On July 6, 1925, the Tribune opened the doors of Tribune Tower to the public. Perhaps spurred by the paper\u2019s hype of its own building, an estimated 20,000 people showed up, a story reported the next day.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudges and society matrons, folks from out of town, a mother with a couple of perspiring children dragging at her arms, a sister in her heavy black robes, an old fellow who boasted he\u2019d read the Tribune for 35 years, all these and many more packed themselves into the lobby of the tower and swarmed over every one of its 34 floors,\u201d the Tribune reported.<\/p>\n
The newspaper\u2019s earlier headquarters were utilitarian structures, the Tribune recalled, \u201clike the clapboarded two story shanty which stood at the northwest corner of Lake and Clark streets where we were writing and printing the Tribune in one room over neighbor Gray\u2019s grocery store \u2014 seventy five years ago this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Tribune Tower was conceived as a work of art. A totem pole in the form of a skyscraper, its iconography celebrated the greatest newspaper in the fairest city of them all.<\/p>\n
Works of architecture are often said to imply something of value. Like, say: \u201cThe tracing over its windows hints at medieval piety.\u201d Tribune Tower spoke loud and clear. Its pedigree was carved into the Indiana limestone of its cladding.<\/p>\n
The English poet John Milton\u2019s \u201cAreopagitica\u201d was published in 1644. It\u2019s quoted a few feet above the tower\u2019s corner stone: \u201cGive me the liberty to know, to utter and argue freely according to my conscience, above all freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that can not be limited without being lost,\u201d Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1786. That line appears in the tower\u2019s Hall of Inscriptions, along with quotations from Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Euripides and Daniel Webster.<\/p>\n
Col. Robert R. McCormick\u2019s hymn to newspapering was chiseled into a mantel piece on the 24th floor: \u201cThe newspaper is an institution developed by modern civilization to present the news of the day, to foster commerce and industry, to inform and lead public opinion, and to furnish that check upon government which no constitution has ever been able to provide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tribune Tower\u2019s story began in 1922, when management recognized the paper had outgrown its headquarters at Dearborn and Madison streets. The Tribune had won a circulation war with William Randolph Hearst\u2019s Herald-Examiner, gaining 250,000 readers.<\/p>\n
Joseph Patterson, the paper\u2019s other co-owner with McCormick, thought it possible to transform a problem into an opportunity, Katherine Solomonson reports in \u201cThe Chicago Tribune Tower Competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ctc-30990912.jpg\")
The entrance to Tribune Tower and the features of the front exposure are visible to the public in July 1925. The removal of the temporary facade revealed a delicate sculpture, \u201cTree of Life,\u201d over the doorway and also shows the stones taken from historic buildings that are inlaid in the front wall. The building officially opened on July 6, 1925. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)<\/p>\n
Over lunch with McCormick, Patterson suggested a competition for the design of the new office building.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour idea grows on me,\u201d McCormick responded in a memo on January 4, 1922: \u201cIt would surely provoke an enormous amount of comment.\u201d<\/p>\n
On June 10, the contest was announced: \u201cMake for The Tribune a picture of the most beautiful building in the modern world and the prize is won.\u201d<\/p>\n
A full-page ad promised a total of $100,000 in prizes. Entrants were asked to \u201csubmit drawings showing the west and south elevations, and perspective from the southwest.\u201d<\/p>\n
As insurance against the promotion being a dud, the Tribune gave 10 prominent firms $2,000 to enter. McCormick and Patterson needn\u2019t have worried.<\/p>\n
Perhaps because architects didn\u2019t have to provide detailed blueprints and construction specifications, the contest drew more than 263 entries from 23 countries on three continents.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ctc-Tribune-Tower-02_230989810.jpg\")
The stone yard for the construction of Tribune Tower was near Navy Pier in downtown Chicago, circa 1924. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ctc-30990014.jpg\")
The vacant site immediately in front of the Tribune plant at Michigan Avenue is where the new Tribune Tower building is to be erected in 1924. The vacant area comprises 13,500 square feet. To the south and west it overlooks the river and the commercial heart of Chicago; to the north and east it faces the parks and drives and Lake Michigan. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)<\/p>\n
McCormick was famed for his pessimistic conception of international relations. \u201cEither we control the destinies of Europe or Europe controls ours,\u201d McCormick said in a 1917 letter to Edward S. Beck, the paper\u2019s longtime managing editor.<\/p>\n
