once the largest
commercial space in the world, the Aalsmeer Flower
Auction is now recognized by Guinness World Records as
holding the record.
Construction James Simpson, president of Marshall Field
and Company from 1923 to 1930 and chairman of the
Chicago Plan Commission from 1926 to 1935, along with
architect Ernest Graham turned the first shovels of dirt
at groundbreaking on August 16, 1928. General contractor
John W. Griffiths & Sons brought building construction
into the machine age through the use of techniques
"ordinarily used in the construction of big dams."
Cement arriving by boat was lifted by compressed air to
bins 75 feet (20 m) above the ground, with gravel and
sand delivered by railroad cars to conveyor belts and
transfer elevators. Giant mixers provided wet concrete
to skip hoists in vertical towers that were extended as
the building rose. Continuously employing 2,500 men and
as many as 5,700 men altogether, the construction
project lasted a year and a half into the early months
of the Great Depression. With a foundation footprint of
nearly two square city blocks, the building required 29
million bricks, 40 miles (64 km) of plumbing, 380 miles
(610 km) of wiring, nearly 4,000,000 cubic yards
(3,100,000 m3) of concrete, 200,000 cubic feet (5,700
m3) of stone, and 4,000 windows. Bethlehem Steel
fabricated much of the 60,000 tons of steel. An
estimated 7.5 miles (10 km) miles of corridors and over
30 elevators were included in the construction.
Architecture Designer Alfred Shaw integrated art deco
stylings with influences from three building types - the
warehouse, the department store and the skyscraper. A
warehouse block stands as the 18-story bulk of the
building. Ribbon piers define the windows, and the
building's chamfered corners, minimal setbacks, and
corner pavilions disguise the edges of the mass and
visually reduce bulk. The south corner pavilions are of
greater height than the north corner pavilions. The
building is open at the pedestrian level with bronzed
framed display windows, typical of a department store,
on the south, west and east boundaries. The 25-story
central tower ascends with a peak in the form of a
skyscraper, and rests in the southern half of the
building. Deeply recessed portals occur between raised
panels, and are adorned with medallions featuring the
interlocked initials of the Merchandise Mart. The same
logo occurs throughout the building. Fifty six American
Indian chiefs circled the tower's crown, a reference to
the site's history and Chicago's early trade activities.
Three and a half feet wide by seven feet tall, the terra
cotta figures were barely visible from the street, meant
to be viewed from the upper floors of the skyscrapers
planned to rise along the riverbank.
The lobby of The Merchandise Mart is defined by eight
square marble piers, with storefronts in side aisles
framed in embossed bronze trim. The green and orange
terrazzo floor was conceived as a carpet: a pattern of
squares and stripes bordered by overscaled chevrons
inlaid with The Mart's initials. The chevron theme is
continued in the column sconces lighting an ornamented
cornice overhead. Referred to as "business boulevards",
two wide 650 feet (200 m) long corridors with terrazzo
floors in the upper levels featured six and one-half
miles of display windows. Building regulations specified
identical entrances along corridors but tenants could
personalize the individual floorspace. Excepting the
corridors, elevator halls, and exhibition space on the
fourth floor, the 5 acres (20,000 m2) of each upper
floor was "raw space" with concrete floors.
Expansions and renovations After years of being used by
hundreds of government offices moving to The Pentagon,
the purchase was followed by a renovation creating
office space on the lower floors and promoting use of
the upper floors for home furnishing and apparel
showrooms. The Merchandise Mart was modernized in the
late 1950s and 1960s. The Indian chiefs were removed,
destroyed and replaced with concrete plates in 1961, of
minimal note to onlookers as skyscrapers did not rise on
the north side of the river as predicted. In 1962, an
entrance canopy was constructed over the south for
vehicle use.
In 1977, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the
Chicago Apparel Center, located on the west side of
Orleans Street, which increased the Merchandise Mart’s
total floor space to 6,200,000 square feet (576,000 m2).
Making use of plazas, esplanades and overlooks employed
the waterfront location for pedestrian pleasure. In
1988, Helmut Jahn designed an enclosed pedestrian
walking bridge over Orleans Street connecting the Mart
and the Apparel Center.
After a 10 year, $100 million modernization in the late
1980s that included public utility upgrades, Beyer
Blinder Belle's commission in 1989 was to create
additional perimeter entrances and restore the display
windows, main entrance and lobby. On the south facade,
the drive-through canopy was removed and two smaller
doorways aside the main entrance were added. Display
windows, painted over during the earlier modernization
campaign, were restored with clear glass to showcase
merchant's wares. New main and corner entrances were
added to the rear facade, and the loading dock that
occupied the north portion of the first floor of the
river level was removed in order to use the bottom deck
of North Bank Drive. Improvements to the lobby included
restoration of the original glass curtain wall over the
entrance, shop fronts and reception desk using terrazzo
floors and wall sconces influenced by the original
design. The project was completed in 1991.
In November 2007, the building received LEED for
Existing Buildings Silver recognition.
Artwork Jules Guerin's frieze of 17 murals is the
primary feature of the lobby and graphically illustrate
commerce throughout the world, including the countries
of origin for items sold in the building. The murals
depict the industries and products, the primary mode of
transportation and the architecture of 14 countries.
Drawing on years as a stage set designer, Guerin
executed the murals in red with gold leaf using
techniques producing distinct image layers in successive
planes. In a panel representing Italy, Venetian
glassware appears in the foreground with fishing boats
moored on the Grand Canal and the facade of the Palazzo
Ducale rises above the towers of the Piazza San Marco.
