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In 2007, a joint venture that included the Kennedy family, which owns Wolf Point, where the main branch of the Chicago River splits into the north and south branches, and once owned Merchandise Mart, announced it would develop the area into an 89-story hotel, residential, and office tower.
But more than 40 years earlier, there was a plan for an 80-story cylindrical apartment building on the same site.
At 782 feet, it would have been the tallest building in Chicago and the fourth-highest structure in the world, and that does not even include the 571-foot broadcast antenna. The design was clearly intended to build on the success of Marina City four blocks to the east.
Announced on April 29, 1963, at a news conference in the office of Mayor Richard J. Daley, the plan was for a giant cylindrical glass and steel tower with a detached perimeter frame, elevated on stilts. Covering 5.67 acres, the project would include 1,300 apartments, ice-skating rinks, tennis courts, a 330-seat theater, and other recreational facilities. A four-story 320-room hotel would be built north of the tower.
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The architect was Charles Booher Genther (1907-1987), founder of PACE Associates, a planning, architecture, and engineering firm that worked on early drawings of Marina City.
Construction of the $45 million project would have started in mid-1964 and be completed, developers estimated, in late 1965 or early 1966. They got at least as far as a permit from the FAA for the broadcast antenna. It is not known exactly when the project was officially cancelled.
French explorers stopped at Wolf Point in the 17th Century. In 1831, a popular tavern and hotel, Sauganash Hotel, was built there. The newly formed Town of Chicago held many town meetings there in the 1830s.
(Right) Wolf Point in 2016. Wolf Point West (left), the first of three buildings planned, and Holiday Inn Mart Plaza (right) from across Chicago River.
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