Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Sears Tower shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Sears Tower offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Sears Tower at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Sears Tower? Wrong! If the Sears Tower is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Sears Tower then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Sears Tower? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Sears Tower and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Sears Tower wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Sears Tower then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Sears Tower site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Sears Tower, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Sears Tower, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox Skyscraper|building_name=Sears Tower|image=|previous_building=World Trade Center|year_highest=1973|year_end= 1998|location=[Chicago, Illinois United States|height_meters=442|height_feet=1,450|height_stories=110|construction_period=1970-1974|emporis_id=117064|roof=442 m (1450 ft)|top_floor=435.8 m (1431 ft)|antenna_spire=527 m (1730 ft) |floor_area=4.56 million sq ft. (3.81 million sq ft. rentable) 418,064 m² (353,961 m² rentable)|elevator_count=104, with 16 double-decker elevators|architect=Skidmore, Owings and Merrill-->

The Sears Tower is a skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. It has been the tallest building in the United States since 1973, surpassing the World Trade Center, which itself had surpassed the Empire State Building only a year earlier. Commissioned by Sears, Roebuck and Company, it was designed by chief architect Bruce Graham and structural engineers Srinivasa and Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Construction commenced in August 1970 and the building reached its originally anticipated maximum height on May 3, 1973. When completed, the Sears Tower had overtaken the roof of the World Trade Center in New York City as the world's tallest building. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. The distance to the roof is 442 m (1,450 ft 7 in), measured from the east entrance.

In February 1982, two television antennas were added to the structure, increasing its total height to 520 m (1,705 ft). The western antenna was later extended to 527 m (1,730 ft) on June 5, 2000 to improve reception of local NBC station WMAQ-TV.

Black bands appear on the tower around the 29th–32nd, 64th–65th, 88th–89th, and 104th–109th floors. These are louvers which allow ventilation for service equipment and obscure the structure's truss which Sears Roebuck did not want to be visible as on the John Hancock Center. The Sears Tower has the second most total floor space of any building in the United States, only behind The Pentagon.

The building's official address is 233 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60606.

On August 12, 2007, the Burj Dubai in Dubai, United Arab Emirates was reported by its developers to have surpassed the Sears Tower in all height categories. It overtook the Sears Tower antenna (radio) (527.3m) and the building now currently stands at least 37.6 metres taller (564.9m).

History Planning and construction In 1969 Sears, Roebuck and Company was by far the largest Retailing in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago Loop. With immediate space demands of 3 million square feet (279,000 m²), and with predictions and plans for future growth necessitating even more space than that, architects for Skidmore knew that the building would be one of the largest office buildings in the world.

Sears executives decided early on that the space they would immediately occupy should be efficiently designed to house the small army that was their Merchandise Group. However, floor space for future growth would be rented out to smaller firms and businesses until Sears could retake it. Therefore, the floor sizes would need to be smaller, and to have a higher window-space to floor-space ratio, to be more attractive and marketable to these prospective lessees. Smaller floor sizes necessitated a taller structure. Skidmore architects proposed a tower which would have large 55,000-square-foot (5,000 m²) floors in the lower part of the building, and would gradually taper the area of the floors down in a series of setbacks, which would give the Sears Tower its distinctive, husky-shouldered look.

from the Sears Tower Sky DeckAs Sears continued to offer optimistic projections for future growth, the tower's proposed height soared into the low hundreds of floors and surpassed the height of New York's unfinished World Trade Center to become the world's tallest building. Restricted in height not by physical limitation or imagination but rather by a limit imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration to protect air traffic, the Sears Tower would be financed completely out of Sears' deep pockets, and topped with two antennas to permit local television and radio broadcasts. Sears and the City of Chicago approved the design, and the first steel was put in place in April 1971. The structure was completed in May 1973. Construction costs totaled approximately $175 million USD at the time, which would be equivalent to roughly $950 million USD in 2005. For comparison, Taipei's Taipei 101, built in 2004, cost around the equivalent of US$1.64 billion in 2005 dollars.

