#Merchant mart chicago 1930 series#
#Merchant mart chicago 1930 zip#

(mmart) The bridge to this station was a bottleneck, so C&NW wanted to build a new station west of the river anyhow. As a side effect, it help beautify the river front by hiding the rail yards. To get the two blocks it needed in a downtown location, it was erected on the air-rights of the C&NW railroad yards. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes.I know of it as the building that displaced the C&NW Wells Street passenger station. Created in 1953, this is the Merchant's Hall of Fame and each of the bronze busts represent a famous retailer such as Marshall Field and Frank Woolworth.

#Merchant mart chicago 1930 series#

On the outside, along the river, often overlooked, are a series of eight pillars with large busts on top. Renovated between 19, the Merchandise Mart now contains a public shopping arcade on the first two floors, which contains retail stores and restaurants.

Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Senator Edwin Kennedy. Kennedy of the famous Kennedy clan, which included President John F.

Only the Pentagon in Washington, DC, is larger. Located on the north bank of the Chicago River between Wells Street and Orleans Street, it is 25 floors high and two city blocks long with 13.6 miles of corridors. What an imposing building! Completed in 1931, the Merchandise Mart was the world's largest commercial building for a period of 10 years. By the end of the day, we thought we had walked from one end of Chicago to the other. At the Merchandise Mart, everything is first-rate.Ī few years ago, while redesigning our apartment, we joined our home designer to Chicago's Merchandise Mart to shop for new furniture and lighting and mirrors and other fixtures. One purchase, a grand mirror for our entryway, took two weeks to be shipped from England. Is a visit to the Merchandise Mart a once-in-a-lifetime experience? My wife and I vividly recall going on a day-long shopping trip with a home designer to buy new furniture for our apartment. The lobby features artist Jules Guerin's frieze of 17 murals which graphically illustrate commerce throughout the world. Since 1969, the Merchandise Mart has hosted the annual National Exposition of Contract Furnishings with over 1,000 exhibitors and 50,000 attendees, the largest trade show of his kind in North America. In addition, a 521-room Holiday Inn is housed in the Apparel Center. The retail shopping area, named The Shops at the Mart, opened in 1991 and includes apparel shops, beauty services, news stands and bookstores, financial services, travel services, telecommunications services, specialty food and wine stores, photo services, a dry cleaner, shoe shine stand and food court. Since 2010, the design center showroom has been open to the public. In 1977, the Chicago Apparel Center was opened on the west side of Orleans Street, increasing the Merchandise Mart's total floor space to 6.2 million square feet. Visitors also marvel at the 7.5 miles of corridors and 30 elevators. Its construction required 29 million bricks, 40 miles of plumbing, 380 miles of wiring, 4 million cubic yards of concrete and 4,000 windows. Opened in 1930, the 25-story Art Deco style structure is spread across two square city blocks and includes 4.2 million square feet of floor space. Built by Marshall Field & Company and owned by the Kennedy family for half a century, it centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating architectural and interior design vendors and traders under a single roof.

#Merchant mart chicago 1930 zip#

But have you ever spent any time inside the building? Have you ever been inside the world's largest commercial building, a structure so large that it once had its own zip code, a building so massive that it has been known as 'a city within a city?' Located at 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, at Kinzie Street between Orleans and Wells, on the Chicago River just east of Chicago's original trading post at Wolf Point, the junction of the river's North and South Branches, in downtown Chicago, the Merchandise Mart is a leading retailing and wholesale destination that hosts 20,000 visitors and tenants per day. If you are a native Chicagoan or have ever visited the city, you probably walked past or drove past the Merchandise Mart.