Willis Tower

Breakdown of the bundled tube structure of Willis Tower with simplified floor plans

In 1969, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees.[9] Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop. Sears asked its outside counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow (now known as Arnstein & Lehr, LLP) to suggest a location. The firm consulted with local and federal authorities and the applicable law, then offered Sears two options: the Goose Island area northwest of downtown, and a two-block area bounded by Franklin Street on the east, Jackson Boulevard on the south, Wacker Drive on the west and Adams Street on the north, with Quincy Street running through the middle from east to west.

After selection of the latter site, permits to vacate Quincy Street were obtained.[10] Attorneys from the Arnstein firm, headed by Andrew Adsit, began buying the properties parcel by parcel.[11] Sears purchased 15 old buildings from 100 owners and paid $2.7 million to the City of Chicago for the portion of Quincy Street the project absorbed.[12]

Sears, which needed 3 million square feet (280,000 m²) of office space for its planned consolidation and predicted growth, commissioned architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Their team of Colombian-Peruvian architect Bruce Graham and Bangladeshi-Pakistani structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes" (each essentially a separate building), clustered in a 3×3 matrix forming a square base with 225-foot (69 m) sides.[13] All nine tubes would rise up to the 50th floor of the building, where the northwest and southeast tubes terminate. The northeast and southwest tubes reach the 66th floor; the north, east, and south tubes end at the 90th. The remaining west and center tubes reach 108 floors.

The Sears Tower during its construction, in 1973

The Sears Tower was the first building to use this innovative design. It was both structurally efficient and economic: at 1,450 feet, it provided more space and rose higher than the Empire State Building and cost much less per unit area.[14] The system would prove highly influential in skyscraper construction and has been used in most supertall buildings since, including the world's current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.[15][16] To honor Khan's contributions, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois commissioned a sculpture of him[17] for the lobby of the Willis Tower.

A sculpture honoring Fazlur Khan at the Willis Tower

Sears decided to focus their initial occupancy on housing their merchandise group, renting out the remaining space to other tenants until needed. The latter floor areas had to be designed to a smaller footprint with a high window-space to floor-space ratio to be attractive to prospective lessees. Smaller floorplates required a taller structure to yield sufficient square footage. Skidmore architects proposed a tower with large, 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m²) floors in the lower part of the building with gradually tapered floorplates in a series of setbacks, which would give the tower its distinctive look.

As Sears continued to offer optimistic projections for growth, the tower's proposed floor count increased rapidly into the low hundreds, surpassing the height of New York's unfinished World Trade Center to become the world's tallest building. The height was restricted by a limit imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to protect air traffic. The financing of the tower was provided by Sears. It was topped with two antennas for television and radio broadcasting. Sears and the City of Chicago approved the design and the first steel was put in place in April 1971. The structure was completed in May 1973. The construction cost about US$150 million,[18] equivalent to $860 million in 2020 dollars.[19] By comparison, Taipei 101, built in 2004, cost the equivalent of US$2.21 billion in 2018 dollars.[20]

Black bands appear on the tower around the 29th–32nd, 64th–65th, 88th–89th, and 104th–108th floors. These elements are louvres to ventilate the building's environmental support systems and obscure its belted trusses. Even though regulations did not require a fire sprinkler system, the building was equipped with one from the beginning. There are around 40,000 sprinkler heads in the building, installed at a cost of $4 million.[21]

In February 1982, two television antennas were added to the structure, increasing its total height to 1,707 feet (520.3 m). The western antenna was later extended, bringing the overall height to 1,729 feet (527 m)[2] on June 5, 2000, to improve reception of local NBC station WMAQ-TV.

As the construction of the building neared the 50th floor, lawsuits for an injunction were filed seeking to stop the building from exceeding 67 floors. The suits alleged that above that point television reception would deteriorate and cause property values to plummet. The first suit was filed by the state attorney in neighboring Lake County on March 17, 1972. A second suit was filed on March 28 in Cook County Circuit Court by the villages of Skokie, Northbrook, and Deerfield, Illinois.[22]

Sears filed motions to dismiss the Lake and Cook County lawsuits and on May 17, 1972, Judge LaVerne Dickson, Chief of the Lake County Circuit Court, dismissed the suit, saying, "I find nothing that gives television viewers the right to reception without interference. They will have to find some other means of ensuring reception such as taller antennas."[23] The Lake County state's attorney filed a notice of appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, which ultimately decided in favor of Sears.[24] In his decision on June 12, Judge Charles R. Barrett contended the plaintiffs did not have a right to undistorted television reception.[25]

Meanwhile, the Illinois Citizens' Committee for Broadcasting requested the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) halt construction so the building would not interfere with television reception. On May 26, 1972, the Commission declined to take action on the grounds it did not have jurisdiction.

