Aon Center

Aon Center, 83-floor (1,136 feet, or 346.3 metres, tall) commercial skyscraper located at 200 E. Randolph Street in downtown Chicago’s East Loop area. Completed in 1972, the simple, rectangular-shaped, tubular steel-framed structure was originally called the Standard Oil Building because it housed that company’s corporate headquarters. Clad in Carrara marble from Tuscany, Italy, a famed source of building material since antiquity, the tower constituted the world’s tallest marble-clad building. When Standard Oil was rebranded as Amoco in 1985, the tower was likewise renamed the Amoco Building. After numerous cracks in the facade were discovered, raising safety concerns, the marble exterior was replaced with white granite at enormous expense in the early 1990s; it was the largest building in the world ever re-clad. The building was sold in 1998, and the following year the tower was renamed after the building’s major tenant, the Aon corporation. It is Chicago’s third tallest building, after the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower (1,450 feet, or 442 metres) and Trump International Hotel and Tower (1,388.45 feet, or 423.2 metres). (For an explanation of the determination of building heights, see Researcher’s Note: Heights of buildings.)