#mather tower

Doors, Gates and Windows (No. 70)

Medinah Temple, Chicago (five pics)

Mather Tower, Chicago

River Point, Chicago

McGraw–Hill Building, Chicago

Crain Communications Building, Chicago

Clouds (No. 443)

London Guarantee Building, Chicago (four pics)

Mather Tower, Chicago

Mather Tower (later Lincoln Tower, as designated on the Michigan–Wacker Historic District roster; now identified primarily by its address) is a Neo-Gothic, terra cotta-clad high-rise structure in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located at 75 East Wacker Drive in the downtown "loop" area, adjacent to the Chicago River.

The 521-foot-high building is sometimes called "The Inverted Spyglass" by Chicagoans due to its highly unusual design, an 18-story octagonal tower atop a more conventional 24-story rectangular "box." Briefly the tallest building in Chicago at the time of its completion in 1928, it remains the city's most slender high-rise structure at only 100 by 65 feet at its base. The interior space within the upper octagonal spire contains the least square footage per floor of any Chicago skyscraper.

It was designed by Herbert Hugh Riddle (1875–1939), the architect of the Chicago Theological Seminary, as headquarters for the Mather Stock Car Company, a builder of rail cars for transporting livestock. Its design was greatly influenced by the pioneering Chicago Zoning Ordinance of 1923, which placed no limit on the height of new buildings as long as the surface area of the structure's uppermost floor did not exceed 25% of its footprint. This resulted in a multitude of tall, slender, "setback" towers, of which the Mather is an extreme and unusual example. The top floor of the octagonal spire has only 280 square feet (26 m2) of floor space.

Mather Company's founder, Alonzo Mather (a descendant of Cotton Mather) is said to be responsible for a number of the building's distinctive design features, including the octagonal tower. Initial plans called for construction of a second, identical building on North Michigan Avenue, behind the Mather and connected to it by a ground-floor arcade, but onset of the Great Depression in 1929 forced its cancellation.

By the 1990s the building had fallen into significant disrepair. In 2000 the 4-story "cupola" at the top of the building was demolished because of structural deterioration and safety concerns, after chunks of terra cotta began falling from the facade. Damage was sufficiently extensive that consideration was given to dismantling the remaining 17 stories of the octagonal spire as well.

In 2000 Masterworks Development Corporation purchased the structure and undertook a complete restoration. In November 2002, the final phase of the project was initiated when a helicopter lifted the steel framework for a new cupola from a river barge to the top of the tower.

The lower, rectangular portion of the building currently houses the River Hotel, while the octagonal upper stories are occupied by a branch of the Club Quarters chain of membership corporate accommodations.

Mather Tower was designated a Chicago Historic Landmark in 2001, and in 2006 it received a National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Wacker Drive, Chicago (No. 7)

Some believe the origin of the term Loop is derived from the cable car, and especially those of two lines that shared a loop, constructed in 1882, bounded by Van Buren, Wabash, Wells, and Lake. Other research has concluded that "the Loop" was not used as a proper noun until after the 1895–97 construction of the Union elevated railway loop.

In what is now the Loop, on the south bank of the Chicago River near today's Michigan Avenue Bridge, the United States Army erected Fort Dearborn in 1803, the first settlement in the area sponsored by the United States. When Chicago was initially platted in 1830 by the surveyor James Thompson, it included what is now the Loop north of Madison Street and west of State Street. The Sauganash Hotel, the first hotel in Chicago, was built in 1831 near Wolf Point at what is now the northwestern corner of the Loop. When Cook County was incorporated in 1831, the first meeting of its government was held at Fort Dearborn with two representatives from Chicago and one from Naperville. Except for the Fort Dearborn reservation (which wouldn't become part of the city until 1839) and land reclaimed from Lake Michigan, the entirety of what is now the Loop was part of the Town of Chicago when it was initially incorporated in 1833.

The area was bustling by the end of the 1830s.Lake Street started to be a center for retail at that time, until it was eclipsed by State Street in the 1850s.

By 1948 an estimated one million people came to and went from the Loop each day. Afterwards, suburbanization caused a decrease in the area's importance. Starting in the 1960s, however, the presence of an upscale shopping district caused the area's fortunes to increase. 

The Loop's population has boomed in recent years. 

Pure Chicago