The Chicago skyscraper Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world for over 25 years

Chicago – The Chicago skyscraper Sears Tower, which was completed on May 4, 1973, could proudly hold the title of the tallest building in the world for more than a quarter of a century. The dark rectangular building, which has been named Willis Tower since 2009, rises to a height of 442 meters, and the taller of its two antennas reaches an additional 85 meters. The headquarters, built by one of the largest retail companies in the world, was 25 meters higher than the just three-year-old World Trade Center (WTC) in New York. The Chicago skyscraper lost its title in 1998 when it was surpassed by the 452-meter tall Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The American retail giant Sears began searching for a new headquarters in the mid-1960s, and after years of planning, they ultimately chose a location in downtown their home city of Chicago, where in addition to purchasing the building parcels, they had to ask the city for permission to cancel one of the streets. The result was a construction site approximately 70 by 70 meters, for which the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the tallest building in the world at that time. It is said that the final solution was born thanks to nine cigars, on which one of the architects demonstrated to the gentlemen from Sears how the skyscraper would look.

In contrast to simple elongated blocks like those of the terrorist-destroyed WTC, today’s Willis Tower consists of nine towers of varying heights, built side by side in a grid that resembles the playing field for the American version of tic-tac-toe from above. All nine of them rise only halfway, to the 50th floor, then gradually end, and only two reach the top. The skyscraper has a total of 108 floors, with an observation deck on the 103rd floor that attracts more than 1.5 million visitors each year. One of the largest tourist attractions was complemented in 2009 by four observation decks protruding from the outline with glass floors, and last year a fifth was added.