City panel to weigh revitalization of LaSalle Street skyscraper

A slate of major improvements designed to revive the Field Building — a snazzy Art Deco landmark skyscraper built at the sunset of Chicago's Jazz Age — is scheduled to come before a city panel Thursday.

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks' Permit Review Committee will decide whether to approve a range of restoration and rehabilitation measures planned for the 44-story building at 135 S. LaSalle St.

Work would include converting the office building's floors one through 14 to residential and commercial spaces. The tower's historic storefronts would be rehabbed, and mechanical penthouses on the building's setbacks would be removed and replaced by rooftop decks.

If approved by the committee, the landmarks commission, and ultimately, the City Council, the work would comprise a significant first step of a $241 million effort to turn the Field Building into a mixed-use tower.

"It is an important moment for the project," said Sara Beardsley, associate principal of SCB, the architecture firm handling the Field Building's renovation.

It's also a moment for the city's 3-year-old La Salle Corridor Revitalization effort to turn the historic but semimoribund financial corridor — with its wealth of high-quality and classic Chicago architecture — into a new community with places to live, work and shop.

‘High-water mark’ for once-prestigious architecture firm

Built in 1934 by the estate of Marshall Field and designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the Field Building is an absolute dazzler. A tower rises from each corner of the building's four-story base. A setback limestone slab in the middle of the quartet soars 535 feet from the building's middle section.

The Field Building was designated a protected Chicago landmark in 1994. The structure virtually emptied out in 2020 when its main tenant, Bank of America, moved to the Bank of America Tower at 110 N. Wacker Drive.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Thomas Leslie, author of “Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986: How Technology, Politics, Finance, and Race Reshaped the City," said the Field Building's design was a response to the 1922 zoning code that mandated skyscrapers provide natural ventilation.

"The code allowed buildings to be taller in the center of the block, but floor plates still needed to be shallow enough to enable cross-ventilation during the summer," Leslie said.

"The lower five floors of the Field were the first newly constructed offices to feature mechanical air conditioning," he said. "While the floors above were all naturally ventilated, the clients [on the lower floors] wanted to avoid the noise and dirt from the street outside. So those floors were all built with sealed windows and conditioned air."

Beardsley said the building's large old mechanical penthouses that contained the air conditioning units will be removed, helping return the Field to its original form.

"[The building is changing] from office to residential, and residential is less energy-intensive than office," she said. "We're also doing upgrades from the inside of the envelope to add some insulation, so the building is going to be using quite a bit less energy than it used to use."

The superlative Chicago Board of Trade Building, a study in Art Deco built at Jackson Boulevard and LaSalle Street in 1930, gets much of the architectural praise in the old financial district, but the Field Building is every bit as good — particularly in its detailing.

The building's window frames are made of polished aluminum and black granite that adorns its base. The lobby and interior arcade spaces are as sleek and polished as a Bix Beiderbecke cornet solo.

SCB Associate Principal Steven Hubbard said these spaces will be preserved.

"The detailing of that space is one of the best ... examples of Art Deco," Hubbard said. "The white marble, the rose-colored marble, the beautiful floors, the metal trimming for all of the shop windows and the elevator openings. It's very, very much intact."

"Definitely a high-water mark for Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, along with the Merchandise Mart, which was about the same time," Leslie said of the Field Building's design.

The proposed work is planned by SCB and the Field Building's owners and developers, Riverside Investment Trust, DL3 Realty and AmTrust RE out of New York City.

The finished project will turn about half the space in the 1.4 million-square-foot tower into 386 apartments, with interior parking spaces and new commercial uses, including a health club and grocery store.

And Chicago taxpayers will be helping the project along with $98 million in tax increment financing.

The Permit Review Committee on Thursday also will be asked to sign off on the creation of a pedestrian entrance on LaSalle Street.

Hubbard said the entrance will have "a revolving door opening and vestibule, which should be similar to what was there originally when the building opened in the early '30s."