Willis Tower Suspends Visitors Above Chicago

CHICAGO — The view looking down through the glass floor toward South Wacker Drive is just what you’d expect if you were balanced on top of 6,960 boxes of this city’s deep-dish pizza — or, as the exhibition at the Willis Tower also tells us, standing atop 313 Oprah Winfreys or 283 Barack Obamas.

That thought brings on its own sort of vertigo. The comfort is that those human towers would reach the top of the building itself, while this particular perch for a human version of Yertle the Turtle is a bit lower, on the 103rd floor: fewer pizzas, media stars and presidents would be required.

Not much help. Stand on the Ledge, as it is called, on the tower’s Skydeck, and look down on rooftops and traffic helicopters, and leftward toward the haze over the lake, and outward along the city’s grid stretching toward the South Side. Despite the reassuring rivets in the 1,500-pound glass panels, the calm stillness of the air at the Windy City’s pinnacle and the security of a 10,000-pound weight capacity for each of the four 4.3-foot-deep glass boxes that protrude past the sheer edge of the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building — despite all that, you still feel twinges of queasiness.

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Full article at nytimes.com

 

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