Merchandise Mart - Building

Building

The Merchandise Mart was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White to be a "city within a city". Second only to Holabird & Root in Chicago art deco architecture, the firm had a long-standing relationship with the Field family. Started in 1928, completed in 1931, and built in the same art deco style as the Chicago Board of Trade Building, its cost was reported as both $32 million and $38 million. The building was the largest in the world in terms of floorspace, but was surpassed by the Pentagon in 1943, and now stands thirty-sixth on the list of largest buildings in the world. Once the largest commercial space in the world, Dubai International Airport Terminal 3 is now recognized by Guinness World Records as holding the record.

Read more about this topic:  Merchandise Mart

Famous quotes containing the word building:

    Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.
    Eric Gill (1882–1940)

    History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.
    Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)

    Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)