Second Leiter Building Second Leiter Building The Second Leiter Building, also known as the Leiter II Building, the Sears Building, One Congress Center, and Robert Morris Center, is located at the northeast corner of South State Street and East Congress Parkway in Chicago, Illinois. The building is not to be confused with the present Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, constructed and owned by the famous nationwide mail-order firm Sears, Roebuck & Company. This landmark of the Chicago school of architecture gained fame for being one of the earliest commercial buildings constructed with a metal skeleton frame remaining in the United States. Built
Joshua Sears Building works on what is now Peter Kirk Park. The building originally intended to house a bank at the corner. Sears outfitted the entire interior and even hired a partial staff but with the arrival of the Panic of 1893, the doors, like the steel mill, never opened. In the years after the bust, the building, like many others in the area remained mostly vacant, though it, along with a large portion of the original townsite remained in the ownership of the Sears estate. The corner space was eventually occupied by a printing company and later a grocery store. An electric