The Merchandise Mart (or the Merch Mart, or the Mart) is a commercial building in downtown Chicago, Illinois. When it opened in 1930, it was the world's largest building, with 4 million square feet (372,000 m2) of floor space. The Art Deco structure is at the junction of the Chicago River's branches. The building is a leading retailing and wholesale location, hosting 20,000 visitors and tenants daily in the late 2000s. Built by Marshall Field & Co. and later owned for over half a century by the Kennedy family, the Mart centralizes Chicago's wholesale goods industry by consolidating architectural and interior design vendors and trades under a single roof. It has become home to several other enterprises, including the Shops at the Mart, the Chicago campus of the Illinois Institute of Art, Motorola Mobility, the Grainger Technology Group branch of W.W. Grainger, Conagra Brands, and the Chicago tech startup center 1871. It was sold in January 1998 to Vornado Realty Trust. The Merchandise Mart is so large that it had its own ZIP Code (60654) until 2008, when the Postal Service assigned the ZIP Code to part of the surrounding area. In 2010, the building opened its Design Center showrooms to the public.
History
Construction and context
In 1926, a westward extension of double-deck Wacker Drive increased development on the south riverbank. In 1927, Marshall Field & Co. announced its plans to build on the north bank opposite Wacker Drive. The site, bordered by Orleans Street, Wells Street, Kinzie Street, and the Chicago River, was formerly a Native American trading post and the site of Chicago and North Western Railway's former Wells Street Station, abandoned in 1911 in favor of the Chicago and North Western Passenger Terminal. With the railroad's air rights, the site was large enough to accommodate "the largest building in the world". Removing the train yard supported the Chicago Plan Commission's desire to develop and beautify the riverfront. James Simpson, president of Marshall Field & Co. from 1923 to 1930 and chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission from 1926 to 1935, turned the first shovels of dirt at groundbreaking on August 16, 1928, along with architect Ernest Graham. General contractor John W. Griffiths & Sons brought building construction into the Machine Age through the use of techniques "ordinarily used in the construction of big dams." Cement arriving by boat was lifted by compressed air to bins 75 feet (20 m) above the ground, with gravel and sand delivered by railroad cars to conveyor belts and transfer elevators. Giant mixers provided wet concrete to skip hoists in vertical towers that were extended as the building rose. Continuously employing 2,500 men and as many as 5,700 men altogether, the construction project lasted a year and a half into the early months of the Great Depression. With a foundation footprint of nearly two square city blocks, the building required 29 million bricks, 40 miles (64 km) of plumbing, 380 miles (610 km) of wiring, nearly 4 million cubic yards (3,100,000 m3) of concrete, 200,000 cubic feet (5,700 m3) of stone, and 4,000 windows. Bethlehem Steel fabricated much of the 60,000 tons of steel. An estimated 7.5 miles (10 km) of corridors and over 30 elevators were included in the construction. The total cost was estimated at $26 million (equivalent to $501,000,000 in 2025).
Ownership The Merchandise Mart opened on May 5, 1930, just east of Chicago's original trading post, Wolf Point. The building realized Marshall Field’s dream of a single wholesale center for the nation and consolidated 13 different warehouses. It was purchased in 1945 or 1946 by the Kennedy family through Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. (MMPI), and managed by Sargent Shriver. Kennedy's purchase price was reported to be either $12.5 or $13 million, and it is said that his initial capital was $1 million, though records say his original mortgage was $12.5 million, roughly half of what it had cost to construct the complex. E. Stanley Klein, a good friend of Marshall Field and Joseph Kennedy, brokered the building's sale. At the time Klein was a partner of Field and together they started Fieldcrest Mills. Klein maintained that Kennedy's bargain price was predicated on an oral agreement between Field and Kennedy that after the sale the building would be donated to the University of Chicago and that Kennedy would take the tax deduction. No documentary evidence of this agreement exists. The building revenues became a principal source of Kennedy family wealth, often used for political campaign funding. In 1998 the Kennedys sold the property to Vornado Realty Trust as part of a larger $625 million ($1.2 billion in current dollars) transaction. When it was sold, the Merchandise Mart was also the Kennedy family's last remaining operating business. That year, Vornado acquired MMPI for $450 million cash and a $100 million-plus stake in Vornado. As of 2007, the building was valued at $917 million.
Expansions and renovations
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