The tower competition, perhaps not surprisingly, fit into his worldview.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne gratifying result of this world competition has been to establish the superiority of American design,\u201d the contest\u2019s jurors reported. \u201cOnly one foreign design stands out\u201d and \u201cit did not come from France, Italy, or England, the recognized centers of European, but from the little northern nation of Finland.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Finish architect Eliel Sarrinen took second place and won $20,000. His entry missed the August 1 deadline, but the judges decided it was too important to be left out.<\/p>\n
Another distinguished architect, Walther Gropius, the head of Germany\u2019s famed Bauhaus arts school and heralded as a founding father of modern architecture, finished out of the money. <\/p>\n
Another German, Ludwig Hilberseimer, a pioneer of urban planning, drew up a design but didn\u2019t enter it. Perhaps he sensed he was bucking the prevailing cultural winds. After World War II, he taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.<\/p>\n
First place and $50,000 was awarded to the New York firm of Howells and Hood for their Gothic revival design. Third place went to a similar design.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ctc-30990318.jpg\")
The exterior of the Chicago Tribune Tower in the late 1920s. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)<\/p>\n
Accordingly, Tribune Tower became a medieval cathedral draped over a 20th century steel frame. The latter was a Chicago innovation that could reduce a building\u2019s cladding to glass. McCormack spiced his anachronistic melange with bits and pieces of other cultures. Those he could accept in limited doses. He gave his foreign correspondents their marching orders in a memo:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can get stones about six inches square from such buildings as the Law Courts of Dublin, the Parthenon at Athens, St. Sophia Cathedral or any other famous cathedral or palace or ruin\u2013perhaps a piece of one of the pyramids\u2013send them in.\u201d<\/p>\n
His man in London replied that his request for a cannonball from an English castle had been turned down by British officials, \u201cbut we acquired it by the process which, I believe, was known in the war as \u2018winning,’\u201d a euphemism for slipping a guard a few bob to look the other way.<\/p>\n
Another correspondent sent a box of rocks from the Holy Land. \u201cI don\u2019t know what size stone David tossed at Goliath,\u201d he explained, \u201cso I am sending a variety of sizes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether or not those stones mounted in Tribune Tower\u2019s walls are a work of art depends on the eye of the beholder.<\/p>\n
![\"Henry](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ctc-3_230990034.jpg\")
Henry Gast sets a stone from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris into the wall of Tribune Tower in Nathan Hale Court on Sept. 16, 1953, in Chicago. (Thomas Johnson\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
Either way, their arrival in Tribune Square, as the property Tribune acquired in 1916 and 1917 was known, was preceded by the construction of a publishing plant. Constructed in front of the plant, Tribune Tower shifted Chicago\u2019s center of gravity.<\/p>\n
Previously, most commerce and entertainment venues were then south of the Chicago River. But along with the neighboring Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower contributed to the development of the \u201cMagnificent Mile\u201d \u2014 a promotional moniker given the stretch of Michigan Avenue from the river to Oak Street by developer Arthur Rubloff in 1947.<\/p>\n
A 29-story women\u2019s hotel was built in Streeterville, the neighborhood just east of Michigan Avenue, and the Shriners built the 34-story Medinah Athletic Club just north of Tribune Tower in 1929. It is now the Intercontinental Chicago Hotel.<\/p>\n
Over the years, the tower housed branches of Loop luxury-goods retailers, such as Henkel and Best\u2019s lighting fixtures, F.W. Monroe Cigar company, and Fanny May candy shops. Kohler rented half of the tower\u2019s first floor to exhibit its plumbing fixtures.<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ctc-0990244.jpg\")
An aerial view shows the Medinah Athletic Club (now the InterContinental Chicago Hotel), Tribune Tower, Wrigley Building and more, circa 1933. (Chicago Tribune archive)<\/p>\n
In 2018, the Tribune moved out of Tribune Tower, selling it to a developer that converted it into luxury condominiums. And in that form the Tribune Tower will mark its 100th birthday, as it had previous ones, at 435 N. Michigan Ave., thus fulfilling the advice of 19th century British writer and art critic John Ruskin that is preserved in the floor of its lobby.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the Chicago Tribune. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of \u201cGuide to Chicago Neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at grossmanron34@gmail.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: July 6, 2025 at 5:00 AM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 6, 1925, the Tribune opened the doors of Tribune Tower to the public. Perhaps spurred by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,472,5386,1818,1370,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-44472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114808715066660594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}