Chicago Stock Exchange Building
Chicago demolished Adler and Sullivan's exchange tower but reconstructed its trading room inside a museum.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A Chicago office and trading building designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.
The building combined a steel-frame office block with a richly ornamented trading room. After the exchange moved, the structure continued in other commercial uses while deteriorating.
Existence timeline
Adler and Sullivan design an exchange and office tower.
Traders and tenants begin using the completed structure.
The trading institution leaves while the building continues in other use.
Architects and activists seek to prevent demolition.
The tower disappears; the trading room is salvaged for reconstruction.
Why it ended
Preservation efforts failed and most of the building was demolished in 1972. Selected elements were carefully removed.
Last confirmed trace
The Art Institute of Chicago reconstructed the original trading room and preserves architectural fragments and drawings.
What it left behind
Its partial afterlife asks whether a room reconstructed in a museum can preserve a building whose urban body has disappeared.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.