150 North Riverside Chicago, skyscraper on the Chicago River in the Loop, Chicago, United States
150 North Riverside is a 54-story, 752-foot office tower completed in 2017 to designs by Goettsch Partners on the west bank of the Chicago River. Its dark blue glass facade rises in a grid of vertical and horizontal lines to a flat top. The office floors cantilever from a central core above an eight-story base, so the tower covers just 25 percent of its two-acre site.
Construction began in 2014 on a two-acre site above tracks carrying Metra and Amtrak trains into Union Station, and the tower opened on 20 April 2017. Goettsch Partners designed it for Riverside Investment & Development, with William Blair and Hyatt as anchors. It earned LEED Gold and, in 2019, the Chicago AIA chapter's top design award and the Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award.
In the lobby, the 150 Media Stream is a public media art installation made of 89 LED blades, 150 feet long and 22 feet high, the largest structure of its kind in Chicago. Since 2017 it has shown commissioned work by local and international media artists.
The tower stands on the west bank of the Chicago River, so architectural boat tours pass directly beneath its cantilevered floors. From the riverwalk and the opposite bank the 1:20 slenderness of the base is easiest to see. The lobby, with its nearly 100-foot glass wall, is open to the public.
Two water-filled concrete vaults near the top act as a tuned liquid damper: when wind pushes the facade, the water sloshes the opposite way and cancels the sway. The German Wikipedia gives their combined content as 160,000 gallons.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 92,885 contributors worldwide.
