Academic

Willis Nonsense Never End? Chicago Set To Lose Sears Tower

By Dan Filler

It felt odd when the Pan Am Building disappeared from the New York skyline (replaced by the MetLife Building monniker in 1991.)  And it feels even stranger to hear that the tallest building in America, Sears Tower, will soon be no more.  Rather, tourists will crane their necks to view Willis Tower, named after Willis Group Holdings, a London insurer.  Will everyone who has never heard of Willis Group please raise your hand?

The name reminded me of an old Chicago embarrassment, the Willis Wagon.  These were portable classroom units added to the playgrounds of overcrowded Chicago schools.  (I know because I spent four years in them.)  From the Encyclopedia of Chicago:

"Willis Wagons? was the pejorative term for portable school classrooms used by critics of Superintendent of Schools Benjamin C. Willis (1953?1966) when protesting school overcrowding and segregation in black neighborhoods from 1962 to 1966. In December 1961, the Board of Education approved Willis's plan to buy 150 to 200 of the 20 x 36-foot aluminum mobile school units and install them at existing schools and on vacant lots. Besides installing the portable units, officials accommodated swelling ghetto pupil enrollments with double-shift schedules, rented commercial space, and much new school construction. Black parents, neighborhood organizations, and civil rights groups also urged authorities to permit black children to attend white schools with empty seats. Willis and the school board, however, resisted, preferring traditional neighborhood-based schools and refusing to reconfigure boundaries.

Once again, the Willis name brings bad karma to the Windy City.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 16, 2009 (boomark / email).