Chicago Board of Trade Building

The Chicago Board of Trade Building stands at the foot of LaSalle Street in Chicago's Loop, completed in 1930 to a design by the firm Holabird and Root, replacing an earlier building on the same site that had housed the commodities exchange since the 1880s. Its stepped, tapering Art Deco massing rises to a pyramidal roof topped by a roughly 9-meter aluminum statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, a fitting emblem for a building built to house grain and commodities trading; according to a widely repeated account, the sculptor gave the statue no facial features because the architects believed it would stand too high above street level for anyone to see its face. At the time of its completion the building was the tallest in Chicago and remained so for more than three decades, and its cavernous former trading floor, with soaring windows and elaborate Art Deco detailing, functioned as the literal marketplace for the exchange for much of the twentieth century. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977, recognizing both its architectural significance and its long role at the center of American commodities trading.