The Civic Opera Building: Insull's Throne, With Its Back to New York

The Civic Opera Building at 20 N Wacker Drive was completed in 1929 by Samuel Insull, the British-born utilities magnate who built Chicago's electricity and transit infrastructure and fashioned himself as the city's cultural patron. The 45-story building is shaped like an armchair when viewed from above: two long wings extending from a central tower, with the chair facing west, toward the river. The story goes that Insull wanted it that way — a throne with its back turned on New York. The building's construction was financed by Insull's utilities empire, which collapsed spectacularly in 1932, leaving hundreds of thousands of small investors ruined and making Insull one of the most despised men in America. He fled to Greece to escape prosecution, was extradited from Turkey in 1934, tried, and acquitted — and died in a Paris Metro station in 1938, reportedly with only 84 cents in his pocket. Despite its origins in collapse and grandiosity, the building endured. The Civic Opera House inside, designed for 3,500 patrons, is still used for performances by the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The throne-shaped outline on the Chicago skyline remains one of the most distinctive silhouettes on the river.