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Roanoke Building

Chicago skyscraper

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ7339772
Source-derived summary

11 South LaSalle Street Building or Eleven South LaSalle Street Building (formerly Roanoke Building and Tower and originally Lumber Exchange Building and Tower Addition or simply the Roanoke Building and Lumber Exchange Building) is a Chicago Landmark building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and that is located at 11 South LaSalle Street in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. This address is located on the southeast corner of LaSalle and Madison Street in Cook County, Illinois, across the Madison Street from the One North LaSalle Building. The building sits on a site of a former Roanoke building (once known as Major Block 2) that once served as a National Weather Service Weather Forecast official climate site and replaced Major Block 1 after the Great Chicago Fire. The current building has incorporated the frontage of other buildings east of the original site of Major Block 1.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (under the name Lumber Exchange Building and Tower Addition) on December 6, 2007, and named a Chicago Landmark on December 12, 2007. It incorporates the lands of the former DeSoto Building and former Farwell Hall. The building was renovated to become the world's largest Residence Inn in 2015.

Original Roanoke Building

A four-story Major Block 1 building, designed by T. V. Widskier, sat on this location until the Great Chicago Fire. After the fire, this was replaced with the Major Block 2, which eventually became known as the Roanoke Building. Major Block 2 stood from 1872 to 1912 as a seven-story building on spread foundations.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Roanoke Building” as chicago skyscraper. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Roanoke, Building and Chicago.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2007, 2015, 1872, 1912—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Roanoke, Building and Chicago providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Roanoke Building”, the useful work is to connect “chicago skyscraper” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7339772. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2015, 1872 and 1912.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Roanoke Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.