The 7-ton glass desk designed by the late architect Frank Gehry for the lobby of the Inland Steel Building sold at auction Wednesday for $243,200.
The 16-piece ensemble, made of emerald-colored glass and named Icehenge, had been anticipated to fetch between $100,000 and $200,000.
Freeman’s, which handled the online auction of the desk, listed the winning bid on its website.
While Freeman’s made known the successful bid for the one-of-kind item, the auction house was mum on the identity of the lucky paddle-raiser. The company didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The auction result means the likely end to a small but noteworthy chapter in Chicago’s storied history of architecture and design.
Gehry — whose portfolio includes internationally renowned structures such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion and BP Pedestrian Bridge — held a nearly lifelong admiration for Chicago’s sleek Inland Steel Building at 30 W. Monroe St.
From 2005 to 2007, the architect had a small ownership piece of the Inland Steel Building, a 19-story skyscraper designed by SOM and built in 1958.
Working with John Lewis Glass Studio, now Christison Lewis, in Oakland, California, Gehry created the 15,000-pound desk unit specifically for the Inland Steel lobby.
The work — a staffed and functioning security desk — was installed in the building in 2012.
Gehry died in 2025 at age 96.
Icehenge is as much sculpture as it is furniture, with the same billowing, sail-like quality found in many of Gehry’s designs. But the work is also visually untamed, jagged and unpredictable.
“It does look like an explosion in a glass factory, kind of,” the Los Angeles architect told Chicago architecture critic Blair Kamin in 2013. “If you actually had an explosion at a glass factory, apart from everyone getting killed, it would be pretty exciting visually.”
The piece is composed of two main desktops, plus base supports and decorative forms — all made of glass. There are also a pair of mirrored cabinets.
That’s a lot of heavy glass and accoutrements for the winning bidder to move. And the desk’s destination better be pretty sturdy: Icehenge is heavier than the combined weight of four nicely optioned 2026 Honda Accord sedans.
And in order to get the piece out of the building, the buyer will have to cover the cost of removing, then reinstalling some of the glass-paneled lobby windows of the skyscraper, a protected city landmark and globally recognized high point in modern architecture.
The buyer will also need a “reputable, experienced transporter,” and the piece will have to be removed “based on the timing of delivery of a replacement desk, which is expected to be delivered in mid-September,” according to the auction details.
The Inland Steel Building is owned by New York Life Insurance Co., which acquired the deed from Inland Steel’s previous owners, Capital Properties, in 2025, in lieu of foreclosure.