(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.

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 $7.6 million in 2014), was signed on December 18, 1964 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 & Cicero Avenues in Chicago and he owned the Spencer Coals, a semi-pro baseball team.

William 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.

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.

Bowling had always been a part of the plan for Marina City. 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 1999. “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 City, and William Spencer. They are signing the lease for Spencer’s Marina City Bowl on December 18, 1964. (Click on image to view larger version.)