Howells
and HoodÕs description of their winning design
¥ÒThe design is before
everything else an expression of The Tribune. The structure is carried to its full height as a square on the Michigan
Avenue front only, thus always giving the same impression from wherever seen, and showing the
same from all points as The Tribune landmark.
¥We feel that in this design we have
produced a unit. It is not a tower
or top, placed on a building – it is all one building.
¥It climbs into the air naturally,
carrying up its main structural lines, and binding them together
with a high open parapet. Our
disposition of the main structural piers on the exterior
has been adopted to give the full utilization of the corner light in the
offices, and the view up and down the Avenue.
¥Our desire has been not so much an
archaeological expression of any particular style as to express
in the exterior the essentially American problem of skyscraper construction, with its
continued vertical lines and its inserted horizontals. It is only carrying
forward to a final expression what many of us architects have tried already
under more or less hampering conditions in various cities. We have wished to make this landmark
the study of a beautiful and vigorous form, not of an extraordinary form.
. . .
¥It is perhaps not necessary to call
attention to the fact that the upper part of the building has been
designed not only for its own outline and composition, but for the
possibilities of illumination and reflected lighting at night.Ó