On June 30, 1972, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the previous rulings by Lake and Cook County Circuit Courts, by a letter order with a written opinion to follow.[26] On September 8, 1972, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the FCC decision.[27] The court's written opinion was filed on September 20, 1972. In affirming the lower court rulings, it held that "absent legislation to the contrary, defendant has a proprietary right to construct a building to its desired height and that completion of the project would not constitute a nuisance under the circumstances of this case." [28]

Willis Tower at dusk, seen from the Loop

Willis Tower from across the Chicago River

Sears' optimistic growth projections were not realized. Competition beyond its traditional rivals such as Montgomery Ward arose from emerging retail giants including Kmart, Kohl's, and Walmart. As a result of a surplus of office space that emerged in the 1980s, the tower did not draw as many tenants as projected and so stood half-vacant for a decade.

In 1984, Sears decided to improve the appeal of the lower floors of the tower to pedestrians. Their solution resulted in the addition of a new entryway dubbed by many as the "Lunchbox Entrance."

Sears looked into selling the Sears Tower in the late 1980s. In July 1990, with no potential buyer apparent, Sears took out a mortgage loan on the tower for $850 million from MetLife and AEW Capital Management, with Metlife as the holder of the mortgage note. This loan would mature in 2005.[29]

In 1990, the law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate decided to move into a development that would become 77 West Wacker Drive, rebuffing Sears' attempts to entice the firm to stay.[30] Just two years later, Sears began a move of its own offices out of the building to a new campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which was completed in 1995.[29]

As the maturation of the mortgage approached, Sears renegotiated the loan in 1994. The negotiations resulted in an agreement where Sears would no longer be liable for the $850 million loan, although it would only nominally own the building, while AEW and Metlife effectively had total control. As part of the 1994 agreement, AEW and Metlife would be able to take official ownership of the building in 2003.[29]

However, in 1997, Toronto-based TrizecHahn Corporation, (at the time the lessee of the CN Tower), purchased AEW's holdings in the building for $110 million, assuming $4 million in liabilities and a $734 million mortgage.[31][32]

Trizec projected that the Sears Tower would quickly reach a value of $1 billion. These projections were not met, with the tower facing the same vacancy and other problems it saw under Sears, although Trizec made somewhat successful efforts to attract new tenants. Following the September 11 attacks, two of the largest tenants, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, immediately announced plans for vacating 300,000 ft² of space. In 2003, Trizec sold its holdings of the tower to MetLife for $9 million.[33]

In 2004, MetLife sold the building to a group of investors including New York-based Joseph Chetrit, Joseph Moinian, Lloyd Goldman, Joseph Cayre and Jeffrey Feil, and Skokie, Illinois-based American Landmark Properties.[34] The quoted price was $840 million, with $825 million held in a mortgage.[35]

In June 2006, seven men were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting to destroy the tower. Deputy FBI Director John Pistole described their plot as "more aspirational than operational".[36][37] The case went to court in October 2007.[38] After three trials, five of the suspects were convicted and two acquitted.[39] The alleged leader of the group, Narseal Batiste, was sentenced to 13½ years in prison.[40] In response to the perceived threat of an attack, the building's largest tenant at this time, Ernst & Young, moved to North Wacker Drive in early 2009.[41]

Since 2007, the owners had considered plans for the construction of a hotel on the north side of Jackson Boulevard, between Wacker Drive and Franklin Street, close to the entrance of the observation deck, above the tower’s underground parking garage. According to the tower’s owners, the second building was considered in the original design. The plan was eventually cancelled as city zoning did not permit construction of a such a tall building in that location.[42]

In February 2009, the owners announced they were considering a plan to paint the structure silver, an idea that was later abandoned. It was hoped that a new, silver, paint-job would "rebrand" the building and highlight its advances in energy efficiency for an estimated cost of $50 million.[43]

