What about Sears Tower?

Sunday, 11 Jan '09 8:28 AM

From: "AH Nelson" To: "UK Financial Times" Chicago

Sunday AM

January 11, 2008

Editors, UK Financial Times

Gentlepeople: Your fine newspaper is passed on to me every AM by neighbors who are subscribers. This is very fortunate for me, since even tho the first thing I read every AM is the WSJ oped page, after that I read FT cover-to-cover.

You have been running an ad for many months featuring a wide angle pic of what first appears to be lower Manhattan, but is actually a clever foto montage of the world's most famous buildings. Featured in the center of that pic are the Petronas Towers of Malaysia, which, according to an all but unknown outfit called the "Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat" in Bethlehem PA (described by the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic Blair Kamin as "pop. 71K, tallest building 22 stories") were the world's tallest buildings when completed in 1996. Accompanying Mr. Kamin's article is a detailed pic comparing the tops of Petronas and Chicago's Sears Tower (attached,) and if the Tall Buildings Council people have ever seen it, they should still be blushing. Not only is the Sears 103rd floor public observation deck, visited by thousands of people every day, 150 feet higher than the highest human-occupied 86th floor of Petronas, but Sears is topped by a 1/4 acre flat roof, compared to Petronas' spindly little spire.

The omission of the Sears Tower in an ad for the Financial Times is also odd in that Sears Tower is a couple blocks from the first modern futures exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and around the corner from the second, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And the Chicago Metro area GDP alone is 35% bigger than the GDP of the whole country of Malaysia ($485bn to $357bn.) So where is Sears Tower in your montage? You do have Chicago's cute little 40-storey Smurfit-Stone building, hardly a local Chicago landmark, let alone world. Also attached is a copy of your ad with the Sears Tower in it. I'm sure if your professional artists did the same thing, Sears would be even more prominent than in my crude attempt.

Arnold H Nelson Chicago IL 60640