LaSalle Street at Jackson Boulevard
Admission: Free
The Chicago Board of Trade rears up at the end of LaSalle
Street like the prow of a financial Titanic. This one seems to
really be unsinkable. Designed in 1928 by architects Holabird
and Root, the limestone facade is an elegant Art Deco landmark,
topped by artist John Storr’s silvery statue of Ceres, the
Roman goddess of grain. She holds a sheaf of wheat in one hand,
and a bag of corn in the other. It’s perfectly natural to
mistake the latter for a sack of money, given the context in
which she appears.
An addition to the original building was designed by local
legend Helmut Jahn, whose controversial style defined a decade
of exuberant postmodern architectural experiments. Completed in
1982, the addition works well as a modern companion piece.
Echoing the Deco lines of the original, Jahn tied the buildings
together with color, massing, and interior detail. In respectful
recognition of the building’s history, a 1930 mural of Ceres
designed and executed by Chicago artist John Warner Norton for
the trading floor was reinstalled in the 12th floor atrium of
Jahn’s annex.
To see the new Chicago Board of Trade in action, make your
way up to the visitors’ gallery on the 5th floor. With its
banks of steeply raked seats, the trading floor looks like a
mercantile UN. An acute visual angle from the visitors’
gallery lends an otherworldly quality to the proceedings; voices
float up from the floor as if from a great distance. The baroque
stratification of markets in this institution evokes imperial
bureaucracies, too: federal funds, bonds, bond options,
municipal bonds, ten-, two-, and five-year notes and options,
Dow options, gold and silver, are all traded here in
site-specific markets.
You know you’re in the modern world, however, as you survey
the incredible mosaic of television screens in serried ranks
above the pits. Some of them are an electronic update of the old
tickertape machines, while others display news broadcasts of
particular interest to traders, brokers, and their clients.
There’s a peppy, sixteen-minute film shown for the benefit
of visitors, which strives for simplicity and comprehensibility,
actually succeeding, for the most part. Taking one of several
vertiginous escalators between floors, you may visit the
in-house art gallery, showing graphic works reflecting the Board
of Trade experience. A small exhibition of historic objects and
ephemera will please those with a nostalgic bent.
