Status Update: Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower

You can't call it "complete" yet, but "topped out" seems appropriate for the vertical expansion of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower fronting Millennium Park.  If you get our Twitter feed, you were alerted a while back when the eastern crane was taken off the building.  Now it looks like most of the structural work is done and we can finally start calling this building 57 stories instead of 32.

The vertical expansion is an unusual thing to see, even though there are several buildings in downtown Chicago and the Loop that were intentionally designed to be extended in height later.  Some of them are even from the 1800's.

De Crane! De Crane! Boss, it's De Crane!

A year after construction crews popped the top off of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower to add another 25 stories to the 32-story structure, things are starting to wrap up.

Over the weekend (Saturday, January 24, 2009) the eastern crane (on the left in this picture, obscured by Aqua) began to slowly come down off of the tower.  That means the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois building has reached its maximum height of 796 feet -- quite a change from 411 feet before.

Also of interest is the slice of building on the far left of the photograph.  This is 340 On The Park, a condo tower.  When most people bought their units there they could look down on BCBS.  Now it's right in the faces of people who used to have western views.  Ah, the hazards of real estate in the big city.