CNA Plaza

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Coordinates: 41°52.63297277927592′N 87°37.5421929359436′W

CNA Plaza is a 600-foot (183 m), 44-story high-rise building located at 325 South Wabash Avenue in Chicago. It is a simple, rectangular International Style building, but it is unique in that the entire building is painted bright red, turning an otherwise ordinary-looking structure into one of the most eye-catching buildings in the city. It was designed by the firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and was completed in 1972.

Originally known as Continental Center III (in reference to the original moniker of CNA Financial Corporation, Continental National American Group [1]), both CNA Plaza and the neighboring CNA Plaza North (Continental Center II, built in 1962) adjoined and were painted red. The shorter red building was later restored to its original gray tone and is no longer physically tied to CNA Plaza. In 1999 a large fragment of a window fell from the building and killed a woman walking with her child. CNA Financial, a property insurance company, later paid $18 million to settle the resultant lawsuit. All the buildings windows were replaced in an expensive retrofit. Many other building owners in Chicago checked their windows for soundness, leading to a flurry of repairs and replacements.

Utilizing a combination of lights on/off and 1,600 window blinds open/closed [2] (and sometimes foamboard cutouts [3]), the windows on CNA Plaza are often used to display lighted window messages, typically denoting holidays, remembrances, and other events denoting Chicago civic pride. A computer program is used to calculate which windows need to be activated to create the proper message.

[edit] External links

• Official Site
• CNA Plaza Lighted Window Message Archive