Post-opening However, Sears' optimistic growth projections never came to pass. Competition from its traditional rivals (like Montgomery Ward) continued, only to be surpassed in strength by other retailing giants like Kmart, Kohl's, and Wal-Mart. The fortunes of Sears & Roebuck declined in the 1970s as the company lost market share and its management grew ever more cautious.For information on this transformation, see Donald R. Katz The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears, New York (Viking), 1987. The Sears Tower itself was not the draw Sears hoped it would be. The tower stood half-vacant for a decade as more office space was erected in Chicago in the 1980s. The company was eventually obliged to take out a mortgage on its signature building. Sears began moving its offices out of the Sears Tower in 1993 and had completely vacated the building by 1995, moving to a new office campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Sears Tower has gone through several owners in the years since but Sears has retained the naming rights for the building.

The Sears Tower still represents one of the finest locations for business in Chicago. It is now a multi-tenant office building with more than 100 different companies in residence, including major law firms, insurance companies and financial services firms.

==The Skydeck==The Sears Tower Skydeck observation deck opened on June 22, 1974 and is located on the 103rd floor of the tower is 412 m (1,353 ft) above ground and is a famous tourist attraction. Tourists can experience how the building sways on a windy day. They can see far over the plains of Illinois and across Lake Michigan to Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin on a clear day. It takes about 45 seconds to soar to the top in either of two special elevators. The Sears Tower Skydeck competes with the John Hancock Center's observation floor across town, which is 98 m (323 ft) lower.

A second Skydeck on the 99th floor is used when the 103rd floor is closed.

The tourist entrance can be found on the south side of the building along Jackson Boulevard.

The Skydeck was prominently featured in the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" during the main characters' joyride into Chicago.

Image:Sears Tower from Hancock Observation Deck - daytime.jpg] observation deckImage:JHancockCtrAug2004A.jpg|900 North Michigan, Park Tower (Chicago), the John Hancock Center, and Water Tower Place (L-R) as seen from the Sears Tower observation deck

Which is the tallest?

At 452 m (1,483 ft) tall, including decorative spires, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, laid claim to replacing the Sears Tower as the tallest building in the world in 1998. Not everyone agreed, and in the ensuing controversy four different World's tallest structures were created. Of these, Petronas was the tallest in one category (height to top of architectural elements, meaning spires but not antennas). However, before the addition of the Sears Tower's own two antennas in 1982, One World Trade Center was taller by height to top of its 360ft-antenna (added in 1978 to its previous 1368-foot height).

Taipei 101 in Republic of China claimed the record in three of the four categories in 2004 to become generally recognized as the tallest building in the world. Taipei 101 surpassed the Petronas Twin Towers in spire height and the Sears Tower in roof height; it also claimed the record for highest occupied floor. The Sears Tower retained one record: its antenna exceeded the Taipei 101's spire in height.

The Sears Tower remained the tallest office building in the United States, and retains the world record when measuring from sidewalk level of the main entrance to the top of the antenna. When completed, the Freedom Tower in New York City is expected to surpass the Sears Tower through its structural but not occupied peak. Burj Dubai, currently under construction in Dubai, is expected to claim world records in a number of categories, surpassing the Sears Tower, Taipei 101 and the CN Tower, when it opens in 2009. The Chicago Spire now under construction is expected to lay claim to most height records for North American structures the following year.

Position in Chicago's skyline The Sears Tower in Popular Culture

Figures and Statistics

References See also External links

{{succession box|title=Building with the most floors 108 floors|before=[World Trade Center|years=2001-2009-->

{{Infobox Skyscraper|building_name=Sears Tower|image=|previous_building=World Trade Center|year_highest=1973|year_end= 1998|location=[Chicago, Illinois United States|height_meters=442|height_feet=1,450|height_stories=110|construction_period=1970-1974|emporis_id=117064|roof=442 m (1450 ft)|top_floor=435.8 m (1431 ft)|antenna_spire=527 m (1730 ft) |floor_area=4.56 million sq ft. (3.81 million sq ft. rentable) 418,064 m² (353,961 m² rentable)|elevator_count=104, with 16 double-decker elevators|architect=Skidmore, Owings and Merrill-->

The Sears Tower is a skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. It has been the tallest building in the United States since 1973, surpassing the World Trade Center, which itself had surpassed the Empire State Building only a year earlier. Commissioned by Sears, Roebuck and Company, it was designed by chief architect Bruce Graham and structural engineers Srinivasa and Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Construction commenced in August 1970 and the building reached its originally anticipated maximum height on May 3, 1973. When completed, the Sears Tower had overtaken the roof of the World Trade Center in New York City as the world's tallest building. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. The distance to the roof is 442 m (1,450 ft 7 in), measured from the east entrance.

