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.