181 West Madison Street

181 West Madison Street is a 207-meter office tower in the Chicago Loop, completed in 1990 to designs by Cesar Pelli. The slender granite facade with its stepped pinnacles at the top belongs to that brief postmodern moment when Chicago skyscrapers were allowed to be ornamental again. In the ground floor stands Frank Stella's monumental sculpture The Town-Hos Story, a 12-meter steel relief that Stella based on a chapter from Moby-Dick. It is the largest publicly accessible Stella work in Chicago. Walking through the lobby brings you face to face with one of the strangest sculptures downtown, free of charge. After dark the tower shows a finely lit crown.