Throwback Thursday – Harris Trust and Savings Bank

This weeks Epstein Throwback Thursday takes us back to Chicago August, 1970 for the completion of the 15-story Harris Trust & Savings Bank located on the southwest corner of Franklin & Monroe Streets. This 428,000 sf office building featured modular design and was constructed of reinforced concrete with tinted glass and granite exterior façade.

The first floor of the Harris Trust building provided customer banking services and the rest of the structure featured space for data processing support and other computer-oriented departments for Harris.

This building featured an approximately 28,000 sf floor plate on each floor with the elevator core and restrooms located along the north wall. This was done to allow Harris to have a larger office space on each floor.

Also for you CTA buffs the caisson foundations for this building were strategically spaced to provide room for the curved CTA tunnel that runs below.

This building at 311 W. Monroe is still standing although Harris, which is now owned by BMO, moved its operations. As a side note this building was sold to a joint-venture led by Golub in 2012 for $44M and Golub has this building up for sale again because they believe that can already turn a profit due to 311s large floor plate of office space. Talk about forward thinking by our architects and planners huh?