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Bank of America Plaza (Chicago)

2003 establishments in IllinoisOffice buildings completed in 2003Skyscraper office buildings in Chicago
540 West Madison Street
540 West Madison Street

540 West Madison, formerly known as ABN AMRO Plaza, is an office building located in the West Loop area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The building was built for ABN AMRO, parent company of Chicago financial institution LaSalle Bank. To the east sits Citicorp Center building and to the south, residential-complex of Presidential Towers. In the base of the building, there is a Starbucks Coffee and a restaurant bar, Slightly Toasted. The building is anchored by West Madison Street, West Washington Street, North Jefferson Street and North Clinton streets. It was completed in 2003. The building has a total of 29 floors that span 453 feet. Cost are estimated to have been near $387 million (US). It took approximately 3 years to erect. The goal was to bring together all office workers in Chicago who comprised the staff of the five buildings the company occupied previous to the construction of the Plaza. When the building was acquired by Bank of America as part of the company's acquisition of LaSalle Bank from ABN AMRO in the spring of 2008, the green and yellow shield icon was removed from the building's top. In December 2012, Bank of America sold the building to a group of New York investors for $350 million. It was the largest office transaction in Chicago that year, both in price and cost per square foot.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Bank of America Plaza (Chicago) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Bank of America Plaza (Chicago)
West Madison Street, Chicago Near West Side

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N 41.8826 ° E -87.6416 °
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West Madison Street 540
60661 Chicago, Near West Side
Illinois, United States
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540 West Madison Street
540 West Madison Street
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Batcolumn

Batcolumn (or Bat Column) is a 101-foot-tall (31 m) outdoor sculpture in Chicago. Designed by Claes Oldenburg, it takes the shape of a baseball bat standing on its knob. It consists of gray-painted Corten steel arranged into an open latticework structure. Batcolumn stands outside the Harold Washington Social Security Administration Building at 600 West Madison Street near downtown Chicago. The United States General Services Administration commissioned the sculpture, which was dedicated in 1977. Oldenburg originally designed the sculpture to be painted red, but he abandoned that idea to distinguish it from Chicago's Flamingo sculpture by Alexander Calder. Oldenburg instead had Batcolumn painted gray, which he also hoped would make the sculpture easier to see against the sky. A plaque on the sculpture reads, "Oldenburg selected the baseball bat as an emblem of Chicago's ambition and vigor. The sculpture's verticality echoes the city's dramatic skyline, while its form and scale cleverly allude to more traditional civic monuments, such as obelisks and memorial columns."The sculpture has been a source of controversy. On the day of its dedication, a number of people came to protest, holding signs saying "Tear it down" and "Expensive joke". However, Batcolumn has also had its defenders. A 2005 Chicago Tribune article named it one of the newspaper's favorite Chicago sculptures (along with Standing Lincoln and the lions outside the Art Institute of Chicago Building).

Riverside Plaza (Chicago)
Riverside Plaza (Chicago)

The Riverside Plaza is considered one of Chicago's finest Art Deco buildings. It was originally known as the Chicago Daily News Building. At the time of its completion in 1929, the Daily News was one of the dominant newspapers in Chicago. The 26-story building helped revitalize the Chicago River and made innovations in engineering and urban design. In the 1920s, the buildings along the river were industrial in nature and butted up against a waterway that was polluted and considered undesirable. This building was the first to develop the Chicago riverfront aesthetically as well as commercially. It was the first American skyscraper with an open-air plaza as part of its design.In 1925, Walter A. Strong acquired the Chicago Daily News from the estate of Victor F. Lawson. Once he became publisher, Strong took immediate steps to build a modern newspaper facility. Lawson had owned a parcel along the river, which is now the site of the Chicago Opera House. Strong thought it too small and instead acquired the air rights over railroad tracks that ran along west side of the river opposite the original site. A year and one-half of meetings were required to reach an agreement between all parties. Once that was settled, Strong sold Lawson’s parcel to the utility magnate Samuel Insull, with the understanding that he construct a building that would include a new home for the Opera. Strong commissioned Holabird & Root to design a modern structure that would house 2,000 Daily News employees and provide studio space for his radio station, WMAQ. The building’s bold design and Art Deco façade were widely regarded as shot fired at the Chicago Tribune, which operated out of the Tribune Tower, a large Neo Gothic building on North Michigan Avenue completed in 1925. Inside, the building featured a much-admired mural by John W. Norton. It was dominated by diagonal lines, and divided into three sections: Gathering the News, Printing the News, & Transporting the News. In the fall of 1993, it was removed and put into storage, where it has remained. Outside, it had bas-reliefs depicting Benjamin Franklin, Charles Anderson Dana, Horace Greeley, Joseph Pulitzer, Samuel Bowles III, James Gordon Bennett and Joseph Medill and a fountain honoring Victor Lawson. The Chicago Daily News Building was completed in June 1929 at a cost of $8 million. During the dedication ceremony, President Herbert Hoover pressed a button that started the presses. The Daily News ceased publication in 1978. Although the building has since been renamed Riverside Plaza, according to the Tribune’s architecture critic, the Daily News Building remains, “one of Chicago's finest examples of Art Deco architecture and a path-breaking work of engineering and urban design.”A ramped concourse through the south side of this building now serves as the main entryway to the Ogilvie Transportation Center in Citigroup Center. This concourse was originally the main lobby, with an even floor in place of the ramp up to the bridge at Canal Street.