"To immortalize outstanding American merchants", Joseph
Kennedy in 1953 commissioned eight bronze busts, four
times life size, which would come to be known as the
Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame:
retail magnates Frank Winfield Woolworth, Marshall Field
and Aaron Montgomery Ward Julius Rosenwald and Robert
Elkington Wood of Sears, Roebuck and Company fame
advertiser John Wanamaker, merchandiser Edward Albert
Filene, and A&P grocery chain founder George Huntington
Hartford. All of the busts rest on white pedestals
lining the Chicago River and face north toward the gold
front door of the building.
Surroundings Dominating the skyline in the south end of
the Near North Side, the Mart lies just south of the
gallery district on the southern terminus of Franklin
Street. Eateries and nightclubs abound on Hubbard Street
one block to the north. The Kinzie Chop House, popular
with politicians and celebrities, stands on the
northwest corner of Wells and Kinzie, across from the
Merchandise Mart. The Chicago Varnish Company Building,
listed on the National Register of Historic Places and
now housing Harry Caray's restaurant, is located east on
Kinzie Street. Across the street to the east is 325 N.
Wells Street, home to The Chicago School of Professional
Psychology.
The Mart is not rectangular in shape due to being
constructed after the bascule bridges over the Chicago
River. The control house for the double decked Wells
Street Bridge stands between the lower level and the
southeast corner of the building. The Franklin Street
Bridge stands at the southwest corner of the building,
at the junction of Orleans Street and Franklin Street.
The building slants at the same angle as Franklin
Street, from southeast to northwest along Orleans
Street. One block east of the Merchandise Mart at 350 N.
LaSalle is the Headquarters of Real Time Freight
Services LLC, a software technology leader in the
transportation industry.
Exterior lighting A heritage of lighting the structure
finds the central and corner towers, along with the
columns between each window on the setbacks, bathed
nightly in an upwardly focused white light. Tradition
dictates annual changes to green in mid-March for St.
Patrick's Day and orange during the fall months around
Halloween and Thanksgiving. Prominent events have found
the behemoth lit in pink for Cancer Awareness Month. To
note the 2006 Chicago Bears season, highlighted by
reaching Super Bowl XLI, the building was lit with team
colors, orange floodlights for the setbacks and blue
floodlights for the towers. Red and green lights are
used during the Christmas season. Nighttime lighting on
the Mart typically matches the colors of antenna
lighting on the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center, as
well as the colors used on the top floors of the Aon
Center.
Use / Commerce
A display inside the Merchandise Mart Wholesale
showrooms occupy 50% of the usable floor space, and the
Sultan of Brunei once spent $1.6 million at the Mart to
furnish his entire palace, claiming the location was the
only place where the task could be completed in one
week. Select showrooms are open only to wholesalers,
with others accessible to the general public. Unlike
stores with traditional shelf and rack displays, entire
usable rooms are created, providing consumers an
opportunity to compare form and function between
applications and manufacturers. A portion of the stores
offer items for purchase singly or as a collection,
while others offer design services, preservation,
renovation, or installation. In addition to being a
resource for architects and decorators, the Mart also
has featured award winning designs as selected by the
American Institute of Architects. Catering to suppliers,
on-site firms specialize in providing professional
services for market research projects.
In 1931, Marshall Field and Company lost five million
dollars, followed by eight million in 1932. The
wholesale division was greatly reduced and Field's
reduced its space in the Mart from four floors to one
and half. The Mart continued to display the latest
trends in home furnishings within the showrooms and
trade shows. The company recovered late in the decade,
but did not return to all previously occupied space.
In 1942, L.L. Skaggs formed a partnership with three
other men and named the partnership the Owners Service
Company, hence Osco. The headquarters was moved from
Waterloo, Iowa to the Merchandise Mart.
A retail shopping area, opened in 1991 and named The
Shops at the Mart, includes apparel shops, beauty
services, bookstores and newsstands, financial services,
telecommunication services, travel services, specialty
food and wine stores, photo services, a dry cleaner,
shoe shine stand, and a food court. A United States
Postal Service office is located on the first floor and
a FedEx location is located on the second floor.
The Apparel Center houses the 530 room Chicago Mart
Plaza Hotel, the offices of the Chicago Sun-Times and
the Chicago campus of the Illinois Institute of Art, as
well as the Chicago office of the Ogilvy & Mather
advertising agency. American Intercontinental University
occupies 93,000 square feet (8,600 m2) on the 5th floor
of Merchandise Mart, the Potbelly Sandwich Works'
corporate offices are located in the tower.
Trade Fairs NeoCon redirects here. Neocon may also refer
to Neoconservatism. Since 1969, the Merchandise Mart has
been home to the annual National Exposition of Contract
Furnishings, known as NeoCon. With over 1,000 exhibitors
of contract and commercial furnishings, and 50,000
attendees, it is the largest trade show of its kind in
North America.
Since 2006 the Merchandise Mart has played host to the
Art Chicago international art fair.
Chicago Merchandise
Mart Historical Pictures ∙ Professional Art Photographs ∙ Historical Chicago
Photographs ∙ Old Chicago Pictures ∙ Black and White Pictures of Chicago ∙
Historic Chicago Snapshots ∙ Chicago Art Dealer ∙ Old Chicago Photos ∙
Historical Chicago Pictures ∙ Marvelous Photographs of Chicago ∙ Chicago
Historical Pictures ∙ Historical Chicago Images ∙ Vintage Chicago Photographs ∙
1930s Photographs of Chicago ∙ Vintage Chicago Photographs ∙ Downtown Chicago
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