![]() ![]() Sears needed 3 million square feet (280,000 m 2) of office space for its planned tower. Sears and the city of Chicago approved the design and construction began in April 1971. Sears eventually bought the West Chicago loop location and bought 15 old buildings from 100 owners and paid $2.7 million to the city. The company was given a location by West Chicago Loop not far from Grant Park. Sears wanted to put many of its employees into one building on the western part of Chicago's Loop. was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Many people from Chicago still call the tower by its original name. It was known as the Sears Tower until 2009, as it was the headquarters of retail company Sears from its opening in 1974. Morgan Stanley moved into the tower in 2019. Other major company offices in the tower include Schiff Hardin and Seyfarth Shaw. The building's largest office partner is United Airlines, which moved its corporate headquarters from 77 West Wacker Drive in 2012. The tower was renamed in 2009 after the Willis Group bought the tower. It is one of Chicago's most popular tourist places. Each year, more than one million people visit its observation deck, the highest in the United States. It is also the 23rd-tallest in the world. As of 2021, it is the third-tallest building in the United States and the Western hemisphere. Willis Tower is seen as the best work of architect Fazlur Khan. It was also the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere for 41 years, until the new One World Trade Center beat it in 2013. It was the tallest building in the world for twenty-five years until the Petronas Towers were built in Malaysia. ![]() When it finished costruction in 1973, it beat the World Trade Center in New York City to become the tallest building in the world. The tower has 108 stories, though the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. ![]() The Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, is a 108- story, 1,450-foot (442.1 m) skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. Now, I’m adding “going out on the Skydeck balcony” to my bucket list.Location in the United States Show map of the United States I was however able to get close enough to the balconies to snap a few pictures of others enjoying the thrill of being suspended 103 floors above South Wacker Drive. Unfortunately the wait in the lines for pictures on the balconies were far too long for me to ever make it back to Union Station before my train was to depart and I had a feeling that Amtrak wouldn’t hold the train just for me. One really cool feature of the Skydeck is the retractible glass balconies. After a while, I figured that I could help speed things up a bit by volunteering to take pictures of the people whose arms were too short to take satisfying selfies. Some of the windows were a little crowded and I’d have to wait for others to finish taking photos before being able to get close enough to snap my own pictures. The views of the city from the top were spectacular. On the elevator ride up, a recorded voice announces when you are at the height of various other structures the Taj Mahal, the Seattle Space Needle, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building etc. So I purchased a ticked, watched a short movie about the history and construction of the tower. and oddly enough, I had to take the elevator DOWN to get to the place to buy tickets. The entrance to the Skydeck is on West Jackson Blvd. Photos taken from atop Willis Tower with my smartphone! #VZWBuzz ![]()
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