it was ABSOLUTELY a real proposal. the original intent was for him to design a television antenna that would be a mile high, and his thought was, well let's build an office building around it.
this was done very late in his life, when he was at his busiest. there wasn't time for daydreaming. he had daydreamt about this kind of thing earlier in his career, and this was what he had hoped would be the realization of those daydreams. but it was a real proposal.

no. it was a semi-serious attempt at a design of a mile high building but it was, never, a real proposal. end of discussion.

Wright's elevator setbacks for the Illinois would show up later on the Transamerica Pyramid:

http://www.physto.se/~linda/photos/b...5_06070001.jpg
physto.se

In that image it appears the Illinois is placed at about where Trump Tower is now, in which case, the scaling is horrendously wrong. Illinois should be 4 times the height of Aon, not 3, and the base would be HUGE, probably one of the largest bases in all of Chicago, not that spindly tower suggested. For its proportions, Illinois is quite skinny, but it would still be immensely wide. That rendering vastly underscores how massive this building would be.

You're right CGII about the elevators in the Transamerica Pyramid.
I'm glad you pointed that out.

This would have looked cool if it was built!

http://time-blog.com/looking_around/milehigh.jpg DOES VISIONARY MEAN THEY WONT BUILD IT???

Apparently it was supposed to be about 18.5 million2 Feet of floor space. I found it out on Wiki so it might not be accurate

so the outer walls at the top are elevator banks?

Yes, the verticle protrusions on two of the sides.

My guess is, by placing the elevators banks in this manner,
they solved the problem of the elevator shafts taking up too much of the rentable floor space
on the smaller floors at the top.

I could be wrong.

I think this would be okay in chicago- it was just designed in thje 50's, so it was never built.

The only problem I have is whether or not it gets enough light on the interior. Ideally it would be flooded with light with that type of open exterior.

How much would this thing cost? Even if they used something better than atomic powered elevators and diamond meshings for stability, I think it would run up to about 75-100 billion. It would need huge amounts of both private and public funding and ideally it would have a massive transit hub nearby.

I doubt it would be 75 billion. If the Chicago spire is estimated to be 2.3 billion to build, this couldn't be much more than 10 billion. I mean its only 2.5 times taller than the spire, so I don't see why it would be much more than 4 or 5 times more expensive.

^ Except I doubt it could be built with traditional steel. Nanotube technology may be needed to keep this structure from collapsing on itself. So that $75 Billion price tag may be right.

Plus its not like this has been done before. What about research costs? It seems like a whole series of new technologies and devices would be needed to make this thing work.

2.5 times the height of the Spire would not mean that the building is 2.5 times as large, using 2.5 times as much materials, manpower, etc. Let's hypothetically construct a new Chicago Spire at one mile in height, and proportionally similar to the one currently on hold that might one day be built. The base of this mile-high building would necessarily--in order to preserve the proportionality--be 2.5 times as long and 2.5 times as wide. Each floor would have 2.5 squared or 6.25 times the floorspace of each corresponding floor on the Spire. Since the building would also, of course, be 2.5 times as tall, it would require 2.5 cubed, or 15.625 times as much material, and correspondingly, 15.625 times as much manpower to construct it. This assumes, of course, that it would be made of the same materials. My guess is that one would need some kind of strong, lightweight graphite compound for support, since traditional steel, glass, etc., would create unimaginable pressures at the base. I estimate that it would cost around $40billion to construct it.

I would love to live in that thing so I can look down on the John Hancock Center.

I read in a book it was supposed to be Lincoln Park, in a render it looks like its in a park with other buildings in the background. If I had to pick a parcel it looks like the southeastern corner of Lincoln Park. 1600 North Lake Shore Drive would be the address and the tower site would be bound by Lake Shore Drive on the east, North Avenue on the south, State Street (if State Street were extended past North Avenue) on the west, and La Salle Drive on the north (the diagonal feeder that connects the normal La Salle Street with Lake Shore Drive).

Do you think this site would even be big enough? Lets forget the huge plaza/garden thing that Wright envisioned around the tower, but just for the base of the tower itself.

This would be an interesting but weird spot, North Avenue Beach is just to the east past Lake Shore Drive, the Cardinal's residence is just to the south. Gold Coast and Lincoln Park NIMBY's would all have nervous breakdowns.

Other possible locations would be southern Grant Park (above the Roosevelt Metra stop), the vacant land south of Roosevelt Road along the Chicago River, Northerly Island, and Wolf Point assuming the demolition of the Apparel Center.

All of the above locations with the exception of Wolf Point would require no major demolition of existing buildings due to being on unbuilt/undeveloped land.

I think the whole town's NIMBY's would have nervous breakdowns.:haha:

But seriously, this would be roughly twice the height of the Burj, so don't be surprised if people got a little freaked out.

If I remember right, on the Illinois, Wright imagined a new kind of elevator that would be six floors high and ratchet up on the outside (unseen part) of the building.