History

The Palmolive Building was commissioned to give Colgate-Palmolive-Peet a prestige Chicago address appropriate to a major national corporation. By the late 1920s, North Michigan Avenue was being developed as the city’s new commercial spine north of the Chicago River, and the Palmolive site at the corner of Walton Place offered a prominent position on the boulevard. Holabird & Root, fresh from the acclaim they had received for their work on the Chicago Board of Trade Building and other major commissions, gave the building an Art Deco profile that draws the eye upward from a richly ornamented base to a setback tower and a distinctive crown.

The Lindbergh Beacon was installed at the building’s summit and named in honor of Charles Lindbergh, whose solo trans-Atlantic flight of 1927 had made him the most celebrated aviator in the world. The beacon projected a powerful beam of light that rotated continuously, making the Palmolive Building a navigation landmark for pilots flying over the flat Chicago hinterland at night. The beacon became part of the building’s identity for decades, though it was eventually turned off as air traffic procedures changed. For a generation of Chicagoans, the sweep of the Lindbergh Beacon across the nighttime sky was a feature of the city as recognizable as the Loop.

In later decades the building became associated with Hugh Hefner and Playboy Enterprises, which occupied offices there and gave it an informal second name, the Playboy Building. It has since been converted to luxury residential use. The original Art Deco fabric of the building, including the ornamental metalwork and carved stonework of the facade, is substantially preserved.