A History of Chicago’s Federal Center at 50 Years, As the Government Considers Selling Some of It

Just over 50 years after it was completed, the Chicago Federal Center might become a lot less federal. On March 4, the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) released a list of 443 “non-core” properties across the country that it was considering selling before trimming the list to 320 later that day and then abruptly taking it down on March 5, saying that a new one would be “coming soon.” Eleven properties in Chicago were on both versions of the list, including the John C. Kluczynski Building and the U.S. Post Office’s Loop Station, both of which are part of Chicago’s Federal Center. The Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse that rounds out Federal Center was not included on any version of the list.

Federal Center is located in the Loop at Jackson Boulevard and Adams, Dearborn, and Clark Streets. Designed by Chicago architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose influence was as monumental as his buildings, it demonstrates his devotion to order and proportion on a large scale, with three brooding steel and glass buildings in his recognizable style organized around a granite-paved plaza. “Every element of the three-building complex – every column, light fixture, bench, door and paver – lines up on the grid,” notes the Chicago Architecture Center. Even the floor continues unbroken from exterior to interior, with the only difference being a layer of polish on the granite pavers inside. All of this authoritative order stands in accentuating contrast to Alexander Calder’s curving, brilliant red Flamingo sculpture in the plaza.

Federal Center was completed just over 50 years ago, in 1974. It replaced a Beaux-Arts style Chicago Federal Building that was itself 50 years old when it was demolished in 1965. With its columns and dome, that building hewed to the neoclassical style used for government buildings across the country, a type of civic architecture that President Donald Trump has officially promoted via executive order in both of his terms. (President Joe Biden repealed the first one, which was issued in 2020.)

“Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage,” proclaims the executive order titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” that was issued by Trump on the first day of his second term.

At the end of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, however, the federal government chose the committed modernist Mies, along with three other Chicago architectural firms, to design the new Chicago Federal Center. The plan was pushed by Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was trying to revitalize Chicago’s downtown and surrounding areas with an ambitious “urban renewal” plan. The mayor would also construct a new civic center for the city four blocks north of the Federal Center, creating two complementary government plazas featuring modernist skyscrapers and abstract pieces of public art. Daley Center and its Plaza were named for Daley after his death, while the Picasso that stands there remains enigmatic and untitled.

Unlike Picasso, who never saw his sculpture in person (or even visited America), the American Calder was present for the dedication of his Flamingo on October 25, 1974. After riding in a circus parade featuring elephants and clowns, Calder with Daley cut a rope releasing multicolored balloons into the sky in front of the 53-foot tall sculpture, which was commissioned by the GSA. He then dedicated another sculpture in the lobby of what was then the Sears Tower; that piece was removed when the building’s lobby underwent renovation in 2017.

The Flamingo was the last piece of Federal Center, which took 15 years to complete. The 30-story Dirksen Courthouse went up first, across Dearborn from the old Federal Building. It was completed in 1964. The other two buildings began construction after the demolition of the old Federal Building and were completed in 1974, five years after Mies’ death. The 42-story Kluczynski Building was named after an Illinois congressman after his death in 1975; the courthouse is named after another Illinois congressman who served as Senate Minority Leader until his death in 1969. The low-slung Post Office (not named after anyone) calls to mind Mies’ lauded Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus.

The plaza outside these buildings has been a location for everything from concerts to protests, including recent ones against the firing of federal workers by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Selling off the properties is part of the administration’s attempt to cut back government spending. “Disposing of these assets helps eliminate costly maintenance and allows us to reinvest in high-quality work environments that support agency missions,” the GSA said on its website, according to WBEZ.

The federal buildings have struggled with maintenance recently, with a legionella contamination detected in 2023 and 2024 in the water system at all three buildings in Federal Center, as well as at the neighboring, 28-story Ralph H. Metcalfe Building. The latter, which was built in 1991 across Jackson Boulevard from Federal Center in a similar style and named after the Illinois politician and Olympic athlete, was also included on the list of properties GSA intends to sell. It houses offices for the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health & Human Services, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to the GSA’s website.  The Kluczynski Building contains offices for the Department of Labor, Drug Enforcement Administration, GSA itself, Internal Revenue Service, and Senators Tammy Duckworth and Richard Durbin.

Other Chicago federal buildings listed as possible sales by the GSA include the 1932 U.S. Customhouse at 610 S. Canal St. and the Harold Washington Social Security Center at 600 W. Madison St., which has another modern sculpture in front of it: Claes Oldenburg’s baseball bat-like Batcolumn.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the move of many workers into at least partial remote work, the Loop’s office real estate market now faces high vacancy rates, so it is unclear if developers would be interested in purchasing large properties like the federal buildings. But in 2022 Google bought another government building, the state of Illinois’ James R. Thompson Center, and is redeveloping it in a plan that advocates hope will help revitalize the Loop.

The Thompson Center was completed more than a decade after Federal Center and has created many more polarizing opinions over the decades, as well as soaring maintenance costs and complaints. Federal Center may not be as controversial, but it still has both its detractors and champions. 

In 2017, Preservation Chicago’s Ward Miller told WTTW News that developers were inquiring into developing Federal Center, a charge that GSA denied at the time. Nevertheless, Miller defended the complex against being destroyed or altered: “The relationship of the buildings to one another, and to the Marquette Building and the alignment with the Monadnock Building, the placement of sculpture and open space – it was an artful composition, one of the most important public plazas, designed by a master architect.”