Perhaps because of the city's notorious ill winds, Chicago architects have long kept its structures to lowly heights of 500 and 600 ft. while New York handily took the first eight places in the world's skyscrapers sweepstakes. But now Chicago has entered the race. Last week the John Hancock Insurance Co. announced plans to build a 100-story, 1,100-ft. skyscraper that, when completed in 1968, will be the world's second tallest building,* topped only by Manhattan's 1,250-ft. Empire State Building.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Hancock Center will taper to less than half-size at the top, stand on splayed steel legs, and jut out from Chicago's skyline like an enormous, glass-enclosed oil derrick. But far more revolutionary than its façade will be its double-duty interior plan. From the 43rd floor down, it is an ordinary office building, complete with seven floors of ramp-access parking. But from the 44th floor up, it turns into an apartment house with its own indoor swimming pool, enclosed shopping promenade and a topfloor restaurant.
The offices-on-the-bottom, apartments-on-top building seems a promising new concept for modern metropolis dwellers and real estate operators. Because of fumes, taxi horns and all-night neon signs, the lower floors of most centrally located apartment houses have been a drug on the market. By giving apartments a piggyback ride on the top of office buildings, realtors can not only lift tenants far above the hurly-burly of the streets, but also keep them close to the city's center.
The pioneer of such buildings was Manhattan's United Nations Plaza, a twin-tower 38-story building, which should be complete some time this summer. The first six floors are office space, the rest luxury cooperative apartments ranging from $25,900 for 3½ rooms to $166,000 for a nine-room duplex. Apartment owners are given options on small offices within the building, plus an exclusive key that will open the door between the segregated office and apartment lobbies.
The new office-apartment combine should prove the ultimate panacea for the commuter. But it does have one drawback—if he takes an elevator to work, how will he get any exercise? Oh well, even a 100-story building must have a stairway.
*Manhattan's proposed World Trade Center, whose 1,350-ft. twin towers will be tallest of all, is still stalled by litigation and is not scheduled for completion until 1970 at the earliest.