The seven-story, 180,000-square-foot basket features a 30,000-square-foot atrium with a glass ceiling. The basket's 150-ton handles, which took eighteen months to build, include a specific heating element that prevents ice from building and potentially smashing through the ceiling in the winter. In the summer, water is pumped through the handle elements to prevent them from getting too hot. When it was completed in 1959, this basket of Chicago was the largest concrete structure in the world. It was also supposed to be permanent, but less than ten years later, heavy rainfall caused some parts of it to collapse. The city rebuilt part of the basket, this time using steel instead of concrete for greater durability. But even so, the replacement section collapsed within just five years of its completion. So despite being designed to last forever, today's basket is actually composed of three baskets stuck together. The first and original concrete portion still stands on South Wabash Avenue in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood. This area was devastated by fire in 1996, but the basket survived because it was still being used as a warehouse. After the fire had burned out, workers went inside the basket and removed all the merchandise they could salvage. The second portion is made of steel and covers an arcade that used to stand next to the original basket. This new version was built in 1965 after another fire damaged the original one further.