History
In 1982, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company monopoly was dissolved by the court ordered divestiture of local phone companies. In the decade that followed, AT&T erected new buildings across the country including the AT&T Building in New York City. On April 5, 1985, AT&T issued a request for proposals that produced eleven respondents. Stein and Co., the winning realtor, sought Skidmore, Owings and Merrill as designers for the purpose of distinguishing a proposal from the nearby Willis Tower. On April 3, 1989, AT&T employees began to occupy the office space.
The building was built under a self-imposed comprehensive minority contracting and affirmative action package that met the city's 1985 30% hiring rule for public sector projects. Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's administration had passed an edict that 30% of the work for public sector projects be set aside for minority and women-owned businesses. In a show of support for this rule Stein & Co. and AT&T adopted the rule for their private development.
Read more about this topic: Franklin Center (Chicago)
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“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)