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Original 1973 Italian Carrara Marble • Lashcon Inc. REGALO Collection • Architectural Salvage from Chicago’s Aon Center
Own a piece of Chicago’s skyline that once actually was the skyline.
This is an official REGALO-line miniature of the Standard Oil Building (later the Amoco Building, now the Aon Center) at 200 E. Randolph Street. It is carved from the original 1973 Italian Carrara marble that clad the tower until the famous 1990s granite recladding. The small building sits firmly on its square marble base, with a gold-toned Amoco torch-and-oval emblem mounted near one corner.
Measurements
- Overall height: about 5\" (building plus ½\" base)
- Base: 3\" square
- Emblem: about ¾\" across
- Weight: about 1.25 lb
The tower is securely attached to the base. Four felt pads are on the underside. Condition is excellent—smooth surfaces with only a few minor original tooling marks and no chips, cracks, or handling damage. It presents as new.
Provenance
The former owner worked in the building for more than 20 years and received this piece as an employment reward.
The marble and the recladding story
Completed in 1973–74 as the Standard Oil Building (“Big Stan”), the 83-story tower by Edward Durell Stone and Perkins & Will was the world’s tallest marble-clad skyscraper, and until the Sears Tower completion, was the tallest building in Chicago. When built it was the 4th tallest building in the world, and it is currently 4th tallest in Chicago. Its exterior used roughly 43,000–44,000 thin panels of white Carrara marble—the same stone Michelangelo favored. Chicago’s extreme temperature swings caused thermal hysteresis: the thin panels bowed, cracked, and lost strength. Stainless-steel straps were added in the late-1980s as a temporary fix. From 1990 to 1992 the entire façade was stripped and replaced with thicker Mount Airy white granite from North Carolina, at a cost estimated at $60–80 million—more than half what the building originally cost to construct.
Most of the discarded marble was crushed for landscaping at Amoco’s Whiting, Indiana refinery or donated to Governors State University. One-sixth went to Regalo, a division of Lashcon Inc., a certified MBE/DBE/WBE. Under a grant from the Illinois Department of Rehabilitative Services, Lashcon’s training program employed disabled workers who turned the salvaged Carrara into corporate gifts and mementos. This skyscraper replica is one of those pieces—an example of architectural salvage given a second life as a desk sculpture.
Original label on the underside of the base
“REGALO The \"REGALO\" collection, a marble gift line created especially for AMOCO Corp., utilizes recycled Italian Carrara Marble, which was the original exterior cladding on the AMOCO Building in Chicago. Lashcon,Inc., a certified MBE/DBE/WBE, Is recycling this Marble through a training program that teaches employment skills to disabled individuals. Contact \"REGALO\" at 200 E. Randolph Dr., MC 5207, Chicago, IL 60601...”
A scarce Chicago architectural souvenir: genuine 1973 Carrara from one of the city’s most distinctive Modernist towers, made by the company that recycled the stone, and given to someone who spent two decades inside the building itself. Ideal for collectors of Chicago history, architectural salvage, oil-company memorabilia, Carrara Marble pieces, or unusual desk pieces.
