Making Willis home: Sears Tower becomes Chicago’s newest renamed landmark Thursday

Written By: KatieRogers on July 15, 2009 No Comment

Flickr.com/Afagen

In the grand tradition of Chicago traditions, yet another of the city’s most famous landmarks will undergo an official name change Thursday.

The Sears Tower will become Willis Tower, and the switch will be made permanent July 16 in a ceremony that will officially recognize the new stake London-based Willis Financial Holdings has in the iconic 110-story skyscraper. Willis has leased 140,000 square feet and will move 500 employees into the 1,450-foot building.

Chicagoans, no strangers to ever-changing landmark names (or the obliteration of those landmarks altogether), are bracing themselves for yet another famous Windy City structure to fall victim to corporate America’s version of the bumper sticker.

For many, it’s hard to understand why plastering the Willis brand on the building is more important to those in charge than keeping the name the tower was christened with when Sears Roebuck and Co. moved in in 1973 (Sears vacated the building in 1992). To many of us, the tower represents Americana; it’s a gem of urban architecture that’s been dubbed over (by a British company, no less), and that makes people uncomfortable.

But we forget how short our collective memory is; history shows us we do eventually get over the pain of the name change. The opulent building at State and Randolph houses Macy’s (formerly iconic Chicago department store Marshall Field’s) now. The White Sox play ball in U.S. Cellular Field, not Comiskey Park. And the land that housed Meigs Field is playing a part in Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics.

Sure, these changes smart for awhile, but the discomfort always dies down. And besides, the focus doesn’t stay on the name switch in question for very long; there’s always the next one to worry about.

The newly unveiled, 103rd-floor glass-bottom ledge may endear us to the newcomer, and Willis’s recent announcement of a $350 million “green” makeover is nothing if not a good public relations move.

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