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Lake Shore Dr View Of Downtown

View of the skyline from Lake Shore Dr as you drive north (right around the museum campus). Some of the buildings seen in this picture: the Trump Tower, the AON Center, Prudential II Plaza and the Smurfit-Stone Building.

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).

Prudential II

Prudential II (also referred to as Pru Two) seen from the North East corner of Lake St and Wabash Ave. Right behind it is the AON Center.