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AON Center Facts

- the exact address of the center is 200 E Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60601;

- it has 83 floors and a height of 1,136 feet (346 m);

- the center was completed in 1973; at that time its name was Standard Oil Building and it belonged to the Standard Oil Company of Indiana later known as AMOCO and now part of BP;

- at the time of completion it was the tallest building in Chicago, surpassed a year later by the Sears Tower and in 2008 by the Trump Tower;

- also, when completed it was the world’s tallest marble-clad building (covered by 43,000 slabs of marble – Italian Carrara);

- when the Standard Oil Company of Indiana changed its name to AMOCO in 1985, the center was renamed the Amoco Building;

- The Blackstone Group bought it in 1998 and changed its name to AON Center in 1999; however, the AON Corporation would become the building’s primary tenant only in 2001;

- due to the fact that the marble used to sheath the building was thinner than what was previously used in the industry, in 1974, just a year after completion, one of the slabs detached and penetrated the roof of the nearby Prudential Center; from 1990 till 1992 the entire building was refaced at an estimated cost of over $80 million (well over half of the original cost of the entire building).

Merchandise Mart Facts

-the building occupies the entire block bounded by the Chicago River (on the North), Kinzie St (on the South), Orleans St (on the West) and Wells St (on the East);

- when it opened on May 5, 1930, the Mrchandise Mart was the largest building in the entire world;

- it was initially owned by the Marshall Field family;

- the building held the title of the largest building in the world in terms of floor space until 1943 when it was surpassed by the Pentagon

- from 1945 until 1998 the Mart was owned by the Kennedy family (Joseph P Kennedy Sr bought the building in 1948 for $12.5 million);

- the Merchandise Mart hosts an average of 20,000 visitors and tenants on a daily basis;

Planning for the Millennium Park began in…

…October 1997, construction in October 1998 and it was completed in July 2004.