The city that invented the skyscraper still reaches higher than almost anywhere on earth. A scroll up through the fifteen structures that define the Chicago skyline — their height, their engineering, and the architects who drew them.
Chicago didn’t just grow tall — it invented tall.
The modern skyscraper was born here in the 1880s, and the city has been refining the form ever since. This is a ranked, visual guide to the 15 tallest buildings in Chicago — from the 1,451-foot bundled tube of Willis Tower (the former Sears Tower) to the glass sliver of The Legacy at Millennium Park. For every skyscraper you’ll find its height in feet and metres, floor count, year of completion, the architects behind it, and detailed photographs — plus an interactive map pinning each tower across the Loop, the Magnificent Mile, and the Chicago River.
Conceived around Fazlur Khan's revolutionary 'bundled tube' — nine square steel tubes clustered together, dropping away at varying heights as the tower climbs. For nearly 25 years it was the tallest building in the world, and its glass-floored Skydeck ledges still cantilever 1,353 feet above the Loop.
Architect · SOM — Bruce Graham & Fazlur Rahman Khan
A stainless-steel and glass shaft on the river whose three setbacks were deliberately aligned with the cornice lines of its historic neighbours. Its sculptural spire pushed it to second-tallest in the city, just shy of Willis.
Architect · SOM — Adrian Smith
The tallest building in the world designed by a woman. Three undulating, frustum-stacked volumes are sheathed in six graduated shades of blue-green glass, while a 'blow-through' floor near the top relieves the wind loads on its slender form.
Architect · Studio Gang — Jeanne Gang
Originally clad in Italian Carrara marble, which warped and cracked in Chicago's freeze-thaw winters. The entire facade was re-skinned in white granite in the 1990s — one of the most expensive re-claddings ever undertaken. Locals still call it 'Big Stan.'
Architect · Edward Durell Stone & Perkins & Will
The tapering black tower wrapped in giant external X-braces — and those crosses aren't decoration, they're the structure, carrying wind loads so the floors can span column-free. An early 'vertical city' of shops, offices and apartments stacked into one address.
Architect · SOM — Fazlur Khan & Bruce Graham
A pink-granite postmodern salute to the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s, rising through tiered setbacks to an ornamented crown. It was the last Chicago tower to cross 1,000 feet for two decades.
Architect · SOM — Adrian Smith
A chevron-stepped Art Deco revival in grey granite, drawn to a sharp chisel-point spire. On completion it won a clutch of awards as one of the most beautiful skyscrapers in the country.
Architect · Loebl Schlossman & Hackl
Crowned by a glowing cylindrical 'lantern' that lights the riverfront after dark. For a time it was the tallest building in the world known purely by its street address.
Architect · Kohn Pedersen Fox
Its facade is articulated with windows of varying depth — a modern echo of the structural rhythm in Chicago's historic towers. Overlooking Grant Park, it is among the tallest all-rental residential buildings in the city.
Architect · Rafael Viñoly
Topped by four illuminated, lantern-like cupolas that glow over the Magnificent Mile, with luxury retail at its base and residences above — a vertical slice of Michigan Avenue.
Architect · Kohn Pedersen Fox
One of the first and largest vertical urban shopping malls in America, stacked beneath a Ritz-Carlton hotel and condominiums — the template that taught towers how to mix retail, hospitality and homes.
Architect · Loebl Schlossman & Hackl
Its sculpted concrete balconies ripple floor to floor like water or a topographic map — shaped to frame views, gather shade and break up the wind. From across the river it appears to be in motion.
Architect · Studio Gang — Jeanne Gang
Its dramatic swooping A-frame curve was engineered to give the bank vast floor plates at street level and slimmer offices above. It rises over a sunken plaza and Marc Chagall's mosaic, 'The Four Seasons.'
Architect · C.F. Murphy & Perkins & Will
A limestone-clad, mansard-roofed homage to early-20th-century European towers, home to a Park Hyatt — a deliberate, romantic counterpoint to the glass modernism of the Mag Mile.
Architect · Lucien Lagrange
A slender glass residential sliver threaded onto a narrow Wabash Avenue lot, rising directly above the Historic Michigan Boulevard District with uninterrupted views across Millennium Park and the lake.
Architect · Solomon Cordwell Buenz
Every tower mapped across the Loop, the Magnificent Mile, and the river's edge. Click a marker to read the tower's story.
Quick answers to the most-searched questions about Chicago's tallest skyscrapers.
Willis Tower — formerly the Sears Tower — is the tallest building in Chicago, rising 1,451 feet (442 m) across 110 floors. Completed in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world for nearly 25 years.
Five Chicago buildings exceed 1,000 feet: Willis Tower (1,451 ft), Trump International Hotel & Tower (1,389 ft), St. Regis Chicago (1,198 ft), Aon Center (1,136 ft), and 875 North Michigan Avenue — the former John Hancock Center (1,128 ft).
St. Regis Chicago, completed in 2020, is the newest of Chicago's tallest towers. Designed by Jeanne Gang, it is also the tallest building in the world designed by a woman.
Yes. Now officially addressed as 875 North Michigan Avenue, the former John Hancock Center is Chicago's fifth-tallest building at 1,128 feet, recognisable by its tapering, X-braced black frame.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) designed Willis Tower, the John Hancock Center and Trump Tower; Studio Gang's Jeanne Gang designed St. Regis Chicago and Aqua; and Kohn Pedersen Fox designed 311 South Wacker Drive and 900 North Michigan.
They cluster across downtown Chicago — the Loop, the Magnificent Mile along North Michigan Avenue, and the banks of the Chicago River. The interactive map on this page pins all fifteen.