With its curving green glass wall echoing a bend in the Chicago River, 333 W. Wacker Drive is one of Chicago's most beloved skyscrapers, a renowned example of architecture that simultaneously draws inspiration from its surroundings and upgrades them.
So I was deeply dismayed last week to get a reader's email alerting me that workers were installing a big "NUVEEN" sign (left) at the top of the 36-story office building.
Guess who was even more upset? The architect of 333, New York's William Pedersen.
"My God," Pedersen said after I showed him a picture of the white-lettered, off-center Nuveen sign — a blot on 333's exquisitely symmetrical riverfront facade. "It is poorly proportioned. It is poorly placed. The sign seems to have little impact other than it just messes up the building."
These warts in the sky are proliferating, bringing ad clutter where it doesn't belong — to Chicago's world-famous skyline.
With the economy still struggling and with office vacancy rates still high, building owners who want to attract or retain tenants may feel they have no choice but to cave in to demands to turn skyscraper tops into advertising billboards.
"To see these signs on these beautiful buildings — they don't belong there, but in today's environment, in today's economy, when you're trying to get a big tenant, that's a real incentive," said Marilyn Lissner, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield, the global commercial real estate firm.
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