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Tribune Tower

Architect
Raymond M. Hood and John Mead Howells
Year
1922
Style
Gothic Revival
City
Chicago, IL
Tribune Tower
Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
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Tribune Tower is a 463-foot, 36-floor neo-Gothic skyscraper at 435 N. Michigan Avenue, built for Chicago Tribune owner Robert R. McCormick to replace an earlier Tribune building destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1922, the Tribune marked its 75th anniversary by staging an international design competition, offering $100,000 in prize money; the winning scheme, by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, became one of the defining events in 20th-century American architecture.

the building

The 1922 competition. The Chicago Tribune hosted an international competition for its new headquarters to mark the paper's 75th anniversary, offering $100,000 in prize money. Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells' neo-Gothic design won, and the contest became one of the most consequential events in 20th-century American architecture.

Broadcasting from the tower. WGN Radio (720 kHz) broadcast from Tribune Tower until June 18, 2018, and CNN's Chicago bureau also operated out of the building, alongside the offices of Tribune Media, Tribune Broadcasting, and Tribune Publishing.

From newsroom to condos. The tower was converted to luxury residences beginning in 2018. In 2023 the project won a Driehaus Prize for architectural preservation and adaptive reuse from Landmarks Illinois.

the style

Hood and Howells dressed the tower in neo-Gothic ornament, most famously the flying buttresses that crown its top — a historicist answer to the young skyscraper form that shows how unsettled the vocabulary for tall buildings still was in the early 1920s.

More on Gothic Revival

the architect

Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells won international recognition for their 1922 Tribune Tower design; the competition itself remains one of the most studied events in American architectural history.

significance

Tribune Tower was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 1, 1989, and is a contributing property to the Michigan–Wacker Historic District. Its 2018 conversion to residences won a 2023 Driehaus Prize for architectural preservation and adaptive reuse from Landmarks Illinois.

nearby

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