Consumers Building
- Architect
- Mundie & Jensen
- Year
- 1911
- Style
- Chicago School
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- the chicago school
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The Consumers Building at 220 S. State Street in the Loop is a Chicago School high-rise designed by Jenney, Mundie & Jensen and built for developer Jacob L. Kesner, opening in 1913. Kesner also bought the adjacent 214 S. State Street building specifically to keep a rival skyscraper from ever rising there. Early tenants included the Consumers Company, the Hilton Company clothing store on the corner, Remington Typewriter Company, and film distributors Mutual, Paramount, Pathe, and Universal.
the building
The Winter Garden. A. Weis & Company ran the Winter Garden, an upscale restaurant that spread through the basements of both the Consumers Building and the neighboring 214 S. State Street building Kesner had bought to block competing development.
Rooftop sign. A sixty-foot electric sign on the roof advertised the Consumers Company to the Loop below.
the style
The building is a Chicago School high-rise, part of the commercial-office idiom the Loop is known for.
More on Chicago Schoolthe architect
The firm of record, Jenney, Mundie & Jensen, carried forward the name of William Le Baron Jenney; by the time of the Consumers Building, Mundie & Jensen led the practice.
significance
Now owned by the General Services Administration and vacant, the Consumers Building is a contributing property to the Loop Retail Historic District and an individual Chicago Landmark (L-397, designated April 19, 2025). In 2022 the federal government proposed demolishing it along with the neighboring Century Building, with $52 million earmarked for the teardown.
nearby
- Century Building
- Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse
- Chicago Federal Building
- Monadnock Building
- Kluczynski Federal Building
- Marquette Building