35 East Wacker Building
- Architect
- Joachim G. Giaver & Frederick P. Dinkelberg
- Year
- 1925
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Chicago, IL
Rising 40 stories and 523 feet at the corner of Wabash Avenue and East Wacker Drive, 35 East Wacker — known as the Jewelers' Building — was built from 1925 to 1927 and co-designed by Joachim Giæver and Frederick P. Dinkelberg. At its 1927 completion it was the tallest building in the world outside New York City, and it's now a Chicago Landmark and a contributing property to the Michigan–Wacker Historic District.
the building
The car lift. For its first 14 years the building had a car lift that carried automobiles up to serve the first 23 floors, letting jewelers park directly outside their offices; it was later converted into ordinary office space.
The rooftop dome. The dome at the top once held architect Helmut Jahn's design showroom, and before that was home to the Stratosphere Club, a restaurant often erroneously said to have been run by a famous gangster.
the style
35 East Wacker was designed in the Neoclassical style, giving the tower's crowning dome and upper stories a monumental finish uncommon among Chicago's jewelry-trade office buildings.
More on Neoclassicalsignificance
Formerly known as the Pure Oil Building and the North American Life Insurance Building, 35 East Wacker was listed as a contributing property to the Michigan–Wacker Historic District in 1978, and designated a Chicago Landmark on February 9, 1994.
nearby
- Virgin Hotels Chicago
- Old Dearborn Bank Building
- Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist
- Chicago Motor Club Building
- Page Brothers Building
- Carbide and Carbon Building