The Inland Steel Building is a skyscraper at 30 West Monroe Street in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Constructed from 1956 to 1958, the building was designed by Bruce Graham and Walter Netsch of the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in the International Style. It was originally the headquarters of the Inland Steel Company and was one of the first skyscrapers to be built in the Chicago Loop since World War II. The Inland Steel Building is designated a Chicago Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Inland Steel decided to develop the building because of space constraints in its previous headquarters, the First National Bank Building. In August 1954, Inland Steel announced plans to lease a site at Monroe and Dearborn streets from the Chicago Board of Education. SOM prepared plans for the site, which were announced in March 1955, and work began in January 1956. The building was nearly fully leased before it opened on February 3, 1958. Inland Steel owned the building until the late 1980s and eventually came to occupy two-thirds of the space. After a Japanese firm briefly owned the building, JPS Interests acquired it in 1989 and conducted renovations. Following another change of ownership, a syndicate that included the architect Frank Gehry bought the building in 2005 and resold it in 2007 to Capital Properties, which conducted another renovation. The New York Life Insurance Company seized ownership in 2025.
The Inland Steel Building consists of two distinct masses: a 19-story main structure at the corner of Monroe and Dearborn, and a 25-story mechanical tower to the east. The main building's facade consists of a curtain wall with green-tinted glass and stainless steel spandrel panels, columns, and mullions. The facade's columns carry the building's entire weight, allowing the majority of the spaces inside to be designed without any interior columns. The first two stories are recessed from ground level, while the upper stories were largely designed as offices with a modular floor grid and movable partitions. SOM also built a dining suite on the 13th floor and an executive suite on the 19th floor. The mechanical tower contains all the stairs, elevators, and utility ducts. Over the years, the building has received praise for its design and materials, and its architecture, while not widely copied, has influenced the design of other buildings.
Site The Inland Steel Building is located at 30 West Monroe Street, at the northeast corner of the intersection with Dearborn Street, in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The site spans about , measuring along Monroe Street to the south and along Dearborn Street to the west. It occupies the southwestern corner of a city block bounded by Dearborn and Monroe streets, along with State Street to the east and Madison Street to the north. The structure shares the block with One South Dearborn to the north and the CIBC Theatre to the east. When the Inland Steel Building was constructed in the late 1950s, there was another building directly abutting the north facade, but this was replaced with a plaza when One South Dearborn was built in the 2000s. The building also originally shared the block with the former McVicker's Theater on Madison Street.
Prior to the Inland Steel Building's construction, the entire block was owned by the Chicago Board of Education. When the region was divided into townships in the 19th century, a small amount of land in each township was reserved for school usage; the Board of Education decided to lease out the land it owned in the Loop, rather than build a school there. The corner of Monroe and Dearborn contained the Crilly Building, a seven-story building that dated from 1878 and housed the Chicago Stock Exchange. The Crilly Building was an early example of a structure that partially incorporated a steel frame, making it a precursor to the early skyscraper. The northern section previously had two seven-story buildings dating from 1888, which contained the Chicago Evening Journal headquarters and the Saratoga Hotel. These buildings were shortened to three stories with the construction of a restaurant at 27 South Dearborn Street in 1948. The restaurant structure was two stories high.
History The building's namesake, the Inland Steel Company, had opened its first Chicago office at the Marquette Building in 1898. The company relocated in 1904 to the First National Bank Building at Monroe and Dearborn. By the 1950s, Inland Steel had two floors in the First National Bank Building. The company's post–World War II growth prompted its president Clarence B. Randall to establish a committee to consider plans for expanding the offices. At the time, the company could not lease any more space in the First National Bank Building, which was fully occupied. After some consideration, the committee recommended a brand-new structure for Inland Steel's Chicago headquarters, which would be able to accommodate the future growth of Inland Steel's office staff. Leigh Block, president of Inland Steel, said: "We wanted a building we'd be proud of, one that spelled steel."
