875 North Michigan Avenue, known for decades as the John Hancock Center, rises on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, completed in 1969 to a design by the structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan and the architect Bruce Graham of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Its most recognizable feature is the exposed X-braced steel trusswork visible across its exterior facade, a structural system Khan developed to resist wind loads far more efficiently than a conventional frame, using markedly less steel than earlier tall buildings of comparable height. The 100-story tower combines retail, offices, parking and residential condominiums within a single tapered form, one of the first skyscrapers designed from the outset to mix such varied uses in one structure. Its observation deck, long a major Chicago tourist attraction, sits near the top of the tower with views over Lake Michigan and the city skyline. The building's name changed to its street address in 2018 after the John Hancock Financial naming rights expired.
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