2018

The London Guarantee Building or London Guaranty & Accident Building is a historic 1923 commercial skyscraper whose primary occupant since 2016 is the LondonHouse Chicago Hotel Formerly, for a time named the Stone Container Building, it is located near the Loop in Chicago, and is one of four 1920s skyscrapers that surround the Michigan Avenue Bridge (the others are the Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower and 333 North Michigan Avenue) and is a contributing property to the Michigan-Wacker Historic District. It stands on part of the former site of Fort Dearborn. From 1872 until 1921 the site was home to the a 7-floor structure that housed the business of William M. Hoyt & Co. The Hoyt company was created during the Civil War. Hoyt became a leading grocery wholesaler, with annual sales of close to $1 million by the mid-1870s and nearly $5 million by the early 1890s, when it was among the region’s leading food distributors. The London Guarantee & Accident Building was designed by Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler and completed in 1923 for the London Guarantee & Accident Company, an insurance firm that was then its principal occupant. The top of the building is noted to resemble the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, but it was modeled after the Stockholm Stadshus. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the studios of Chicago’s WLS (AM) radio were located on the fifth floor of the building. For several decades, Paul Harvey performed his daily syndicated radio show from studios on the fourth floor. The building was also famous from the 1950s through the early 1970s for The London House, a famous Chicago jazz nightclub and steakhouse that was located on the west side of the building’s first floor; it had its own entrance on Wacker Drive. It was one of the foremost jazz clubs in the country, once home to such luminaries as Oscar Peterson, Ramsey Lewis, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland, Cannonball Adderley, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal, Nancy Wilson, Barbara Carroll, Bobby Short and many others. In the 1980s and 1990s TV show Perfect Strangers, the building's exterior was used as the home of the fictional newspaper Chicago Chronicle. The London Guarantee & Accident Building was designated a Chicago Landmark on April 16, 1996.

325 North LaSalle, constructed in 1914, was designed by George C. Nimmons for Reid, Murdoch & Co. one of the country’s largest wholesale grocers. Reid, Murdoch & Co. used the building for corporate offices and warehouse space, with several floors dedicated to manufacturing and processing various foods: cheeses, coffee, catsup, sugar, fish, bread, and pickles. The building even included a humidor where tobacco was rolled for cigars. The riverfront site enabled Reid, Murdoch & Co. to ship and receive goods via a supply chain that connected steamers on the building’s south side to railroad spurs on the north side. Under LaSalle Street, the building’s shipping platform was used to load trucks that delivered to merchants all over the city. The building even connected with the city’s downtown freight tunnel system, 60 feet below street level. A notable example of the "Chicago School" of Architecture, the building’s design features a red brick façade with decorative terra-cotta embellishments covering a steel and concrete skeleton. Originally the building was symmetrical, with 6 bays of windows flanking the center tower on both sides. In 1926, one bay on the west end was removed allowing the City to widen LaSalle Street. It was used as a makeshift hospital on 24 July 1915 after the S.S. Eastland capsized in the Chicago River on the opposite shore, directly across from the building. In 1930 the westernmost bay was demolished, due to the widening of LaSalle Street, and the façade lost its symmetry. From 1955 the building was used by the City of Chicago, housing its traffic courts, the State Attorney’s Office, and various city departments. In 1998 it was redeveloped by Friedman Properties. The building currently houses the headquarters of Encyclopædia Britannica. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. It also has been designated as a Chicago Landmark. It is located at 325 North LaSalle Street in the River North neighborhood, alongside the Chicago River between LaSalle Street and Clark Street.

The La Salle Street Bridge (officially the Marshall Suloway Bridge) is a single-deck double-leaf trunnion bascule bridge spanning the main stem of the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois, that connects the Near North Side with the Loop area. It was constructed in 1928 at a cost of $2,500,000 by the Strobel Steel Constructing Company. The bridge was part of a scheme to widen LaSalle Street and improve access from the Loop to the north side of the river that had been proposed as early as 1902. The design of the bridge, along with those for new bridges at Madison Street, Franklin Street, and Clark Street, was approved in 1916. The Chicago City Council renamed the bridge in 1999 to honor former Chicago Department of Public Works Commissioner Marshall Suloway.