Development
Planning By 1954, Inland Steel was interested in erecting its own office building on the block bounded by Dearborn, Monroe, State, and Madison streets. Inland Steel wanted to lease the corner of Monroe and Dearborn from the Board of Education, but the existing leases there would not expire for 31 years. That August, Inland Steel officially announced plans to lease the site and erect the building there. The firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) drew up the preliminary plans, which called for a 17-story office tower with . Randall told Nathaniel A. Owings, one of SOM's partners, that he wanted the building "to be like a man with immaculate English tailoring" and that the design should allude to the company's heritage. Inland Steel offered to lease the site from the Board of Education for 99 years, initially paying $75,000 annually. The Board of Education approved the lease that October, with the stipulation that Inland Steel pay $84,000 annually for the first 20 years and renegotiate the fee every decade afterward. Since the site was exempt from property tax, Inland Steel initially paid no property taxes, saving $172,000 annually.
In its annual report published in February 1955, Inland Steel announced that it would start constructing a 19-story skyscraper later that year. The firm was to occupy the top seven stories and lease out the rest of the building. The next month, SOM architect Walter Netsch unveiled plans for a building with a 23-story mechanical tower; the plans called for the structure to be supported entirely by 14 exterior columns. Inland Steel unveiled an architectural model of the skyscraper that month. SOM initially contemplated constructing the building's garage at ground level but later decided to instead place the garage in the basement, freeing up the ground level for commercial tenants. The architects also contemplated using black steel for the exterior columns, but decided against it, on the basis that it was too similar to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's skyscrapers. In exchange for constructing public space at ground level, Inland Steel was allowed to construct additional floor area under the Chicago zoning code.
The development of the Inland Steel Building coincided with the construction of several other office buildings in the Loop. Though the Inland Steel Building was sometimes cited in the contemporary media as the Loop's first large tower in 20 years, and by extension the first post–World War II skyscraper in the area, One Prudential Plaza (completed in 1955) held that distinction. These conflicting claims stem from how the term "The Loop" refers both to an area encircled by the Chicago "L" and Chicago's downtown in general. The Inland Steel Building was the first postwar building within the Chicago "Ls loop, but One Prudential Plaza was the first such building downtown overall. The Inland Steel Building was also cited as one of the first post–World War II buildings in Chicago to be designed in a modernist style.
Construction Inland Steel announced in August 1955 that it would clear the site. That November, Turner Construction received the general contract to construct the building. Work on the foundation began on January 10, 1956. Inland Steel executives devised a system of steel supports and shoring to ensure that the excavations did not destabilize adjacent buildings or streets. Contractors finished constructing the pilings for the foundations in early March; each piling was drilled into the ground using a pile driver until it was embedded into the soil. Fishbach, Moore & Morrissey were hired as the building's electrical contractors, while the Badger Concrete Company of Wisconsin was hired to construct the wall panels. The steel contract was awarded to a subsidiary of Inland Steel, Joseph T. Ryerson & Sons, which prefabricated the columns and girders.
Inland Steel occupied the top eight stories. Draper & Kramer—a real-estate firm that had occupied the Crilly Building, one of the three previous existing buildings on the site—was hired as the leasing agent, later occupying space in the skyscraper. The first tenant to sign a lease was the Chicago Association of Commerce, which had leased the building's ground (first) and second stories in November 1955 and operated an exhibit space on these stories. The Chicago Association of Commerce was initially the only ground-floor tenant, as Inland Steel did not want stores on that floor. Other notable tenants who signed leases during construction included the financial firm White Weld & Co., which leased the 4th floor for use as a trading floor, as well as SOM itself, which occupied two and a half floors. The Toronto-Dominion Bank, the New York Life Insurance Company, and the manufacturer A. O. Smith Corporation had space in the building as well. These floors were initially leased out for 15-year terms, except for the 11th floor, which was leased for five years in case Inland Steel needed to expand its offices.
The prefabrication of the steel frame helped speed up the construction process, and the superstructure was topped out on November 1, 1956, when the last steel beam was installed. A spruce tree was hoisted atop the structure to mark the occasion, and a broom was placed on the final steel beam to celebrate the fact that no workers had died up to that point. One worker was subsequently killed in June 1957 after being crushed in an elevator shaft; this was the project's only fatal incident. By that October, Draper & Kramer had leased out 98.5% of the space, despite the rent being higher than at other office buildings in the area. The building was substantially completed at the beginning of 1958, and Inland Steel moved its Chicago offices there during the weekend of January 11–12, 1958. Inland Steel's new offices covered , slightly less than the company's space at the First National Bank Building. However, the Inland Steel Building offices actually had more usable space, since nearly one-fifth of the First National Bank space had been devoted to corridors.
1950s to 1970s