In February 1982, two television antennas were added to the structure, increasing its total height to 520 m (1,705 ft). The western antenna was later extended to 527 m (1,730 ft) on June 5, 2000 to improve reception of local NBC station WMAQ-TV.

Black bands appear on the tower around the 29th–32nd, 64th–65th, 88th–89th, and 104th–109th floors. These are louvers which allow ventilation for service equipment and obscure the structure's truss which Sears Roebuck did not want to be visible as on the John Hancock Center. The Sears Tower has the second most total floor space of any building in the United States, only behind The Pentagon.

The building's official address is 233 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60606.

On August 12, 2007, the Burj Dubai in Dubai, United Arab Emirates was reported by its developers to have surpassed the Sears Tower in all height categories. It overtook the Sears Tower antenna (radio) (527.3m) and the building now currently stands at least 37.6 metres taller (564.9m).

History Planning and construction In 1969 Sears, Roebuck and Company was by far the largest Retailing in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago Loop. With immediate space demands of 3 million square feet (279,000 m²), and with predictions and plans for future growth necessitating even more space than that, architects for Skidmore knew that the building would be one of the largest office buildings in the world.

Sears executives decided early on that the space they would immediately occupy should be efficiently designed to house the small army that was their Merchandise Group. However, floor space for future growth would be rented out to smaller firms and businesses until Sears could retake it. Therefore, the floor sizes would need to be smaller, and to have a higher window-space to floor-space ratio, to be more attractive and marketable to these prospective lessees. Smaller floor sizes necessitated a taller structure. Skidmore architects proposed a tower which would have large 55,000-square-foot (5,000 m²) floors in the lower part of the building, and would gradually taper the area of the floors down in a series of setbacks, which would give the Sears Tower its distinctive, husky-shouldered look.

from the Sears Tower Sky DeckAs Sears continued to offer optimistic projections for future growth, the tower's proposed height soared into the low hundreds of floors and surpassed the height of New York's unfinished World Trade Center to become the world's tallest building. Restricted in height not by physical limitation or imagination but rather by a limit imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration to protect air traffic, the Sears Tower would be financed completely out of Sears' deep pockets, and topped with two antennas to permit local television and radio broadcasts. Sears and the City of Chicago approved the design, and the first steel was put in place in April 1971. The structure was completed in May 1973. Construction costs totaled approximately $175 million USD at the time, which would be equivalent to roughly $950 million USD in 2005. For comparison, Taipei's Taipei 101, built in 2004, cost around the equivalent of US$1.64 billion in 2005 dollars.

Post-opening However, Sears' optimistic growth projections never came to pass. Competition from its traditional rivals (like Montgomery Ward) continued, only to be surpassed in strength by other retailing giants like Kmart, Kohl's, and Wal-Mart. The fortunes of Sears & Roebuck declined in the 1970s as the company lost market share and its management grew ever more cautious.For information on this transformation, see Donald R. Katz The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears, New York (Viking), 1987. The Sears Tower itself was not the draw Sears hoped it would be. The tower stood half-vacant for a decade as more office space was erected in Chicago in the 1980s. The company was eventually obliged to take out a mortgage on its signature building. Sears began moving its offices out of the Sears Tower in 1993 and had completely vacated the building by 1995, moving to a new office campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Sears Tower has gone through several owners in the years since but Sears has retained the naming rights for the building.

The Sears Tower still represents one of the finest locations for business in Chicago. It is now a multi-tenant office building with more than 100 different companies in residence, including major law firms, insurance companies and financial services firms.

