An IDS timeline

1963: Baker Properties (developer of the nearby Northstar Center) and Minneapolis architect Edward Baker propose a 12-story tower at 8th St. and Nicollet Av. S.

1966: IDS (now Ameriprise) joins the project.

1967: Dayton Co. (now Target Corp.) joins the project, which expands to a 50-story tower, hotel and indoor court, designed by architects Philip Johnson ("an extremely natty and articulate man," said the Minneapolis Star in October 1969) and John Burgee of New York City in association with Baker.

1969: Demolition begins.

1971: The tower's last structural steel is set on Sept. 2, one year and one day after the first column was installed.

1972: Tenants start moving into the tower in February. The tower's address is 80 S. 8th St., but principal tenant Dayton Hudson Corp. preferred the classier 777 Nicollet Mall, to the chagrin of the U.S. Postal Service. "The rules are supposed to apply to everyone," griped a Postal Service spokesperson.

1972: The Symphony Ball is held in the Crystal Court in June (the court opens to the public four months later). Among the guests is Andy Warhol.

• The Marquette Inn (now Marquette Hotel) opens.

• 51st-floor observation deck opens Nov. 22.

1973: IDS becomes a TV star when it appears in the opening credits of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

1974: Orion Room restaurant and lounge opens, sharing the tower's 50th floor with the Minnesota Alumni Club.

1978: A pair of 111-foot-tall radio antennas are added to the tower's roof. "Antennas on the IDS? How about a mustache on the Mona Lisa?" asks a headline in the Minneapolis Star.

1981: Oxford Development buys the center for $200 million. The deal stipulates that the IDS name remain.

1983: Observation deck closes.

1985: Orion Room moves from the 50th to the 51st floor.

1993: The tower's lobby and elevators receive a makeover (by Shea Inc. of Minneapolis), which "will update the building's look, brighten the too-dark lobby and bring in some elegant touches," said Star Tribune architecture critic Linda Mack. "It may also erode IDS' integrity. And it's hard to get back a classic."

• Woolworth's closes, replaced by the Gap and Banana Republic, among others.

• Windows on Minnesota, formerly the Orion Room, closes. The Minnesota Alumni Club moves out of the center.

1995: Heitman Properties, the building's manager, adds sculptor Jonathan Borofsky's mammoth "Hammering Man" to the Crystal Court but clears the floor of all seating and retail kiosks, turning it into "a wasteland," decried Mack.

1996: In the tower's first suicide, a 32-year-old man jumped from a 30th-floor window, crashing through the roof of the Crystal Court. A similar Crystal Court death -- a 30-year-old man breaking through a window on the 51st floor -- occurred in 2001.

1998: White benches, black olive trees and a 105-foot fountain (designed by HGA Architects and Engineers of Minneapolis) inject new life into the Crystal Court. "A human-scale space within the city's piazza," said Mack.

2004: John Buck Co. of Chicago buys the center for $225 million.

2006: The center is sold to Inland Real Estate Group of Companies Inc. of Chicago for $277 million.