Editing Tribune Tower (section)

==Design competition==
In 1922 the ''Chicago Tribune'' hosted an international [[Architectural design competition|interior and exterior design competition]] for its new headquarters to mark its 75th anniversary, and offered $100,000 in prize money with a $50,000 first prize for "the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world". The competition worked brilliantly for months as a publicity stunt, and the resulting entries still reveal a unique turning point in American architectural history. More than 260 entries were received.

The winner was a [[neo-Gothic]] design by New York architects [[John Mead Howells]] and [[Raymond Hood]], with [[buttress]]es near the top.

The entry that many perceived as the best, by the [[Finland|Finnish]] architect [[Eliel Saarinen]], took second place and received $20,000. [[Eliel Saarinen's Tribune Tower design|Saarinen's tower]] was preferred by architects like [[Louis Sullivan]], and was a strong influence on the next generation of skyscrapers, including Raymond Hood's own subsequent work on the [[330 West 42nd Street|McGraw-Hill Building]] and the [[Rockefeller Center]]. The 1929 [[Gulf Building (Houston)|Gulf Building]] in [[Houston, Texas]], designed by architects [[Alfred C. Finn]], Kenneth Franzheim, and [[J. E. R. Carpenter]], is a close realization of that Saarinen design. [[César Pelli]]'s [[181 West Madison Street]] Building in Chicago is also thought to be inspired by Saarinen's design.

Other Tribune tower entries by figures like [[Walter Gropius]], [[Bertram Goodhue]], [[Walter Burley Griffin]], [[Bruno Taut]], and [[Adolf Loos]] remain intriguing suggestions of what might have been, but perhaps not as intriguing as the one surmounted by a Mount Rushmore-like head of an American Indian. These entries were originally published by the Tribune Company in 1923 under the title ''Tribune Tower Competition'' and later in ''The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s'' by Katherine Solomonson, 2001.

In the 1980 book entitled ''The Tribune Tower Competition'' published by Rizzoli, authors [[Robert A. M. Stern]], [[Stanley Tigerman]] as well as Bruce Abbey and other architects jokingly submitted "late entries" in Volume II of the work.

Archival materials regarding the competition and the building are held by the [[Ryerson & Burnham|Ryerson & Burnham Libraries]] at the [[Art Institute of Chicago]].