Tribune Tower

Tribune Tower is a Gothic skyscraper with a secret that most visitors walk past without noticing — embedded in the limestone walls at street level are 149 fragments of famous buildings and landmarks from around the world, collected by Chicago Tribune correspondents over decades: pieces of the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Berlin Wall, the Great Pyramid, Westminster Abbey, and Fort Sumter, among others.

The tower itself was the winning entry in a 1922 international architecture competition organised by Tribune publisher Colonel Robert McCormick, who wanted 'the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world.' The Gothic design by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells beat 260 entries from around the globe, including a famous modernist submission by Eliel Saarinen that didn't win but was so influential it changed the direction of American architecture. The competition entries are displayed in the Art Institute.

The stone fragments are labelled with small plaques, and hunting for them is one of Chicago's best free activities — walking around the base of the tower, spotting pieces of world history mortared into the wall of a newspaper building. The Tribune moved out in 2018 when the tower was converted to luxury condominiums, but the fragments remain, and the flying buttresses, pointed arches, and octagonal crown still make it one of the most distinctive silhouettes on the Michigan Avenue skyline.