Palmolive Building
Holabird & Root’s 37-story Art Deco tower crowns the northern end of Michigan Avenue with the Lindbergh Beacon — a powerful searchlight trained on the sky at night that became one of Chicago’s most recognizable signals.
At a glance
The Palmolive Building stands at 919 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, a 37-story Art Deco skyscraper completed in 1929 for the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. Designed by Holabird & Root, the building anchors the northern stretch of the Magnificent Mile with a slender tower and a powerful beacon at its crown. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 16, 2000, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The building is also widely remembered for the decade and a half when it bore the name “Playboy Building” on its roofline — the years when Playboy Enterprises held the leasehold and the word was spelled out in illuminated nine-foot letters visible across the Chicago skyline.
Key facts
- Built: 1929
- Architect: Holabird & Root
- Style: Art Deco
- Address: 919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago
- Chicago Landmark: February 16, 2000
- NRHP: August 21, 2003
- Notable feature: Lindbergh Beacon at the crown — an aviation searchlight named for Charles Lindbergh
History
The Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company commissioned the building as its Chicago headquarters in the late 1920s, a period when the North Michigan Avenue corridor was transforming from a mixed residential and commercial street into one of the most prestigious addresses in American retail and business. Holabird & Root — one of the leading Chicago architectural practices of the Art Deco era — produced a tower whose slender proportions and clean setbacks expressed the new commercial confidence of the street while the beacon at the crown gave it an identity no other building on the avenue could claim.
Playboy Enterprises purchased the leasehold in 1965 and renamed the building. For the next two and a half decades, the word “PLAYBOY” in illuminated nine-foot letters across the north and south rooflines was one of Chicago’s most visible night-time landmarks. Playboy moved its editorial and business offices to 680 N. Lake Shore Drive in 1989 and sold the leasehold in 1980, signing a ten-year lease that expired in 1990; the building reverted to its more neutral designation as “919 North Michigan Avenue” before eventually recovering the Palmolive name.
The building received Chicago Landmark designation in 2000 and NRHP listing in 2003. Today it operates as a luxury residential building while remaining one of the defining Art Deco towers on the Magnificent Mile — the Lindbergh Beacon at the crown continues to operate, its beam sweeping the night sky as it did when the building first opened.
What you see
The Palmolive Building rises in a series of setbacks that reduce the tower’s footprint as it ascends toward the crown — a composition that Holabird & Root used to give the building a visual lightness unusual for its height. The Art Deco ornament is concentrated at the base and the crown rather than spread uniformly across the facade, allowing the intervening shaft to read as a clean vertical accent on the Michigan Avenue streetscape.
The Lindbergh Beacon at the top is the building’s most dramatic element. Named for aviator Charles Lindbergh, whose 1927 transatlantic flight made him a global hero, the beacon was intended as a practical aviation navigational aid as well as an architectural gesture. By day the crown reads as a setback turret; by night the beam rotates through the sky above the city, visible for miles and continuing a tradition of architectural illumination that goes back to the building’s 1929 opening.
Practical information
- Status: Luxury residential building; exterior viewable year-round
- Beacon: Lindbergh Beacon operates at night; visible from Oak Street Beach and the lakefront
- Photography: Exterior unrestricted from Michigan Avenue and the surrounding blocks
- Nearest transit: CTA Red Line at Chicago/State station, approximately 3 blocks west; bus routes on Michigan Avenue
- Time needed: 15–20 minutes for exterior; combine with a Michigan Avenue architecture walk
Getting there
The Palmolive Building is at 919 North Michigan Avenue, at the corner of East Walton Street, on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. O’Hare International Airport (ORD) is 17 miles northwest via CTA Blue Line to Clark/Lake, then bus or Red Line north. The building is two blocks from Oak Street Beach and a 10-minute walk from the Hancock Center. GPS: 41.89983°N, 87.62388°W.
Nearby
- John Hancock Center (1969) — supertall tower two blocks north, Chicago’s most iconic mixed-use skyscraper
- Tribune Tower (1925) — Gothic Revival landmark six blocks south on Michigan Avenue
- Civic Opera Building (1929) — Art Deco opera house on the Chicago River, 1 mile southwest
- Oak Street Beach — lakefront public beach, two blocks east of the building
Sources
- Wikipedia: Palmolive Building
- City of Chicago, Commission on Chicago Landmarks: February 16, 2000
- National Register of Historic Places: August 21, 2003
- Chicago Architecture Center — Michigan Avenue corridor documentation
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