Skyscraper nerds (myself included) across Greektown are shouting Opa! this week as word spreads like flaming saganaki that the One South Halsted tower has been given a green light for construction by the city.
Though the building is going by the nom de plume of 727 West Madison, it’s unmistakably the column-tastic residential tower designed by friends-of-the-blog FitzGerald Associates that will replace the Crowne Plaza hotel’s surface parking lot with a 472-foot-tall circular tower.
There are lots of other curvy skyscrapers in Chicago. The last few years have seen The Parker Fulton Market, 1001 South State, and Hubbard Place all twist their way into the sky. But 1 South Halsted is the first fully circular skyscraper to go up since Bertrand Goldberg’s River City got started, but not much more, back in 1986.