Years ago, in the late ’80s, Chicago radio station WXRT – I think – made brief fun of Helmut Jahn, telling listeners that famed Chicago architect “Helmut Helmut” had designed a giant glass football as a downtown building. The station joker wasn’t really making fun of the starchitect as much as the Jahn-designed State of Illinois Center, a vast, roundish glass structure that opened in 1985 in the Central Loop, joining other major government buildings in the area.

For about three decades, the glass 3D roundel housed state offices, acquiring a new name at some point — the Thompson Center — and a reputation as a money pit in terms of maintenance and a source of discomfort for the workers.

The state of Illinois bugged out during the 2010s, and the structure still stands, but is empty. I encountered it on my evening walk yesterday.

Inside is well lighted, but the building is still a ghost of its former self. I took an image through the window near the former main entrance. These days, otherwise, access denied.

Google bought the building last year, and tapped Jahn’s successor firm (he died in 2021) to do the redevelopment design, or, as other sources have put it, demolition of the exterior and the sweeping atrium. I’m not sure what the plan is exactly. Still pending, I guess.

I used to visit often, especially when I worked downtown, but also afterward, and the building, which I didn’t care for that much when I first visited – 1986? – grew on me, especially that sweeping atrium. I’d hate to see it altered beyond recognition.