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350 North Orleans

1977 establishments in IllinoisBuildings and structures completed in 1977Kennedy familyModernist architecture in IllinoisSkidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings
Skyscraper hotels in ChicagoSkyscraper office buildings in ChicagoUse mdy dates from August 2016Wholesale markets
Chicago River from Lake Street bridge
Chicago River from Lake Street bridge

350 North Orleans (formerly known as River North Point) is the official name of the 24-floor multipurpose building located in the River North community area of Chicago, at the intersection of the North Branch and the Main Branch of the Chicago River. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In 1988, Helmut Jahn designed an enclosed pedestrian walking bridge over Orleans Street connecting the building to Merchandise Mart. Originally built to serve as the world's largest wholesale buying center for the clothing industry, the building has more commonly known by several other names including River North Point, The Apparel Mart, and the Chicago Apparel Center. The building opened on November 6, 1976.The property was formerly owned by Marshall Field who sold it to Joseph P. Kennedy and the building's grand opening was attended by the entire Kennedy family. The family owned the land upon which the building was constructed for over 50 years. After the building was constructed in 1976, it remained in the family for over 20 years, but was sold to Vornado Realty Trust in 1998 as part of a larger $625 million ($1,039.1 million today) transaction including Merchandise Mart and several other properties. Shorenstein Realty Services purchased the building in 2012 and subsequently sold to The Blackstone Group in 2015.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article 350 North Orleans (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

350 North Orleans
West Wolf Point Plaza, Chicago Near North Side

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Wikipedia: 350 North OrleansContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 41.887726 ° E -87.637263 °
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Address

Wolf Point East

West Wolf Point Plaza 313
60654 Chicago, Near North Side
Illinois, United States
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Chicago River from Lake Street bridge
Chicago River from Lake Street bridge
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Chicago River
Chicago River

The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of 156 miles (251 km) that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). Though not especially long, the river is notable because it is one of the reasons for Chicago's geographic importance: the related Chicago Portage is a link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. The river is also noteworthy for its natural and human-engineered history. In 1887, the Illinois General Assembly decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River through civil engineering by taking water from Lake Michigan and discharging it into the Mississippi River watershed, partly in response to concerns created by an extreme weather event in 1885 that threatened the city's water supply. In 1889, the Illinois General Assembly created the Chicago Sanitary District (now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) to replace the Illinois and Michigan Canal with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a much larger waterway, because the former had become inadequate to serve the city's increasing sewage and commercial navigation needs. Completed by 1900, the project reversed the flow of the main stem and South Branch of the Chicago River by using a series of canal locks and increasing the flow from Lake Michigan into the river, causing the river to empty into the new canal instead. In 1999, the system was named a "Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium" by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).The river is represented on the Municipal Flag of Chicago by two horizontal blue stripes. Its three branches serve as the inspiration for the Municipal Device, a three-branched, Y-shaped symbol that is found on many buildings and other structures throughout Chicago.

Wolf Point, Chicago
Wolf Point, Chicago

Wolf Point is the location at the confluence of the North, South and Main Branches of the Chicago River in the present day Near North Side, Loop, and Near West Side community areas of Chicago. This fork in the river is historically important in the development of early Chicago. Located about 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from Lake Michigan, this was the location of Chicago's first three taverns, its first hotel, Sauganash Hotel, its first ferry, its first drug store, its first church, its first theater company, and the first bridges across the Chicago River. The name is said to possibly derive from a Native American Chief whose name translated to wolf, but alternate theories exist. Historically, the west bank of the river at the fork was called "Wolf Point," but in the 1820s and 1830s it came to denote the entire area and the settlement that grew up around the river-fork. Wolf Point is now often used more specifically to refer to a plot of land on the north side of the fork in the Near North Side community area owned by the Kennedy family as part of the larger Merchandise Mart Center complex. Today the north bank at the fork, is the location of a high-rise and a construction site, the west bank includes condominium high rises, commercial skyscrapers, and railroad tracks, while the south bank includes part of the Chicago Riverwalk and serves as the transition point of Wacker Drive from an east–west street to a north–south street.