This story was reported and written by Ryan Ori with design by Jelena Schulz.
Los Angeles has the Binoculars Building. London has the Shard.
Now a prominent Chicago tower is getting rebranded as the Diamond to reflect the distinctive shape of its sloping roof.
Around the world, buildings with distinguishable shapes are earning nicknames that so well reflect their appearance that they become the formal or informal moniker — displacing the less-colorful identities their owners initially planned.
That's playing out most recently in the case of investors who bought the 41-story office building at 150 N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago last year. They are now rolling out the Diamond moniker on signs at the property and on a new website describing the tower as “Chicago’s crown jewel.”
Their bet is that the new title can gain the acceptance of other building identities that were changed by design or by popular sentiment in a trend that dates back more than a century in the case of New York's Flatiron Building. That Manhattan structure began as the Fuller Building in 1902 before locals began calling it — and later, the entire district around it — the Flatiron because it's shaped like a household clothing iron.
Hollywood, creative marketing and opinions of locals who are most familiar with structures have introduced to the real estate world monikers such as the Lipstick, Superman and Batman buildings, as well as the Gherkin, Nakatomi Plaza and the King and Queen.
The owners of Chicago's Diamond tower, a venture of Italy’s billionaire Garavoglia family, the controlling shareholder of spirits giant Campari Group, and their local asset managers, R2 and Anagram Capital, have chosen the simple name to help them fill vacancies at the property.
Completed in 1984, the tower — a fixture on Chicago postcards and skyline shots — has had other formal and informal names that didn't stick. They include the Stone Container Building, the Smurfit-Stone Building and even the Adventures in Babysitting Building in a reference to the climactic scene of a 1987 movie starring Elisabeth Shue where a child that Shue's character is babysitting is dangled from the distinctive roof.
Now the Diamond's staying power faces the test of public opinion. While that name undergoes its shakeout in Chicago, here are examples of other well-known buildings throughout the United States and the world that have also changed identities.
Batman Building
The longtime AT&T office building at 333 Commerce St. in Nashville, Tennessee, is often referred to as the Batman Building because of its dual spires that resemble the ears of the comic book hero's mask.
Rising more than 600 feet, the MetLife-owned tower is the tallest in Tennessee.
The nickname arrived just as the then-South Central Bell tower was set to open in 1994, when a newspaper editor at the Nashville Tennessean decided to run a photo of the building alongside a photo of Michael Keaton as Batman, with the actor facing at nearly the exact angle of the building photo, according to a 2024 story in the paper at the tower's 30-year mark.
The 1994 headline exclaimed: "Holy High-rise!"
Superman Building
The Industrial National Bank Building is known to many in Providence, Rhode Island, as the Superman Building.
The nickname is from the art deco structure’s similarity to the Daily Planet newspaper headquarters in the TV series “The Adventures of Superman.”
The 28-story office building, completed in the late 1920s, has been vacant in recent years. Its owner, High Rock Development, has been working on a plan to convert the structure into 285 apartments.
The Shard
When architect Renzo Piano designed the tallest tower in Western Europe on a London site at 32 London Bridge St., it was supposed to be called London Bridge Tower.
Piano's 1,016-foot-tall design was inspired by church spires and ship masts. Over time, it became popularly and formally known as the Shard because of its resemblance to a sharp fragment of glass.
Completed in 2012 and including offices, apartments, retail and a Shangri-La hotel, the tower is now owned by an arm of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund and its developer, Sellar Property Group.
The Shard rises 95 stories, but only 72 are habitable.
Top floors serve as London's highest viewing platform, including an open-air sky deck on the 72nd floor.
The skyscraper is the centerpiece of a development on the south bank of the River Thames called the Shard Quarter.
Flatiron Building
One of New York’s most famous structures began as the Fuller Building. It was named for George A. Fuller, founder of the Fuller Co. Fuller commissioned the office building to house his company's headquarters, but he died before it was built.
Because of its shape resembling a clothing iron, the Daniel Burnham-designed landmark was widely known as the Flatiron Building by the time the company moved out almost 30 years later.
New York developer The Brodsky Organization and previous owners Sorgente Group and GFP Real Estate last year formed a venture to redevelop the building into luxury condominiums with ground-floor retail space.
Designated a New York landmark in 1966 and a National Historic Landmark in 1989, the 22-story building has been mostly vacant in recent years.
Binoculars Building
This Google-occupied office building in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles is also known to locals as the Binoculars Building.
The technology giant has leased the entire 79,000-square-foot building, which doubles as public art, since 2011.
W.P. Carey spinoff Net Lease Office Properties put the property up for sale in March.
Designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1991, the building is accessed via cars and pedestrians through a large set of binoculars resting on their lenses. Another part of the building looks like a tree, with brown pillars that resemble branches.
Beer Can Building
Rivergate Tower, a 31-story office building in Tampa, Florida, was designed by Harry Wolf to look like a lighthouse.
The cylindrical structure was nicknamed by locals as the Beer Can Building.
