Tuesday Trivia: 10 Things You Probably Don't Know About Marina City

Yesterday we published a review of the new book Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision.  Today, we present

Ten Things You Probably Don't Know About Marina City

1. You've heard of the retail and office complex at "Block 37" in the Loop.  Well, Marina City is on "Block One" of the City of Chicago plan.
2. The land Marina city sits on was formerly a rail yard.
3. Marina City was originally called Labor Center.
4. The original plan for Marina City called for two 40-story towers, and a third 10-story tower.
5. Marina City once had its own ice skating rink and supermarket.
6. Marina City's architect, Bertrand Goldberg, first experimented with curved concrete in the design he made for the city of Nashville's sewage treatment plant.
7. Marina City was built for the Chicago janitors' union.
8. Ten years before Marina City became a reality, its architect designed a smaller, but very similar, set of twin towers for a South Side motel that was never built.
9. The boatyard underneath the Marina City complex was once known as Phillips Pier 66, after the oil company.
10. What is now the House of Blues was called the Field Television Center at the time it opened, because WFLD Television had its studios there.