By Dennis Rodkin | WBEZ
The Prudential Insurance Company is planning to leave the Randolph Street skyscraper it built seven decades ago — and taking the name with it.
The Prudential name has been on the 41-story Loop building since it opened in 1955. The name has also been on the 64-story younger sibling, Prudential Plaza Two or Pru Two, since that building opened in 1990.
The departure is momentous. Prudential stuck with its namesake skyscraper long after Sears, Wrigley, the Chicago Tribune, Montgomery Ward, Kemper and other big corporations left their buildings.
There is more than just a change in name. When Prudential goes, the company leaves behind a lot of the legacy it embedded in that building. The tower was the first high-rise in Chicago built since the Great Depression and the first built on air rights over a vast Illinois Central rail yard that filled what’s now 15 square blocks of high-rises and park land — Illinois Center and Lakeshore East. It helped pave the way for Millennium Park, the Pedway week and between 1955 and 1965 was the city’s tallest building.
The Prudential name isn’t just “on the building” — it’s prominently displayed 200 feet long across the top of the older building’s façade in blue letters, and carved into the façade beneath a sculpted rendering of its Rock of Gibraltar logo.
Prudential sold the two buildings in 2000 but has held onto office space and the naming rights. Prudential is planning to move out of its 50,000 square feet in Prudential Plaza and move to a 28,000 square feet space clear across the Loop at 150 N. Riverside Plaza.
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