Inland Steel Building

Project Facts
  • Completion Year 1958
  • Design Finish Year 1956
  • Size Site Area: 23,040 square feet Building Height: 331 feet Number of Stories: 19 Building Gross Area: 325,000 square feet
  • Collaborators Turner Construction Company
Project Facts
  • Completion Year 1958
  • Design Finish Year 1956
  • Size Site Area: 23,040 square feet Building Height: 331 feet Number of Stories: 19 Building Gross Area: 325,000 square feet
  • Collaborators Turner Construction Company

Inland Steel

The Inland Steel Building is one of modern architecture’s most epochal structures. The first Chicago high-rise built after the Great Depression, Inland Steel was the paradigm for SOM’s principle that high-rise form at its best does, indeed, follow function. Inland Steel changed the way towers are constructed, and helped transform American office culture during the second half of the 20th century.

The building consists of a 19-story office tower and a 25-story service tower. A one-story unit that contains auxiliary facilities is attached to the service tower. The 19 floors of the office tower, each with an area of 10,200 square feet, have no interior columns, and therefore these open floor areas allow maximum flexibility in the arrangement of offices and work rooms.

The framing is structural steel. Girders, 60 feet long, span the whole building and support the beams and decking. Frames and mullions of the curtain wall are stainless steel, glazed with tinted laminated glass and paneled with porous concrete and insulated stainless steel sheets.

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Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo © Hedrich Blessing
Photo © Hedrich Blessing
Inland Steel Building interior. © Ezra Stoller | ESTO
Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo Ezra Stoller © ESTO
Photo © Chicago History Museum Hedrich Blessing Collection
Inland Steel Building © Hedrich Blessing

Renovation

The Inland Steel Building renovation aims to make the tower a modern embodiment of progress shaped around the needs of the dynamic global marketplace. The updated building will define a new paradigm for the contemporary workplace while satisfying Chicago Landmark requirements.

The redesigned office spaces will accommodate growing or mobile companies. The interior is designed to be re-configurable and reusable so that turnover will result in negligible waste. This concept is one of many green design features that will allow the building to be as technologically advanced going forward as it was in its first 50 years of existence.

Other sustainable features include ergonomic workstations that will enable users to customize air and daylight preferences; active chilled beams in the ceiling and motorized solar shading that will maximize thermal performance; and a customizable “kit-of-parts” that will allow tenants to select from a menu of options and will help overcome the wastefulness of demolition and fit-out. The design also calls for a green roof to manage stormwater runoff, along with new art in outdoor plazas and a revolving art program in the tower’s lobby.

© Ezra Stoller
Inland Steel
© Ezra Stoller

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