At 55 stories, Bank of America Tower is the tallest commercial office building completed in Chicago in the last 30 years. The 1.5 million-square-foot building features a stepped center core with rippling 5-foot setbacks running up the height of the west river-facing façade. This enhances leasable space by carving out the equivalent of 14 corner offices per floor. The setbacks also accentuate the building’s verticality. The marble cathedral lobby is enclosed by a cable-supported, ultra-transparent glass wall, similar to 150 N. Riverside on the opposite river bank, also designed by Goettsch Partners.
The site was formerly home to The Morton Salt Building, a five-story limestone structure with formed stainless-steel spandrels completed in 1958 by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. The Morton Salt Building remained a fixture on Wacker Drive for 60 years. In tribute to the earlier Modernist low-rise, Goettsch Partners refurbished and incorporated its original spandrels into the tower’s riverside frontage.
