Tribune Tower - Chicago, IL - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

The TRIBUNE TOWER, 435 N. Michigan Ave., contains the plant and offices of the Chicago Tribune. Cathedral-like, its vertical shaft of soft-toned Indiana limestone terminates in a crown reminiscent of the Butter Tower in Rouen. At the 25th floor a setback provides a promenade enclosed within a Gothic cloister of delicate tracery, above which soaring arches simulate flying buttresses.

Flanked by built-in stone fragments from celebrated buildings, the richly carved entrance arch is three stories high; light enters the lobby through a pierced stone screen of fanciful design. Entwined in foliage ar figures from Aesop's fables and facetious representations of the architects - a howling dog for John Mead Howells, a figure of Robin Hood for Raymond M. Hood - whose design won the $50,000 award for "the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world." The second prize was won by Eliel Saarinen, whose severely vertical design has had a more profound and extensive influence on skyscraper architecture.

The Tribune Tower design competition was one of the largest, most important and most controversial design contests of the 1920s and 263 designs were submitted. The choice of the Howells and Hood design was not a popular one in the architecture world. Gothic design went against the trend of the Chicago School of architecture to modernize design, and also the European trend to functionalize buildings, paring them to only the necessary (later called the International Style.) It was a time of transition in architecture and the choice was seen as a step backward.