The Merchants Insurance Building, northwest corner of LaSalle and Washington streets, as it appeared after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. From a series of stereograph cards, “Views in Chicago & Vicinity, Before and after the Fire” taken by Plymon B. Greene.
In 1868, Merchants Insurance Co. obtained a lease on the lot from Tuthill King, who had built his residence there in 1841. The firm engaged architect Augustus Bauer (1827-1894) to design the four story building, which fronted 96 feet on LaSalle, and 111 feet on Washington. Faced in “Athens marble,” a term used at the time for a type of limestone quarried near Joliet and Lemont, the building cost $200,000 to construct.
Plymon Bennett Greene was born in Vermont in 1827 and arrived in Chicago shortly before the Civil War, where he established his photography business. At the time of the Fire, it was located at 315 West Jackson Street (using the current numbering system, the address would be 1042 W. Jackson, located well outside the burnt district). Greene’s photographs of Chicago before and after the Fire provide a valuable record of the city in the mid- to late-19th century.
Also an inventor, Greene claimed that he was the first to invent the mechanism used for adjustable upper berths in railroad sleeping cars. George Pullman patented the idea, leading to the success of the Pullman Palace Car Company. Greene died at his Chicago home in 1892 and is interred at Rosehill Cemetery.
A new Merchants’ Building, designed by architect Lorenzo D. Cleveland, was completed on the site in 1873. That building was torn down in 1928 to make way for the current building, 100 North LaSalle Street, designed by the firm of Graven & Mayger.