File:Carbide and Carbon Building, Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL - 52891395441.jpg

English: Built in 1929, this Art Deco-style skyscraper was designed by Burnham Brothers for the Carbide and Carbon Company to serve as their regional headquarters. The building stands 37 stories and 503 feet (153 meters) tall, with a 23-story lower section that is the same dimensions as the building’s footprint, and a 14-story slender tower above in the center of the eastern end of the building. The building features a black granite base with green and gold terra cotta cladding above, along with gilding and bronze trim. The building is clad in black granite at the base, which extends up to the third floor, which features large brass-trimmed storefronts at the base, a tall doorway with a large glass curtain wall and decorative brass screen over the door, and is flanked by two large brass lantern sconce light fixtures, and features a decorative architrave above with gilded panels, and decorative panels on the side walls flanking the doorway. The base also features window bays on the second and third floors featuring decorative metal spandrels, below metal lettering spelling out Carbide and Carbon Building on both the Michigan Avenue and Wacker Place facades, above which is a band of gilded acroterions, forming the top of the base. Above the base, the building is predominately clad in a chalky pale dark green terra cotta, with one-over-one windows, decorative reliefs, some of which are made of a contrasting tan terra cotta or being gilded, which surround the fifth floor windows and sit below the sixth floor windows, with the facade remaining relatively simple with decorative spandrel panels that feature motifs with volutes up to the spandrel between the 20th and 21st floors, which features decorative contrasting trim at the corners and along the Wacker Place facade, demarcating the start of the top of the lower portion of the building, with the spandrel panels between the 21st and 22nd floors being distinct from those below, and the 23rd floor featuring a non-recessed spandrel, with decorative reliefs in green terra cotta, tan terra cotta, and gilded terra cotta on the facade above the 23rd floor windows, terminating the two outer bays on each side of the Michigan Avenue facade, as well as the building’s north, south, and west facades. Above the 23rd floor, the tower continues to the 35th floor, with corner setbacks featuring chamfered corners and contrasting tan terra cotta and gilded terra cotta, with the two central bays on the east and west facades and three central bays on the north and south facades continuing to the 36th floor, where they also terminate below decorative tan terra cotta and gilded terra cotta trim. The tower gets narrower at the 37th floor, with decorative piers turned 45 degrees from the rest of the building at the corners, projected bays on each face, and decorative made of tan terra cotta and gilded terra cotta ringing the top with decorative reliefs. The top of the building is crowned with a spire, clad in tan terra cotta and gilded terra cotta, and is similar in shape to the top of the tower below, but with narrower and taller proportions, emphasizing its verticality. Inside, the building’s lobby is mostly intact, with the decorative ribbed ceiling, original glass ceiling light fixtures, brass screens around the front entrance doors, marble wall cladding, brass trim and railings, coffered ceilings, fluted pilasters, brass elevator doors, and marble floors being intact and in excellent condition. The building is a contributing structure in the Michigan–Wacker Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1996. The building was adaptively reused and converted into a hotel in 2001-2004, serving first as the Hard Rock Hotel Chicago, before becoming the St. Jane Chicago Hotel in 2018, which closed in 2020. Since 2021, the building has been home to the Pendry Chicago Hotel.