Railway Exchange Building

Chicago, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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The Railway Exchange Building, a 17-story Chicago School office tower completed in 1904, stands at 224 South Michigan Avenue in the Loop's Historic Michigan Boulevard District. Designed by Frederick P. Dinkelberg of D. H. Burnham & Company—who also served as associate designer on the Flatiron Building in New York—the building exemplifies the commercial aesthetic of early twentieth-century Chicago. Its distinctive features include round, porthole-like windows along the cornice and a central lightwell capped with a skylight installed in the 1980s. The structure gained further visual prominence with the addition of a large Motorola logo on its roof, visible across Michigan Avenue from Grant Park and Lake Michigan. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building is also known as the Santa Fe Building.