Jewelers Building

The Jewelers Building, rising forty stories at the corner of Wabash Avenue and Wacker Drive, is crowned by a distinctive dome that distinguishes it from the surrounding skyline. Completed in nineteen twenty-seven, the neoclassical tower was engineered to house and protect the city's diamond trade. To shield merchants from the risk of street robberies, architects Joachim Giaver and Frederick Dinkelberg incorporated a specialized internal system. Jewelry dealers could drive their vehicles off Lower Wacker Drive directly onto steel platforms, where elevators hoisted the cars as high as the twenty-second floor. This allowed merchants to transport precious stones from their vehicles to their offices without ever setting foot on a public sidewalk.