Building Features

Architect, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill combined traditional and contemporary forms in designing 70 West Madison: a saw-toothed, cantilevered tower of Carnelian granite featuring ten-foot wide, three-sided bay windows (a traditional element of Chicago turn-of-the-century architecture) with floor to ceiling, tinted, reflective glass panels.

The saw-tooth geometry, which provides nine corner offices on the high-rise and thirteen on the low-rise floors, creates a transition on the top six levels of the building to stepped greenhouse offices. This design accommodates both large and small firms with virtually every office near extraordinary unobstructed views of the lake and city.

The lobby consists of two levels, which are connected by three 48-inch wide escalators and one passenger elevator. On the mezzanine level a fully integrated Otis elevator system provides twenty-eight passenger elevators in five zones and two shuttle elevators to carry people to individual floors. The walls and floors are thermal finish Carnelian granite to match the exterior with the floors featuring a polished and honed pattern at grade level, and carpet insets in the elevator lobbies located on the mezzanine level. The elevator doors, as well as all the architectural metal in the lobby, are a polished bronze finish.