No More Hancock? 5 Iconic Chicago Buildings with Name Changes

Crain Communications Building (150 N. Michigan Ave)— You’ve seen this building, it’s the one that looks like it was sliced off at the top into a diamond shape.  It was built in 1984 by Associates Commercial Group and was named Associates Center, until the firm moved out in 1989.  New building tenants renamed it the Smurfit-Stone Building and, later, the Stone Container Building, until 2012. That’s when Crain Communications (publishers of Crain’s Chicago Business, Advertising Age, Auto Week) relocated their Chicago headquarters into the building.

Guaranteed Rate Field (35th and Shields) — We’ve only had to live with this horrible moniker for a baseball stadium for two years (so far), but prior to that it possessed an equally horrible moniker, U. S. Cellular Field (nicknamed “The Cell” by fans). That name lasted from 2003 until 2016. In the era before “naming rights” were sold to the highest bidder, the stadiums located at this intersection (the original was across the street from the current one) were known, alternatively, as Comiskey Park (1912-1962 and 1975-2003) and White Sox Park (1910-1912 and 1962-1975).

Richard B. Ogilvie Transportation Center (500 W. Madison) — The original structure on this site was built by the Chicago & North Western Railway in 1911 and was called the Chicago & Northwestern Terminal until the station’s head house was demolished in 1997 and replaced by a 42-story office building called Citicorp Center.  Later that same year, the building, which rises above the below-street-level tracks, was renamed after Richard B. Ogilvie, a former Board member of the Milwaukee Road Railroad, a governor of Illinois and the creator of the Regional Transportation Authority.

Palmolive Building (919 N. Michigan Ave.) — This beautiful Art Deco building, the one with the beacon on top, was built in 1929 by the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company and, for the next 36 years was known as the Palmolive Building. In 1965, Playboy Enterprises moved its editorial and business offices into the building and it became the Playboy Building, as evidenced by the huge PLAYBOY letters across the outside of the top floor. Playboy vacated the building in 1989 and for the next 12 years it was known by its street address, 919 N. Michigan Ave. In 2001, the new owners of the building decided to restore the Palmolive name, which remains in place today.