For more than forty years, a three-story mural of Ceres presided over the exchange floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. The Roman goddess of the harvest, rendered like a Jazz Age erotic dancer by local muralist John W. Norton, overlooked a mahogany-lined marketplace arranged into octagonal amphitheaters of teakwood steps. These were the open outcry “trading pits,” each devoted to a basic commodity like grain or cotton.
The Board of Trade was designed by Holabird & Root at the height of stock-exchange optimism. Overwhelmingly vertical and modern, the art deco tower is laden with agricultural and financial symbolism. Above the La Salle Street entrance, a row of bulls protrudes from the limestone façade, closely followed by a pair of hooded figures clutching sheaves of wheat and corn. Six hundred feet above street level, at the tip of the skyscraper’s crown, stands a riveted aluminum statue of—who else?—Ceres.
By the time the building opened in 1930, the market had lost its luster. The Board of Trade had long attempted to modernize the commodities trade, starting with…
