(Above) Bowling alley on the second floor of the office building, below the employees’ terrace, from the 1985 book Dans La Ville. Other recreational activities at Marina City in the mid-1960s included ice skating, a swimming pool and gymnasium, and boating.

Marina City strikes deal for bowling alley

In December 1964, with 26,000 light bulbs decorating every balcony of both towers, it was announced downtown’s only major bowling facility would be built at Marina City. A 20-year lease, worth more than $1 million (equal to $7 million in 2011), was signed on December 18 with Spencer’s Marina City Bowl, owned by William A. Spencer (1924-1996).

His father, John C. Spencer, had built a bowling alley at Belmont and Cicero Avenues in Chicago and owned the Spencer Coals, a semi-pro baseball team.

William A. Spencer had a 42-lane operation in St. Louis and two bowling facilities in Racine, Wisconsin. He was also a pilot and the inventor of the automatic gate at parking lots, which he first built for the parking lot of his father’s bowling alley. He would later own and operate eight bowling centers in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri.

Bowling had always been a part of the design of Marina City. Besides 38 lanes on the second floor of the office building – that Bertrand Goldberg Associates would design – the facility would have a restaurant, cocktail lounge, and an area for billiards.

The original design, according to BGA architect Ben Honda, was for 54 lanes of bowling, stretching from Dearborn Street to State Street. “But then when the National Design Center came in as a tenant, they wanted a chunk of it to poke up through the bowling alley,” he said in a 1999 interview with Betty Blum. “So then the numbers of lanes were reduced.”

(Left) Standing, Charles Swibel, president of Marina Management Corporation, and Frank C. Wells, vice-president of L. J. Sheridan & Company, a real estate broker. Seated, William McFetridge, president of BSEIU Local 1, the union local that had one-third interest in Marina Ciry, and William Spencer. They are signing a lease on December 18, 1964. (Click on image to view larger version.)