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And that is how you spell “Kemper” April 22, 2012 – (Above) The last letter is lowered into place at the top of the 41-story Kemper Building at State & Wacker in downtown Chicago late Sunday morning. (Click on image to view larger version.) The sign was delivered by truck from Landmark Sign Group, 138 miles away in Chesterton, Indiana. Two trucks parked on Wacker Drive in front of the building. A Sikorsky twin-turbine helicopter took it from there, delivering the sign letter by letter to the top of the Kemper Building, both the north and south sides. It took about an hour. A spectacle within the spectacle was the sight of two workers walking from the north side to the south side using a narrow ledge near the top of the 525-foot high building. “After the letters went up there was no way to get down,” explained one of the workers, Joseph Rukavina of Midwest Helicopter Airways, “so we had to walk the ledge around to the south side of the building.” The lifts have gone without incident. The new signs, according to Kemper Corporation, are made with LED technology “that will reduce electrical consumption by 50 percent compared with the former Unitrin sign.” According to Kemper’s public relations firm, the sign will be lit this week, most likely on Tuesday. This is not the Loop’s first Kemper sign. In 1947, the Kemper name appeared on the west side of the Civic Opera House. More images…
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