James R. Thompson Center

The James R. Thompson Center (JRTC; being redeveloped as Google Center and originally the State of Illinois Center) is a postmodern-style building at 100 W. Randolph Street in the Loop district of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Helmut Jahn around a post-modernist rotunda, it was built to house offices of the Illinois state government in Chicago. The building occupies an entire block bounded by Randolph, Lake, Clark and LaSalle streets.

Prior to the development of the State of Illinois Center, many offices of the government of Illinois were housed at 160 North LaSalle Street. Governor James R. Thompson allocated funding for the State of Illinois Center in 1978, and Jahn was selected as the architect, announcing his plans in 1980. The building opened in 1985 after several delays and a construction accident that killed five people. It was renamed for Thompson in 1993. By the 2000s, the building was functionally outdated, prompting three successive governors to propose redeveloping or selling the building. The sale proposals elicited numerous objections from preservationists, who unsuccessfully tried to have it added to the National Register of Historic Places. Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, finally acquired the building in 2022 and began renovating it in 2024.

The 17-story building curves and slopes facing a plaza on the southeast corner of the property. The facade is made of glass, which was originally multicolored and single-paned; the panels were replaced with insulated glass during the 2020s. On the building's roof is a round sloped skylight, which covers the building's circular atrium. A large transparent glass extension running from the skylight down the sloped front of the building, allowed views of the surrounding skyscrapers from the rotunda. The Thompson Center's atrium overlooks all of the building's stories and originally had semi-circular balconies, with exposed stairs on three sides opposite the front, and a glass enclosed elevator column opposite the front. Office floors stretched back from the balconies to the end of the building, which extended in straight outline to the back corner property lines. The building included 19 specially commissioned artworks funded by the State of Illinois Art-in-Architecture Program, among them the Monument with Standing Beast sculpture by Jean Dubuffet. The building's unconventional design has attracted mixed reviews over the years.