The CBOT Building

Our office, and several of our affiliated offices are at the Chicago Board of Trade Building. The building is pretty epic. We took a tour of the CBOT on Friday morning. The building is designed in an Art Deco style with silver trimmed dark marble, marble patterned floors and intricate lights and mouldings. The tour started from the top and worked its way down. We took the elevator to the 42 floor, then walked up at least 2 flights of stairs. The top few floors of the building feel fairly abandoned but house at least one office. The top floor is abandoned but is the site of an old studio for Soul Train.

We took the stairs up to the old observation deck. The observations deck used to be ceiling-ed with glass windows but was eventually enclosed. There are two look out hatches that we were able to open to see spectacular views of the city. Out of one of the hatches you could turn around and face upward to see the statue of Ceres on top of the building.

On the way down we stopped in the atrium with expansive glass ceilings. We also made a stop at the viewing windows that look out onto the exchange floor. The hustle and bustle I had heard of was not really visible. I was told that it was a quiet day. There were still the tell tale scraps of paper littering the floor and a few of the pits had some action. The colorful motion of the different trading jackets gave the floor it's lively feel even though it was a quiet day.

We eventually worked our way down to the vault. The large safe door, equipped with cogs and bolts was open, exposing the abandoned safety deposit boxes, some pulled out with doors hanging open. This was my favorite part of the tour, the vault had a mysterious and Gothic atmosphere, especially since our tour guide told us historians can only speculate what the vault was used for, but don't know for sure. I found this to be odd, you'd think it would be well noted somewhere.

It was a fun few days even though we didn't fit it all in. I at least got a mini history lesson with the tour of the building. Oh well! Until next time!