Article: Chicago landmark's design offers light, may have saved lives.

Chicago Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Dec. 8--The same wedding cake, tier-upon-tier setbacks that made the office building at 135 S. LaSalle St. an Art Deco gem played another, unanticipated role Monday night: They gave firefighters a perch in the sky to contain the inferno at the skyscraper and prevent the loss of lives.

The original purpose of those tiers, or setbacks, was to bring light and air into the Loop's thicket of office buildings, a goal of city planners when the Field Building, as 135 S. LaSalle was originally called, rose amid the gloom of the Depression.

Yet on Monday night, the setbacks--a classic feature of ...

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