Sears' name is gone but still towers over icon

CHICAGO -- The sleek black building that looms over this city's skyline has for 36 years been instantly recognizable as the Sears Tower. Until now.

The 110-story building — once the world's tallest, now the tallest in the Western Hemisphere — officially became the Willis Tower Thursday in a ceremony in downtown Chicago.

The switch was part of the deal struck by Willis Group Holdings, an insurance brokerage with offices in New York and London, when it leased 150,000 square feet in the famous skyscraper.

Company Chairman and CEO Joseph Plumeri and Mayor Richard Daley unveiled a sign out front bearing the tower's new name.

Getting city residents to embrace the change, however, may not be so easy.

Sears moved out in the 1990s, but Chicagoans take their architecture and history seriously, and name changes often are met with resistance here — or just ignored.

Online petitions still demand that Macy's restore the name Marshall Field's to its State Street department store. That change took effect in 2006.

Many people here still refer to the ballpark where the White Sox play as Comiskey Park. It became U.S. Cellular Field in 2003.

"We expect the same wailing and gnashing of teeth we heard about Macy's," says Jason Neises, vice president of tour operations for the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

The group is updating its tours and promotional material to reflect the name change.

"Part of Chicago's greatness has to do with its people feeling strongly about their buildings," Willis' Plumeri says.

Still, his job is to "get the Willis name to be more prominent," Plumeri says, and he couldn't pass up a chance to put it on "a building as iconic as the Sears Tower."

Phyllis Kozlowski of Wendella Boats says its guides will tell visitors the building has a new name but will also mention its original moniker.

"If you just suddenly bleep out 'Sears Tower,' people are not going to know what you're referring to," she says.