Two years to the day after the groundbreaking ceremony, on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1962, dignitaries gathered again at Marina City. This time, to bury into the foundation a celestial map showing the position of the stars and planets when ground was broken two years earlier.
With text in five languages, the map was on a silver plaque. It represented a copper scroll that would over the next few weeks be covered with hot asphalt to protect it from moisture, then embedded in the foundation of the east tower core, in a mass of concrete 50 feet in diameter and eight feet thick.
The text in the lower half read, in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chinese, “This building began on the 22nd day of November 1960 A.D. according to the Gregorian calendar. The planets in the heavens were as shown on this celestial map. The universal language of astronomy will permit men forever to understand and know this date. Marina City and its towers were the dream of William L. McFetridge, the planning of Charles R. Swibel, and the architecture of Bertrand Goldberg.”
Robert S. Adler (left), president of Chicago Planetarium Society and the son of Max Adler, for whom Adler Planetarium is named, presented the star map to William L. McFetridge, president of Marina City Building Corporation and former president of the union that financed Marina City.
The ceremony, which included an interdenominational service, took place in the lobby of the east tower, just off State Street. Officiating were Dr. Kenneth Hildebrand, pastor of the nondenominational Central Church of Chicago, Rabbi Ralph Simon (1907-1996) of Congregation Rodfei Zedek, and Very Reverend Comerford J. O’Malley (1944-1963), president of DePaul University.
Several paper copies of the map, each rolled up into a tube, were handed out after the ceremony. The silver version, meanwhile, was displayed for a time in the lobby of the east tower.