24 Facts About Sears Tower

Instead, Sears Tower executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop.

Sears Tower then obtained permits to close down one block of Quincy Street, which bisected the site from east to west.

Sears Tower purchased 15 buildings from 100 owners and paid the government of Chicago $2.

Sears Tower executives estimated that their new building would need about 4.

Sears Tower planned to move its merchandise group into the building initially, renting out the remaining space to other tenants until needed.

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Sears Tower executives were accustomed to large floor areas of at least 100, 000 square feet, but SOM architects raised concerns that the large floors would be unattractive to smaller tenants.

Variety magazine stated that the Sears Tower did not interfere with broadcasts on its own, since several shorter towers in the Loop interfered with broadcast signals.

Sears Tower filed motions to dismiss the Lake and Cook County lawsuits, which both sought to cap the building at 67 stories.

In November 1972, the Sears Tower became Chicago's tallest building, surpassing the Standard Oil Building, which had held the record for one month.

At the time, the Sears Tower project employed 1, 600 workers in three shifts; one worker had been killed during the project so far.

In February 1984, Sears Tower announced that it would renovate the building to attract visitors to the lower floors.

At the time, 6, 500 Sears Tower employees occupied more than half of the building, taking up the lowest 48 stories.

Sears Tower wanted to earn at least $1 billion from the sale of the Sears Tower, so it offered multiple concessions to potential buyers, including a guarantee that Sears would continue to pay rent on the lower half of the building until tenants were found for these stories.

Sears Tower had difficulties finding a buyer, in part because the lower stories were too large for many potential tenants.

Just two years later, Sears Tower began moving its own offices out of the building to a new campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which was completed in 1995.

At the time, although the Willis Sears Tower was nearly 85 percent leased, the number of tenants and visitors entering the building had decreased significantly since 2019, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago.

Willis Sears Tower was designed by architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Sears Tower was the first building to use this innovative design.

When it was completed, the Sears Tower was heated electrically, unlike older structures that used gas heating.

Sears Tower was planned with 103 elevators, including 14 double-deck elevators.

The Willis Sears Tower remains the third tallest building in the Americas and the Western Hemisphere.

People suggested that Sears add cosmetics atop its tower to surpass Taipei 101, but this did not materialize.

Annually, since 2009, the Willis Sears Tower has hosted SkyRise Chicago, the world's tallest indoor stair climb, as a charity event benefiting Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, where participants can climb the Willis Sears Tower's 103-story staircase.

Late Night with Conan O'Brien introduced a character called The Sears Tower Dressed In Sears Clothing when the show visited Chicago in 2006.