Archinect - News

35-story Raffles Boston becomes Hancock Tower's newest neighbor

2024-01-10T13:32:00-05:00

The Architectural Team (TAT) has completed a mixed-use tower in Boston featuring the city’s first sky lobby. The Raffles Boston Hotel & Residences features a 400-foot curved glass form and is described by the team as a “sophisticated new skyline statement within a challenging and historic context.”

Image credit: Ed Wonsek

The 35-story high-rise comprises 146 homes, 147 hotel guestrooms, and 16 amenity spaces. To compensate for the site’s narrow plot, the tower’s design sees a cantilever at the fourth-floor extent over the adjacent historic University Club to support the upper 29 stories, with a further cantilever occurring at the 17th floor.

Image credit: Ed Wonsek

In addition to increasing the internal area of the tower, the cantilevering approach forms a distinctive design element of the scheme’s exterior, “granting the tower a contextually scaled street presence while also allowing the building to express itself as a sculptural form on the upper levels,” according to the team. To d...

Elevator plunges 85 stories in former John Hancock Center after cable breaks

2018-11-20T13:15:00-05:00

Six people, including a pregnant woman, have plummeted 84 floors in an elevator inside one of Chicago’s tallest skyscrapers, only learning afterwards how far they had fallen. [...] One of several cables holding the elevator broke and the car fell rapidly, landing somewhere near the 11th floor.

Everyone's worst nightmare became a near fatal reality for six people trapped inside an elevator after falling 85 stories inside Chicago's iconic 875 North Michigan Avenue tower, formerly known as the John Hancock Center.

According to the Chicago Fire Department, the rescue operation inside the nearly 50-year-old skyscraper was unusually difficult: "It was a pretty precarious situation where the cables that broke were on top of the elevator. We couldn’t do an elevator-to-elevator rescue. We had to breach a wall on the 11th floor of the parking garage in order to open up the elevator doors."

Thankfully no serious injuries were reported.

Farewell John Hancock Center — Hello 875 N. Michigan Ave.?

2018-02-13T15:26:00-05:00

The John Hancock Center is getting a name change, nearly a decade after another of Chicago’s most beloved skyscrapers — the Sears Tower — switched identities and caused a civic uproar. Owners of the 100-story John Hancock Center said the building’s namesake, the insurance company that built the tower almost five decades ago, asked that its name and logos throughout the building’s interior be removed immediately.

Until the owners of the building, Chicago-based developer Hearn Co., find interested buyers for its naming rights, the iconic landmark tower will be known simply by its address, 875 N. Michigan Ave.

If Chicago's John Hancock Center gets a new owner, it could get a new name

2017-05-22T18:55:00-04:00

[Hearn's] venture also controls rights to the building's name, which has remained unchanged since John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. developed it [...] Hearn has been in talks with companies interested in putting their name on the skyscraper since the structure's namesake no longer pays for that right. "We've had interest in it, but have not made a deal yet," Hearn said. That process could be resumed by a new owner.

Chicago-based developer Hearn Co. currently plans on selling the John Hancock Center's office space, parking garage and, perhaps most interestingly, its naming rights later this summer. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hearn would use the proceeds from the naming rights toward a $10 million redevelopment of the tower's plaza.

Fire on 50th floor of Chicago's Hancock Center left five people injured

2015-11-23T13:03:00-05:00

Five people were injured in a fire that broke out Saturday afternoon in a bedroom on the 50th floor of the John Hancock Center, officials said. [...] The cause of the fire has not been determined, officials said. [...] Earlier Saturday, flames could be seen shooting out of a window on the 50th floor, catching the attention of Michigan Avenue shoppers, some of whom were getting ready for the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival. A smoky smell lingered near the ground several hours later.

Related in the Archinect news:

Boston's John Hancock Tower is now '200 Clarendon'

2015-07-31T14:44:00-04:00

You can still call it the John Hancock Tower, but the company that paid $930 million for New England’s tallest building can’t. Now that John Hancock’s last lease in the office building has expired, owner Boston Properties Inc. can no longer use the financial services company’s name on the property.