Originally built for North Carolina National Bank's headquarters, the tower includes a five-story glass atrium.
Completed in the late 1980s, the property is now owned by Banyan Street Capital.
Lipstick Building
The Lipstick Building, a 34-story postmodern office tower at 885 Third Ave. in midtown Manhattan, derived its name from its unique shape and color.
It was designed by the architecture firm of John Burgee and Philip Johnson. Johnson previously was co-designer of the nearby Seagram Building with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Burgee and Johnson feuded during the Lipstick Building project, eventually pushing Burgee into bankruptcy and retirement.
One former tenant is Bernie Madoff, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history from an office in the tower. He died in 2021 while serving a 150-year prison sentence.
It was the first New York project by development giant Hines.
The building is now owned by SL Green Realty, Manhattan’s largest office landlord.
Also known as 53rd at Third, the tower is a short walk from Grand Central Terminal.
Nakatomi Plaza
The 2121 Avenue of the Stars office tower in Los Angeles is known to film buffs as Nakatomi Plaza, the tower’s name and setting for the 1988 film “Die Hard” starring Bruce Willis.
At the time, the property’s actual name was Fox Plaza, home to the film’s producer, 20th Century Fox.
The 34-story tower was completed in 1986, and it is now owned by the Irvine Co.
King and Queen
The 5 and 6 Concourse Parkway office towers in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, Georgia, are known locally as the King and Queen buildings because of their eye-catching crowned tops.
The 32-story 5 Concourse, completed in 1988, became known as the Queen because of the rounded arches of its lattice crown. The 33-story 6 Concourse, completed in 1991, took its King name from its squared lattice top.
The towers within the 64-acre Concourse Corporate Center, among the most recognizable towers in the Atlanta-area skyline, are owned by Building and Land Technology.
The Walkie Talkie
The 37-story office building at 20 Fenchurch St. in London is commonly known as the Walkie Talkie because of the top-heavy design’s resemblance to a radio handset.
Designed by Rafael Vinoly, the office building opened in 2014. The design is to maximize the floor space on upper, higher-rent floors.
It is topped by London’s Sky Garden, featuring sweeping skyline views.
The building is owned by LKK Health Products Group, which set a U.K. office-deal record by paying 1.68 billion U.S. dollars in 2017.
Taipei 101
The former Taipei World Financial Center, an office tower in Taiwan, was the world’s tallest skyscraper when it opened in 2004, a title it held for about a half-decade until the Burj Khalifa was completed in Dubai.
The bamboo-shoot-shaped tower changed names before its completion, as a reference to its height in stories. The 1,667-foot-tall skyscraper includes offices, restaurants, a shopping mall and observatories.
One of the structure's unique features is a 730-ton gold sphere called a tuned mass damper, which is suspended by 92 steel cables at the top of the tower. The pendulum-like engineering feature is used to resist wind and protect the skyscraper from natural disasters such as earthquakes, as it did last year.
Taipei 101 is owned by Japanese firm Itochu and several banks in which Taiwan's government is an investor.
The Cucumber
The Torre Glories, a 38-story tower designed by Jean Nouvel, stands out as one of the tallest buildings in Spain, and it stands out even more when illuminated at night using more than 4,500 LED devices.
It is referred to by nicknames that describe its unusual shape, including the Cucumber.
Completed in 2005, Barcelona's third-tallest building includes office space and a 350-seat auditorium.
It is owned by Spanish real estate investment trust Merlin Properties.
The Gherkin
Originally built as 30 St. Mary Axe and designed by Norman Foster, the circular structure quickly became known as the Gherkin when it opened in 2004.
The 41-story office tower is one of several London properties in recent decades to have taken on a quirky alias, in this case that of a small variation of cucumber often used to make pickles.
Commissioned by Swiss RE for its London office, the building also has a rooftop restaurant.
The building is owned by Safra Group, the conglomerate controlled by Brazilian billionaire Joseph Safra.
The Biosphere
La Biosphere de Montreal, or the Biosphere, is a geodesic dome designed by American architect Buckminster Fuller to house the U.S. Pavilion within a 1967 world’s fair event known as Expo 67 in the Canadian city.
During renovations to the structure in 1976, a fire burned away the transparent, acrylic exterior of the 203-foot-tall dome.
The name eventually was changed to the Biosphere after it was converted into an environmental museum showcasing the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River ecosystem in the 1990s.
The museum is in buildings constructed within the original steel skeleton. It is operated by the city of Montreal.
The Pencil
The 42-story Tour Part-Dieu in Lyon, France, began in 1977 as the Tour du Credit Lyonnais.
It is more commonly known as Le Crayon, or the Pencil, because of its cylindrical shape and pyramid top.
The tower has office space below a Radisson Blu hotel on the top 10 floors. The 32nd floor includes the hotel lobby and expansive views from Celest Restaurant.
Le Crayon is in the third arrondissement of France’s third-largest city, within the Part-Dieu business district.