James R. Thompson Center
- Architect
- Helmut Jahn
- Year
- 1985
- City
- Chicago, IL
The James R. Thompson Center -- originally the State of Illinois Center -- is a postmodern office building at 100 W. Randolph Street designed by Helmut Jahn around a dramatic glass rotunda. Governor James R. Thompson allocated funding for the building in 1978 and selected Jahn as architect in 1980; it opened in 1985, after delays and a construction accident that killed five workers, to consolidate Illinois state offices that had been scattered as far as 160 N. LaSalle Street. It was renamed for Thompson in 1993.
the building
The rotunda. Jahn organized the entire building around a soaring postmodernist rotunda that opens up the full block bounded by Randolph, Lake, Clark, and LaSalle streets, turning what could have been an ordinary office block into one enormous shared atrium.
the style
Jahn designed the building as a work of postmodern architecture, wrapping government offices around an oversized rotunda instead of a conventional lobby -- a deliberately theatrical departure from the corporate towers around it in the Loop.
the architect
Helmut Jahn was selected as architect in 1980 after Governor James R. Thompson allocated funding for the project in 1978; the Thompson Center, opened in 1985, became one of Jahn's most prominent and most debated Chicago designs.
significance
By the 2000s the building was considered functionally outdated, and three successive Illinois governors proposed redeveloping or selling it. Preservationists objected to the sale proposals and tried, unsuccessfully, to have it added to the National Register of Historic Places; it is now being redeveloped as the Thompson Center.
nearby
- Randolph Tower
- LaSalle-Wacker Building
- Trustees System Service Building
- City Hall-County Building
- 77 West Wacker Drive
- Daley Center