The Merchandise Mart

The Merchandise Mart is a commercial building located in downtown Chicago, Illinois. When it was opened in 1930, it was the largest building in the world, with 4 million square feet of floor space. The Art Deco structure is located at the junction of the Chicago River's branches. The building is a leading retailing and wholesale destination, hosting 20,000 visitors and tenants per day in the late 2000s.Built by Marshall Field & Co. and later owned for over half a century by the Kennedy family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating architectural and interior design vendors and trades under a…