Aon Center

Here’s a really cool photo that I took of the building where I work, the 83-story Aon Center in Chicago.
I just love this building, even before I worked here. It’s the fourth tallest building in the U.S. and there’s nothing pretty about it. It was completed in 1973, the same time as the World Trade Towers in New York and one year before Chicago’s Sears Tower took its world record in 1974.

It has absolutely “no” architectural appeal. There’s no art deco from the 1930s, no new colored-glass from the 1950s, no neo-modern design of the mid 60s -- It’s a pure, blatant, prime example of the strictly utilitarian, functional design from the early 1970s.

But it works.

Although this slender white structure was the second-tallest building in Chicago for 36 years, I doubt that any Chicagoan could tell you that. It's address lies two blocks west of Lake Shore Drive and also two blocks east of Chicago's downtown Loop.

Its towering, nondescript "non-iconicness" connects our city together, really, without anyone ever realizing it.

So that's why I love it, and always have.

Even when I first visited Chicago in 1988, I was really captivated by this building. I was a restaurant manager and church organist back then. . . .

Little did I know that 22 years later would have me being a mid-level manager with a windowless office on the 22nd floor of this fine building.

Sigh . . . It’s always pretty amazing how life works out.