Illinois Bell Telephone Company Relief Panels - Chicago, IL
Posted by: 
adgorn
N 41° 52.818 W 087° 39.618
16T E 445213 N 4636696
Two stone relief panels and 4 cast aluminum (apparently) panels on the front of the AT&T building at Chicago's near west side.
Waymark Code: WM12AM0
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 04/14/2020
Views: 2
The Smithsonian Inventory makes the following comments:
"The 1992 SOS survey questionnaire notes that it appears there are only two relief panels on the building's exterior rather than the six mentioned in Riedy's 1981 publication, "Chicago Sculpture." Also noted on the SOS survey questionnaire is the observation that the media resembles stone rather than cast aluminum. And although Holabird and Root designed several buildings for the telephone company, it is unclear whether this building is one of them. The Chicago Historical Society houses the archives of Holabird and Root, and once thoroughly researched may know if indeed the architectural firm played a role in the creation of these reliefs. No information on the reliefs could be obtained from Illinois Bell Telephone Company. Riedy's "Chicago Sculpture" contains an image of only one of the relief panels."
The above confusion is documented correctly and bears some research to sort out. If you include the 4 other black vertical panels at the center top of the building (see photos), which are likely in fact to be aluminum, then you do have a total of six. I think that Riedy simply made a minor error by lumping all these panels together as if they were all aluminum, rather than distinguishing 2 stone and 4 aluminum.
I have dropped a note to the still-going-strong Holabird and Root company here in Chicago to see if they can shed more light on all this. Will post if they do.
Located at: 1340 West Monroe Street, Facade
See the Smithsonian entry: (
visit link)
FYI Illinois Bell Telephone is now called AT&T.