Chicago Board of Trade Building Opens (1885)
On May 1, 1885, the Chicago Board of Trade opened the doors of its lavish new headquarters at the foot of LaSalle Street, cementing Chicago's reputation as the commercial capital of the American Midwest. The Romanesque Revival structure, crowned by a soaring clock tower, replaced a more modest earlier home and gave the world's busiest commodities exchange a building worthy of its economic clout. Though it would stand for only four decades before being replaced, the 1885 building set the stage for the Art Deco skyscraper that occupies the site today.
A Symbol of Chicago's Commercial Rise
By the 1880s, the Chicago Board of Trade, founded in 1848, had become the dominant marketplace for grain, livestock, and other agricultural commodities in the United States. Farmers, millers, and speculators from across the country funneled their business through its trading floor, where wheat, corn, and pork futures were bought and sold in a chaotic daily scrum known as the pits. The organization's growing wealth and influence demanded a headquarters that matched its status, and Chicago civic leaders saw the new building as a chance to showcase the city's recovery and expansion since the devastating fire of 1871. Architect W.W. Boyington, already famous for designing the Chicago Water Tower, was commissioned to create a structure that would stand as one of the tallest and most recognizable buildings in the city. Construction proceeded through the early 1880s at the intersection of LaSalle and Jackson streets, a location that would remain synonymous with Chicago finance for well over a century. When it opened on May 1, 1885, the building rose roughly 322 feet including its distinctive tower, making it briefly one of the tallest structures in Chicago and a proud emblem of the city's rapid Gilded Age growth.
Did You Know?
The 1885 Board of Trade building's clock tower was so tall for its era that it briefly ranked among the highest points in Chicago, and locals used it to navigate the city long before skyscrapers filled the skyline. When it was demolished in 1929, workers salvaged some of its ornamental stonework, pieces of which reportedly ended up decorating gardens and buildings elsewhere in the city.
Opening Day and the Trading Floor
The May 1, 1885 opening drew crowds of merchants, brokers, and curious Chicagoans eager to see the ornate new home of the exchange. Boyington's Romanesque design featured heavy stone masonry, arched windows, and elaborate carved detailing, while the interior centered on a vast, light-filled trading hall built to accommodate the shouting, gesturing throngs of traders who conducted business by open outcry. The building's tower, visible for miles across the flat Chicago skyline, quickly became a navigational landmark and a point of civic pride, appearing in postcards and photographs of the era. Inside, the Board of Trade's members conducted transactions that set prices for grain shipped across the country and exported overseas, giving the building outsized influence over the American agricultural economy. The structure also housed offices for the many brokerage firms, telegraph companies, and grain merchants who depended on proximity to the trading floor. For the next several decades, the LaSalle Street building served as the literal and symbolic heart of Chicago's futures markets, weathering economic booms, panics, and the enormous surge in commodity trading that accompanied America's westward agricultural expansion.
Legacy and Replacement
By the late 1920s, the aging 1885 building could no longer accommodate the exchange's booming membership and trading volume, and Board of Trade leaders decided to demolish it in favor of a modern skyscraper. The Romanesque structure was torn down in 1929, and in its place rose the 44-story Art Deco tower designed by Holabird & Root, completed in 1930 and still standing today at 604 feet, topped by the famous statue of Ceres, goddess of grain. That newer building went on to serve as the primary trading venue for both the Chicago Board of Trade and, after the 2007 merger, the CME Group, before CME sold it in 2012 to a consortium including GlenStar Properties and USAA Real Estate. Though the 1885 building itself no longer exists, its opening marked a pivotal moment in Chicago's history: the moment the city's grain and commodities markets acquired an architectural home grand enough to reflect their national importance. The site at LaSalle and Jackson has remained continuously associated with commodities trading since that 1885 opening, a remarkable 140-year lineage anchored by two successive landmark buildings.