Bankers Building
A 41-story Art Deco tower by the Burnham Brothers on West Adams Street, built in 1927 when Chicago’s Loop was still defining the American skyscraper — one of the tallest buildings in the city at the time of its completion.
At a glance
The Bankers Building at 105 West Adams Street in Chicago’s Loop district was completed in 1927 by the firm of Burnham Brothers — Daniel H. Burnham Jr. and Hubert Burnham, sons of the legendary Chicago planner Daniel Burnham. At 41 stories and 476 feet, it was among the tallest buildings in Chicago when it opened, its limestone setback shaft rising with the clean vertical emphasis that defines Chicago Art Deco at its most controlled. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains in active office use.
Key facts
- Address: 105 West Adams Street, Chicago, IL 60603
- Height: 41 stories, 476 ft (145 m)
- Completed: 1927
- Architects: Burnham Brothers (Daniel H. Burnham Jr. and Hubert Burnham)
- Style: Art Deco
- NRHP: Yes
- Current use: Commercial offices
History
Daniel Burnham Sr. had transformed Chicago’s skyline and urban plan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — most famously through the 1909 Plan of Chicago and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. His sons Daniel Jr. and Hubert inherited the firm and continued to build in the Loop through the 1920s, adapting the family tradition of large-scale commercial architecture to the Art Deco style that had become the dominant idiom for American skyscrapers after the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs.
The Bankers Building was conceived as a prestige office address for financial and banking tenants — hence its name. The Loop banking district concentrated some of the most powerful financial institutions in the Midwest within a few blocks of LaSalle Street, and 105 West Adams offered proximity to that district with the kind of visual presence that major tenants expected. The 41-story tower delivered both: a clean limestone shaft with Art Deco setbacks and ornamental detail sufficient to announce its significance without the Gothic extravagance of some contemporaries.
The building has been in continuous commercial use since its completion and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its architectural quality and its role in the development of Chicago’s Loop skyline during the interwar period.
What you see
The Bankers Building presents a facade of Indiana limestone with Art Deco ornamental detail concentrated at the base and crown. Its massing follows the setback logic mandated by Chicago’s zoning regulations of the period: the shaft rises to a series of steps that narrow the building’s footprint as it climbs, creating the characteristic silhouette of the tall office tower of the 1920s and 30s. The result is a building that reads as vertical and authoritative from the street — the corporate self-presentation of the American financial sector at its most confident.
The lobby level retains elements of its original Art Deco character, with the scale and materials appropriate to a building designed to impress banking tenants. At street level, Adams Street presents a facade wide enough to anchor its block without dominating it — the Burnham Brothers’ recognition that the Loop’s grid required buildings that held the street wall while asserting their height.
Practical information
- Lobby: Accessible during business hours; the building is in active commercial use
- Exterior: Viewable at all times from Adams Street
- Photography: Best full tower shots from the intersection of Adams and Clark Streets looking east
- Loop context: Within a 5-minute walk of the Chicago Riverwalk and the elevated ‘L’ tracks that define the Loop boundary
Getting there
The Bankers Building is in Chicago’s Loop, half a block from the Adams/Wabash elevated station and two blocks from the Adams/Quincy CTA Blue Line stop. Millennium Park is five blocks east. O’Hare International Airport (ORD) is about 17 miles north-west via the Blue Line.
Nearby
- Civic Opera Building (1929) — Art Deco opera house four blocks west on Wacker Drive
- The Rookery (1888) — Burnham & Root’s landmark early skyscraper, two blocks east on LaSalle Street
- Chicago Board of Trade (1930) — Art Deco skyscraper two blocks south at the foot of LaSalle Street
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Bankers Building (Chicago)” — height, architects, NRHP, construction date
- Chicago Architecture Center — building documentation and Loop context
- National Register of Historic Places nomination — architectural significance
- Carl W. Condit, Chicago, 1910–29: Building, Planning, and Urban Technology — Loop development context
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