The Dome Fifty Artisans Spent Eighteen Months Setting by Hand

Look up as you pass the store at State and Washington, because the ceiling you cannot see from the sidewalk is the real landmark here. Inside, over a five story atrium, hangs a dome of Tiffany favrile glass that took fifty artisans eighteen months to set, piece by piece, until it held one point six million individual fragments of iridescent glass. It remains the largest mosaic of its kind anywhere in the world, designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and finished in nineteen oh seven for a merchant who had already rewritten the rules of American shopping.

Marshall Field built his department store on ideas that sound ordinary now only because he made them standard. He posted fixed prices on every item so customers would never have to haggle, and he backed every sale with a full refund, no argument, no exceptions, a policy so unusual for its era that competitors called it reckless. His staff distilled his philosophy into four words that still get quoted in business school case studies: give the lady what she wants. This building is also credited with opening the country's first in store restaurant, so a shopper could spend an entire afternoon under that glass dome without ever stepping back onto State Street. The store has worn other names since, but the dome above the old State Street entrance has not moved, and on a clear day the light still pools through one point six million pieces of glass exactly as it did when the artisans finished their scaffolding and climbed down.