Merchandise Mart, Chicago - A Critical Review 2025

Of all the many people I’ve met in my life, I’m sure none would describe me as practical, but I do very much enjoy a good practical brand name or aptly named establishment. If you’re a shoe store, for example, & you sell shoes, & you name your store “shoe store,” I’ll be your number one customer for life because I like things that are what they say they are. Call me old-fashioned. Here in the Land of Lincoln, there is perhaps no greater example of this sort of genius flair for the practical than the absurdly monumental Merchandise Mart situated along an entire block of the Chicago riverside.

Developed by Marshall Field & designed by Art Deco architect Alfred P. Shaw in the late 1920’s, Merchandise Mart was the largest building in the world by sheer volume for decades. First conceived as a gargantuan wholesale goods market- the prototypical equivalent of a modern day world trade center, all 4 million square feet were purchased by Joseph Kennedy in the 1940’s. It was Kennedy who commissioned these 8 titanic busts out front to commemorate his favorite outstanding titans of American industry. There they rest in power above the old freight train station, forever frozen in their primes, ever silent, not facing outward to the world but inward toward the giant front doors of a capitalist heaven.

You may scoff at the antiquated hero worship depicted in this parade of greedy old white men, but you may also find some solace in knowing that much of this building is now dedicated to the sales & presentation of antiques & artwork, the promotion of Chicago culture, & the enormous backdrop for “Art on Mart,” which is a free public digital art installation that projects large-scale contemporary art onto the river-facing facade of the building, thus forcing these old statued business fellows to observe in perpetuity that kind of public joy they likely would have tried to commodify if only they were still alive to do so.

Should you go visit this sliver of Chicago’s unique architectural history? A definitive yes from me, and five stars to boot.

The Parade of Titans:

Robert E. Wood (Sears Roebuck & Co.)
Frank Winfield Woolworth
Julius Rosenwald (Sears Roebuck & Co.)
Marshall Field
John Wanamaker
Aaron Montgomery Ward
George Huntington Hartford (Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.)
Edward Filine