Sears tower - Height, hours, How many floors, History, Pictures

How tall is the Sears Tower?

The Sears Tower, currently known as The Willis Tower, is a 110 storied skyscraper located in Chicago, Illinois, US. After it was completed in 1973, the 442.1m/1, 450 feet tall building overtook New York’s World Trade Center towers to attain the title of the tallest building in the world. It held the title for almost 25 years and then was passed onto the Petronas twin towers in Malaysia. It was the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere until the construction of the One World Trade Center in New York in 2014. As of 2018, the Sears Tower is the 16^th tallest building in the world and the second tallest in the Western Hemisphere and the US.

United Airlines has its operations center and headquarters in the Sears Tower. It has rented nearly 20 floors is the biggest occupant in the building. In 2009, the building was renamed as Willis Tower as part of the lease deal signed with the Willis Group for a section of space in the building.

The Sears Tower is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Chicago. Over 1 million people visit the observation deck in the building every year.

History of the Sears Tower

Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the biggest retailer on the planet in the 1960s. It employed around 350,000 people. In 1969, the company decided to integrate all its offices and employees disbursed around different places in Chicago under one roof. To this end, they sought the consultancy services of a firm to find a location for a new office building.

After checking the legalities involved, the consultancy firm offered two locations and Sears executives chose the S Wacker Dr site. The property was then acquired by buying 15 older buildings from about 99 owners. Sears also paid nearly $2.8 million to the city of Chicago for a part of Quincy Street to consolidate the lot.

Design and Construction

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill were commissioned as architects by Sears to create a structure that would be one the biggest buildings in the world. Such a building would be able to provide office space for the burgeoning growth predicted for Sears in the coming years.

The architect and structural engineer team of Bruce Graham and Fazlur Rahman Khan then conceived the design of the building. The structure would consist of 9 square tubes and each of the tubes would more or less be a separate building. These tubes would be grouped in a matrix of 3 by 3 forming a 70m/225-foot-sided square base. All the 9 different tubular buildings will be built till the 50^th floor. Then the southeast and northwest tubes would stop and the rest 7 tubes would continue to rise. The southwest and northeast tubes would stop at the 66^th floor, while rest continued upwards. The south, east, and north tubes ended on the 90^th floor. The center and west tubes would keep rising till the 108^th floor. This innovative bundled tube design for a building was very innovative, economic, and structurally efficient. The 442.1 meter building was taller than the Empire State Building and offered much more office space at a lesser cost per unit area.

The city of Chicago and Sears approved the distinctive design and in April 1971, the first steel was laid at the site. The construction of the building completed in just 2 years in May 1973. There are black bands on the Sears Tower near the 29^th to 32^nd floors, the 64^th to 65^th floors, the 88^th to 89^th floors, and the 104^th to 108^th floors. They are known as louvres that facilitate ventilation for service machinery and hide the belt trusses of the building. The building had a fire sprinkler system installed from the very start even though then laws did not require it.

The total construction cost was around $149 million which was borne by Sears. In 2018, this cost would be around $829 million; this is still lesser than the 2004-constructed Taipei 101, which would have cost over $2 billion as of 2014.

Two TV antennas were placed on the roof of the Sears Tower in 1982. This increased its overall height to 520.3 m/1,707 feet. One of the antennas was extended further in 2000 and it increased the height to 527 m/1,729 feet.

Sears Tower opening and later

Sears had calculated that the company would occupy a percentage of the space in the building and rent other offices to small business and companies. It would retake that space once their company grew as predicted. However, due to increased competition, the Sears did not grow as expected and it even lost its market share by the mid/late 1970s. Other businesses also did not take up tenancy in the tower as expected and the building was only 50 percent occupied in the 1980s.

Sears moved out of the Sears Tower in 1992 and sold the building to AEW Capital Management in 1994. Some companies tried to buy the building between 1997 and 2014, but were unsuccessful. The Blackstone Group bought it in 2015 for $1.3 billion.

The ‘Skydeck’ observation place

The Skydeck is an observation deck in the Sears Tower, the highest such deck in the US. It is situated on the 103^rd floor of the building, at a height of more than 412m/1350 feet above ground level. It was opened to public in June 1974. Visitors can feel the swaying of the tower on windy days. Tourists can take the elevator and reach the deck in around 60 seconds. During the elevator ride, one can experience the change in pressure as one rises upwards. The views from the deck are also spectacular; on a clear day, one can see across Lake Michigan, over the plains of the IL state, and to other states like Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

There is a second observation deck on the 99^th floor. It is used when the above floor is closed.

The Skydeck was renovated in Jan 2009. Retractable all-glass balconies that could be extended to 1.2 m/4 feet were installed from the 103^rd floor. These glass balconies/boxes are referred to as ‘The Ledge’ and can bear a load of about 4 metric tons. Tourists can sit on the glass floor of the balconies and look down 412 m below onto the street as well as enjoy more than 180-degree views of the surroundings.

Sears Tower – Opening hours

The Skydeck and other tourist spots in the Sears Tower are open 10 AM to 8 PM, Monday to Sunday. The tickets are priced at $15 for 3 to 12 year olds, while adult tickets cost around $23. Tourists may spend about 1 hour (or less) on the deck enjoying the views.
The visitor entrance is located along Jackson Boulevard, on the tower’s south side.

Trivia

The total building area of the Sears Tower is 3,787,200 sq ft/351,846 m2
The name change of Sears Tower to Willis Tower did not go down well with the locals. The name change was featured in the top 10 list of worst corporate name changes by Time magazine.
The glass floor of the Skydeck shattered on 29^th May, 2014, with tourists sitting on it. It however did not result in any injuries.
Dan Goodwin was the first man to successfully climb to the top of the tower in May 1981. Alain “Spiderman” Robert climbed the building with his bare feet and hands in August 1999.
The Sears Tower is the tallest steel construction tower in the world. Composite construction or concrete has been used by all buildings taller than the Sears Tower.
A few suits were filed during the construction phase. The applicants did not want more than 67 floors to be constructed as that would disrupt their TV reception. The suits were dismissed by all courts, including the Supreme Court of Illinois