How to Spell Steel

Nearly a quarter of a century had passed since a new office building rose in Chicago's Loop, where the first skyscraper* was built 72 years ago. This week, amid the Loop's smoke-stained, weather-worn monuments to another era, the Inland Steel Co. dedicated a crisp, tall, gleaming home office that goes a step or two ahead of almost every other office building in the U.S.

When Inland decided to build its own headquarters at Dearborn and Monroe Streets, opposite its old offices in a bank building, it set a basic goal. "We are the only major steel company with headquarters in Chicago," said Inland Vice President Leigh Block. "We wanted a building we'd be proud of, one that spelled steel."

Pas de Deux. The spelling assignment went to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, whose group architecture produced a design with two important new space-creating features. The building is entirely supported by steel columns outside the glass facade, thus leaving on each floor an unobstructed span, 58 ft. across by 177 ft. long, for flexible office planning. The service core with its elevators, rest rooms and air conditioning, which clutter up the center of most office buildings, is installed in a separate tower.

Resting on steel piles that extend 85 ft. through mud and clay to bedrock underlying the Loop, Inland's main building rises 19 stories, with thin, stainless steel mullions retaining the 10-ft.-tall green-tinted glass windows. Joined to it is the windowless service core, towering 80 ft. above the main structure, and sheathed in small panels of dull stainless steel. Architecturally, it is as striking as the building it serves. Unlike its street-crowding neighbors, the Inland structure is set back far enough to provide a small plaza.

And Art, Too. Inside, Inland's new building makes widespread use of art--both paintings (the industrial scene by modern artists) and sculpture (stressing the use of steel under tension). "Of course, the most important thing is the sale of steel," said Art Collector Block. "But on the other hand, we believe that painting and sculpture belong in a modern office building to enhance its beauty."

To enhance the lobby, Inland commissioned Richard Lippold (TIME, July 30, 1956) to design a is-ft.-tall construction of stainless steel rods, which is suspended in a delicate network of wires of gold, stainless steel and fire-red enamel. It is set against a block of polished black Belgian marble, and rests in a reflecting pool of water. For the 19th-floor executive suite, U.S. Sculptor Seymour Lipton, winner of the Jockey Club's top acquisition prize at the Sao Paulo Bienal, hammered out a heroic, 7-ft.-tall Hero. There are more than 30 paintings, including a green, red, and white abstraction by Stuart Davis, a whirling Willem de Kooning, a locomotive wheel by Hedda Sterne and a towering Georgia O'Keeffe cityscape on the building's walls. A Calder mobile floats above a table in Vice President Block's office.

Among the first tenants in the new building will be Chicago's civically proud Association of Commerce and Industry. Its decision to move there added point to Leigh Block's assertion: "In a city of dark buildings, our new building offers a ray of hope and cleanness and, I think, drama."

*The ten-story Chicago office of the Home Insurance Co. of N.Y., designed in 1883 by William Le Baron Jenney, which used wrought-iron beams to the sixth floor, finished off with the then newly invented Bessemer steel beams.

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