One of Chicago’s most iconic buildings is the Tribune Tower. Despite rising only 36 stories the tower has helped set Chicago apart as a living architectural museum. Its soaring Gothic spires and shrine-like lobby, complete with inspirational quotes, are by now iconic identifiers of the city and make it a thoroughly Chicago building. But the fragments embedded into the tower’s facade make it a thoroughly cool building.

Where did those fragments come from? And, perhaps more importantly, is it possible to track down how each one was acquired?

There are about 150 fragments from places all over the country and the world. Some of the most notable examples are a rock from the Great Pyramid at Giza, an emblem from the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, a fragment from the Great Wall of China, and a piece of metal from the World Trade Center. These fragments, or “relics” as the paper was fond of calling them, stretch across most of the building’s facade and range from eye-level to several feet above eye-level in height.

From the outset I should note that there are not necessarily records for every stone that describes who acquired it and how. But there were essentially two ways every fragment found its way to the facade: it was either sent back to Chicago by reporters in the field, or was gifted to Chicago and the Tribune by a town or a person. Additionally, the stones and fragments were not gathered and installed at the same time; it was, and continues to be, a process. The most recent dedications were in 2015 when bricks from Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park were installed.

A newspaper clipping from Tribune reporter John Menaugh, published while the WGN Building adjacent to Tribune Tower was under construction in 1948, makes note of a “plan” to “imbed stones from historic sites of 43 states of the Union.” According to Menaugh, “This is a further development of the original plan, which saw historic stones from five states as well as stones from various other places in the world imbedded in the walls of the Tribune Tower and W-G-N studio building.”

He describes the process in probably the most detail the paper recorded. “Stones from the 43 states already have been collected, some after considerable research and exchange of correspondence.” (Emphasis added) The article then lists the origins of all 43 stones.

That explains about where 28 percent of the stones on the Tribune’s facade came from. What about the other 107 fragments?

Another clipping from 1952 listed all the stones then installed in the building, numbering 119 (including the 43 stones embedded in the WGN tower). The 1952 article notes that “Many of these stones, garnered from the important corners of the world, were presented to Col. Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of The Tribune, and others were obtained by The Tribune’s foreign correspondents serving over the globe.” Unfortunately, the article does not list which stones were gifts and which were acquired by correspondents directly.

But the article does offer a valuable clue to the origin of approximately 16 stones that were acquired after World War II (the article calls them “Battle Stones”). Today most of these stones are found on the WGN side of the building.