Editor’s Note: As Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Encyclopaedia Britannica, I was on the team that helped select and design its new global headquarters in 2005. The company had just survived the dot com crash and was moving from its former offices across from the Art Institute of Chicago to its new home in a former warehouse on the Chicago River built in 1914. When I retired in 2014 after 28 years, I was asked to record a tour of Britannica’s then lobby area in the Reid Murdoch Building. With this tour came some history of Britannica, some history of the Building, and some history of my uncle Augustine Bowe’s service in the Building years earlier as Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of Chicago and Chairman of its first Architectural Landmarks Commission.

A separate video was created by me earlier in 2005 when Britannica moved from 310 South Michigan to the Reid Murdoch Building. You’ll find that here.