Crain Communications Building Review

Besides holding the distinction of being one of the buildings destroyed in Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the Crain Communications Building, formerly the Smurfit-Stone Building, stands apart from the rest of Chicago’s skyline because of its slanted, rhombus-shaped face. The prominent, disjointed slit near the top of its facade earned it the nickname the “Vagina Building” and in fact, many locals view it as the feminine counter to Chicago’s other phallic skyscrapers.

At the time of its completion in 1983, the Crain Communications Building was one of the world’s first computerized office buildings. Designed by A. Epstein and Sons, the modern-looking building overlooks Millennium Park and can be seen from Chicago’s Museum Campus. From this vantage point, the building brings some much needed variation to Chicago’s boxy skyline. The Crain Building’s slanted facade stands out amongst the IBM Plaza and Heritage Building. The unique and modern architecture of the Crain Building’s disjointed, sloping face, adorned with lights makes its neighbors look archaic and unoriginal.

However, if one were to walk around the corner of 150 N. Michigan Avenue and examine the building’s other side, it becomes apparent why more buildings don’t take their design and structural cues from Chicago’s least phallic skyscraper.

The other side of the Crain Communications Building looks like it belongs to a completely different building. Its top looks angular and seems unfinished. It loses its flashy modernist appeal and instead, looks garish and ugly. The building’s bold design risks would pay off more if it looked as extravagant from every angle, rather than one specific vantage point. A few blocks away, the similarly structurally-unique Marina City residential complex looks interesting no matter what angle it is viewed at. It is for this reason that Marina City is more iconic than the Crain Building and is (probably) why Wilco chose to use Marina City on the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot instead of the Crain Building. 

The Crain Building’s “bad side” takes away from the appeal from the otherwise well-designed, distinguished facade. If the building looked as good as it does from the front at every angle, the Crain Communication Building would be one of the highlights of Chicago’s skyline, but its tacky backside leaves this diamond-shaped skyscraper as little more than a lump of coal.