Although Sears' naming rights expired in 2003, the building continued to be called the Sears Tower for several years, despite multiple changes in ownership. In March 2009, London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings agreed to lease a portion of the building and obtained the naming rights.[44] On July 16, 2009, the building was officially renamed Willis Tower.[45] On August 13, 2012, United Airlines announced it would move its corporate headquarters from 77 West Wacker Drive to Willis Tower.[6]

In 2015, the Blackstone Group purchased the tower for a reported $1.3 billion, the highest price ever paid for a U.S. property outside of New York City.[46] In 2017, Blackstone announced a $500 million "facelift" for the property which would include the construction of a six-story commercial complex in the tower's plaza area.[47]

On May 25, 1981, Dan Goodwin, wearing a homemade Spider-Man suit while using suction cups, camming devices, and sky hooks, and despite several attempts by the Chicago Fire Department to stop him, made the first successful outside ascent of the tower. Goodwin was arrested at the top after the seven-hour climb and was later charged with trespassing. Goodwin stated that the reason he made the climb was to call attention to shortcomings in high-rise rescue and firefighting techniques. After a lengthy interrogation by Chicago's District Attorney and Fire Commissioner, Goodwin was officially released from jail.[55][56][57]

In August 1999, French urban climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using only his bare hands and bare feet, scaled the building's exterior glass and steel wall all the way to the top. A thick fog settled in near the end of his climb, making the last 20 stories of the building's glass and steel exterior slippery.[58]

NOAA Weather Radio station KWO39 transmits off the tower at 162.550 MHz. Programmed by the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Chicago, it is equipped with Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), which sets off a siren on specially-programmed weather radios to alert of an impending hazard.

The building has appeared in numerous films and television shows set in Chicago such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where Ferris and company visit the observation deck.[78] Late Night with Conan O'Brien introduced a character called The Sears Tower Dressed In Sears Clothing when the show visited Chicago in 2006.[79] The building is also featured in History Channel's Life After People, in which it and other human-made landmarks suffer from neglect without humans around, collapsing two hundred years after people are gone.[80] In an episode of the television series Monk, Adrian Monk tries to conquer his fear of heights by imagining that he is on top of the tower. In an episode of Kenan and Kel, Kenan Rockmore and Kel Kimble decide to climb to the top of the tower so Kenan can declare his love for a girl, but they end up getting stuck on a window washer's platform 110 stories up.

The Chicago Franchise frequently features locations where the tower is visible in the distance.

In the movie Category 6: Day of Destruction, it is damaged by a tornado.

In "1969", a Season 2 episode of the science-fiction series Stargate SG-1, the SG-1 team accidentally travels back in time to the titular year. At one point the team travels through Chicago and the tower is shown (erroneously, since construction did not begin on the tower until two years later in 1971).

In the 2004 film I, Robot, the tower is shown updated in the year 2035 with new triangular antennas. It is portrayed as having its height surpassed by the fictional USR (United States Robotics) Building.

In the 2008 film The Dark Knight, it is part of Gotham City.

In the 2011 film Transformers: Dark of the Moon, it is featured in a number of scenes. The most notable one is when the N.E.S.T team tries to enter the city using V-22 Osprey helicopters. They use Willis Tower for cover before using wing suits to descend into the city streets.

In the 2013 film Man of Steel, the tower is the location of the offices of the Daily Planet.[81]

In the 2014 film Divergent, it is shown abandoned and decayed in a future Chicago.

In the 2015 film Jupiter Ascending, the tower is featured prominently as the place where Caine and Jupiter await a spaceship to lift them off the planet.

In the 2018 film Rampage, the Energyne corporation is headquartered in the building and uses the tower's antenna to broadcast an echolocation signal that would attract three mutated monsters. After the antenna is destroyed, the entire building collapses to the ground due to being heavily damaged by a giant mutated ape.

In the 2019 film Captive State, which takes place a decade after an extraterrestrial race has taken over the Earth in an alien invasion, the aliens in Chicago have replaced the tower's antennas with their own jamming device to shut down all digital communication worldwide. The modified tower was also featured on one of the film's posters.[82]

Older versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator would begin with the player on the runway of Meigs Field, facing a virtual version of the tower.

In Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois, the tower is referenced in the track "Seer's Tower."

In the 1987 VHS video game Captain Power set in 2147, you can fly around the tower which is at that time called "The Tower of the Seer".