What You Talkin' About, Willis?

The London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings has taken over multiple floors of the Sears Tower for $14.50 a square foot for five hundred of its employees and will rename the Western hemisphere's tallest building after itself.

Mayor Richard M. Daley pointed out that Sears, which built the 110-story skyscraper, moved out a long time ago, but the fact that the new business taking over the tower is from out of town, unlike Sears, Roebuck and Company (now based outside the city in suburban Hoffman Estates) doesn't sit well with Chicagoans. After all, Macy's took over Marshall Field's. But Chicago should at least be happy that their icon of architectural height is still standing.

Some cities, like New York, can't make such a claim.

The Willis Tower was the world's tallest building until a twin-towered skyscraper, a single building at ground level, opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1996.