History of Chicago upper income Americans continued to move from the city for better housing and schools in the suburbs. Office building resumed in the 1960s. When completed in 1974, the Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower, at 1451 feet was the world's tallest building. It was designed by the famous Chicago firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which designed many of the city's famous buildings. Mayor Richard J. Daley served 1955–1976, dominating the city's machine politics by his control of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee, which selected party nominees, who were usually elected in the Democratic stronghold. Daley took
Sears history of the old company, celebrating the original 1892 incorporation, rather than the 1906 revision, as the start of the company. Sears' successful 1906 initial public offering (IPO) marks the first major retail IPO in American financial history and represented a coming of age, financially, of the consumer sector. The company traded under the ticker symbol S, and was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1924 to 1999. In 1906, Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Chicago's West Side. The building was the anchor of what would become the massive Sears,