Chicago Architecture Info

Two Pru

Location

180 North Stetson Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
United States

Photographs

Facts

Formerly Two Prudential Plaza
Address 180 North Stetson Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60601
Neighborhood The Loop
Built 1990
Developer Prudential Insurance Company of America
Architecture firm Loebl Schlossman and Hackl
Type
  • Office
  • Retail
  • Skyscraper
Floors 64
Hheight
  • Maximum height: 995 feet
  • Roof height: 915 feet
Net site area 143,544 square feet
Floor Area Ratio 17.5
Floor space 993,507 square feet
Loading docks 9
Parking space 523

Timeline

2018 This building's name changed from Two Prudential Plaza to Two Pru, and the complex was renamed from Prudential Plaza to One Two Pru.
August, 2020 Crain's Chicago Business reported that the Prudential Insurance Company decided to walk away from the naming rights it's had for this complex for the previous 65 years.

Narrative

Reminiscent of a number of other skyscrapers around the world, this building successfully takes the art moderne aesthetic and updates it for a new generation.

The building rises from an artificial hillside plaza as a dramatic shaft piercing the sky. Along the way it goes through several chevron-shaped setbacks until it reaches the top — a diamond shape created by chamfering the corners of the block. The building's grid pattern is represented in these cuts as stripes, as if the architect cut into a layered candy. Further visual interest is generated by long glass channels which run down all four sides of the building, leaping over the setbacks like crystal waterfalls that sprout from gables at the roofline. The entire affair is topped with a short spire, a spike really, which helps end the building's skyward ambitions.

Quotations

We have a responsibility to the community to build something that is uplifting and appealing and doesn't show its shorts.
Architect Steve Wright in The Chicago Tribune July 23, 1995

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