One North LaSalle Building

skyscraper
art-deco
IL
Chicago

About the One North LaSalle Building in Chicago
1. Building Catalogations
Architect and team
Architectureal style
Spaces and uses
Structure and materials

The One North LaSalle Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Vitzthum & Burns and built between 1929 and 1930 in Chicago, IL.

Its precise street address is 1 North Lasalle Street, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

The One North LaSalle Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Chicago and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the One North LaSalle Building was officially declared as a national landmark on April 16^th 1996.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2017.

Building's timeline

Construction begins

1929

Construction completed

1930

Declared NL

1996

Restoration

2017

years ago

2024

Architect and team

Vitzthum & Burns was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Vitzthum & Burns was in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the One North LaSalle Building a reality:

John Griffiths & Son as the Main Contractor
The Beitler Company as the Main Developer

Architectural Style

The One North LaSalle Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The One North LaSalle Building was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The One North LaSalle Building reaches an architectural height of 530ft (161.5m). It has a total of 48 floors, which combined offer a total of 493,729 sqf (45,869m²) of usable space.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1930, the One North LaSalle Building has mainly been used as Commercial space.

Materials & Structure

The One North LaSalle Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features light-colored limestone.

Other materials found at the One North LaSalle Building include, bronce, found in the ornamented elevator doors in the lobby, and green marble, used for the walls of the lobby.

Sources

archive.org