Ceres in Chicago

To Rome its milk-giving she-wolf, to crumbling Athens its Pallas Athene. The goddess of Chicago is Ceres, deity of grain, harvest, plenty. Last week a glittering aluminum Ceres took her place on the city's skyline, poising her twinkling magnificence on top of Chicago's tallest office pylon, the new 44-story, 609 ft. Board of Trade building.* Designed by Sculptor John H. Storrs, Ceres of Chicago went up to her perch in 40 pieces and was hurriedly assembled, a bit late for the Boards opening day ceremonies.

As the flour counter of the nation's chief grocery store, the new building is decorated throughout with a grain motif by Architects John Auger Holabird and John Wellborn Root. The entrance grill bristles with fuzzy sheaves and kernels, grain garnishes the elevator doors, flanking the clock outside stand a wheat-raising Egyptian and a corn-fed Amerindian. Ripe wheat heads were thrust into the hands of visitors on the opening day as they peeped into the main trading floor, 113 ft. x 163 ft., where business was going on as usual in the wheat pit (38 ft. across) and nearby corn, oat, rye pits. Visitors gaped at the world's largest light fixture in the lobby-- a shaft of glass and metal. In a smaller room beyond. Board members will trade in securities at the rate of 10,000 to 15,000 shares a day.

Built at a cost of some $12,000,000, the new building which looks north up LaSalle St. ("Wall St. of Chicago") is the twelfth home of the Board of Trade in its 82 years, is not owned by the Board but by the Chicago Board of Trade Safe Deposit Co.

*No. 1 La Salle St., 530 feet high, has five more floors.

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