==The Skydeck==The Sears Tower Skydeck observation deck opened on June 22, 1974 and is located on the 103rd floor of the tower is 412 m (1,353 ft) above ground and is a famous tourist attraction. Tourists can experience how the building sways on a windy day. They can see far over the plains of Illinois and across Lake Michigan to Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin on a clear day. It takes about 45 seconds to soar to the top in either of two special elevators. The Sears Tower Skydeck competes with the John Hancock Center's observation floor across town, which is 98 m (323 ft) lower.

A second Skydeck on the 99th floor is used when the 103rd floor is closed.

The tourist entrance can be found on the south side of the building along Jackson Boulevard.

The Skydeck was prominently featured in the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" during the main characters' joyride into Chicago.

Image:Sears Tower from Hancock Observation Deck - daytime.jpg] observation deckImage:JHancockCtrAug2004A.jpg|900 North Michigan, Park Tower (Chicago), the John Hancock Center, and Water Tower Place (L-R) as seen from the Sears Tower observation deck

Which is the tallest?

At 452 m (1,483 ft) tall, including decorative spires, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, laid claim to replacing the Sears Tower as the tallest building in the world in 1998. Not everyone agreed, and in the ensuing controversy four different World's tallest structures were created. Of these, Petronas was the tallest in one category (height to top of architectural elements, meaning spires but not antennas). However, before the addition of the Sears Tower's own two antennas in 1982, One World Trade Center was taller by height to top of its 360ft-antenna (added in 1978 to its previous 1368-foot height).

Taipei 101 in Republic of China claimed the record in three of the four categories in 2004 to become generally recognized as the tallest building in the world. Taipei 101 surpassed the Petronas Twin Towers in spire height and the Sears Tower in roof height; it also claimed the record for highest occupied floor. The Sears Tower retained one record: its antenna exceeded the Taipei 101's spire in height.

The Sears Tower remained the tallest office building in the United States, and retains the world record when measuring from sidewalk level of the main entrance to the top of the antenna. When completed, the Freedom Tower in New York City is expected to surpass the Sears Tower through its structural but not occupied peak. Burj Dubai, currently under construction in Dubai, is expected to claim world records in a number of categories, surpassing the Sears Tower, Taipei 101 and the CN Tower, when it opens in 2009. The Chicago Spire now under construction is expected to lay claim to most height records for North American structures the following year.

Position in Chicago's skyline The Sears Tower in Popular Culture

Figures and Statistics

References See also External links

{{succession box|title=Building with the most floors 108 floors|before=[World Trade Center|years=2001-2009-->



[SEARS TOWER]
Official website of this structure of 1,353 feet, listing tenant and leasing information and amenities.

Sears Tower: 110 Storeys of the Big Store
Celebrates the skyscraper in Chicago that was the world's tallest building when erected in 1973. Photographs and newspaper articles.

Sears Tower: A Tribute to 35 Years (Chicago, Illinois)
Commemorating the 35th anniversary since topping out of Sears Tower on May 3, 1973. ... were the memorable words sung by a chorus of electrical workers as the final white beam with ...

Sear Tower

Sears Tower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sears Tower is a skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. It has been the tallest building in the United States since 1973, surpassing the World Trade Center, which itself had ...

Sears Tower, Chicago - SkyscraperPage.com
SkyscraperPage.com's cities database is one of the world's largest buildings databases featuring a real-time resource of proposed, under construction and completed structures.

[SEARS TOWER]
Sears Tower is strategically located on Wacker Drive in the heart of the West Loop, Chicago’s premier submarket and home to its largest corporations and ...

BBC NEWS | Americas | Sears Tower 'plot' trial begins
The trial begins of seven men in the US charged with trying to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings.

Sears Tower
For several years the Sears Tower in Chicago was the world's tallest building

BBC NEWS | Americas | Profile: Chicago's Sears Tower
Sears Tower, the United States' tallest building, has dominated Chicago's skyline for 33 years. ... Until the arrival of Malaysia's Petronas Towers in 1998, Sears Tower in Chicago ...

 

Sears Tower



 
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