![]() ![]() dreamt of creating the world’s largest wholesale facility in the world, the economic decline of the Great Depression and World War II prevented any such long-term business. Shaw designed the building in such a way as to visually minimize its sheer size by setting back the corners and upper stories.While Marshall Field & Co. The building’s limestone and terracotta exterior features traditional Art Deco designs such as chevron patterns and ornamental displays. When completed in 1930, the “Colossus of marketplaces” was officially the largest building in the world, boasting a footprint of four million square feet – the equivalent of two-and-a-half city blocks – and rises 25-stories. ![]() Construction began on the giant building in the summer of 1928 and for the next two years, construction continued tirelessly through the start of the Great Depression. In his design, Shaw combined architectural elements from the warehouse, department store, and skyscraper to create Marshall Field’s Merchandise Mart. Shaw, chief architect of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, to design the largest building in the world. Marshall Field commissioned architect Alfred P. The site also previously home to the Chicago and North Western Railroad’s Wells Street Station, which included the railroad air-rights. A site along the Chicago River bordered by Orleans, Kenzie and Wells Streets was chosen to be the new home for Marshall Field’s building. sought to create a central marketplace for retailers, consolidating the city’s wholesale enterprise. During the mid-1920s, retailer Marshall Field & Co. White & company, 1893.The economic boom of the 1920s resulted in a staggering number of new ambitious Art Deco buildings in Chicago’s downtown, Merchandise Mart being one of them. White, James Terry, 1845-1920, and George Derby. The National Cyclopædia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States As Illustrated In the Lives of the Founders, Builders, And Defenders of the Republic, And of the Men And Women Who Are Doing the Work And Moulding the Thought of the Present Time. New York: J.Marshall Field & Company. Marshall Field’s And Chicago. Chicago: Marshall Field & Co., 1940.“The Chicago Merchandise Mart: How the World’s Largest Commercial Building Fueled an American Political Dynasty.” Global History of Capitalism Project, Sep 2018. Drury, John, 1898-. A Century of Progress Authorized Guide to Chicago. Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, Inc, 1933.“Cleaning The Merchandise Mart’s Epic ‘Merchandise Around the World’ Mural.” The Conservation Center.“Chicago Mart Gets Loan.” New York Times.Additional sources, including books and websites, can be found on the Resources page. This is a selection of specific sources used to provide details while researching this landmark. Read more about this landmark in Living Landmarks of Chicago.Īrchitects: Graham, Anderson, Probst and Whiteĭiscover more of Chicago’s living landmarks Sources for Merchandise Mart (theMART) Eleven years later, James moved up to first vice president, and when John retired in 1923, James took the top spot. In 1906, James was promoted to second vice president and assistant to John Shedd, who’d been appointed president after Marshall’s death in January of that year. The Scottish immigrant, who’d been in the states since he was six, so impressed Marshall that he made James his confidential clerk (basically a private secretary) within a year. James was only seventeen when he began working at Marshall Field’s as a clerk. Like John Shedd, Harry Selfridge, and Marshall Field himself, he was another top-level executive who started at the bottom as a young man and worked his way up. James Simpson, president of Marshall Field & Company, was the force behind this massive building. Even then, the sheer scale can escape you. You can mention that there are six and a half miles of corridors, that the initial plate glass order would stretch for seven miles, and that thirty thousand people enter through its doors every weekday, but none of that sinks in until you stand in front of it and look left, right, and up. You can know it was once the largest commercial building in the world. You can say it’s four million square feet. It’s difficult to comprehend just how big the Merchandise Mart is. ![]()
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