The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company Building, also known as the Northern Implement Company and the American Trio Building, is a warehouse building in downtown

Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

PPG Industries PPG Industries, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 company and global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials. With headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, PPG operates in more than 70 countries around the globe. By revenue it is ...

of Pittsburgh constructed the structure.

Background

It was designed by the architectural firm

Kees and Colburn Frederick G. Kees (April 9, 1852 – March 16, 1927) was an American architect notable for his work in Minnesota and partnerships with Franklin B. Long and Serenus Colburn. Life and career Kees was born in Baltimore, Maryland on April 9, ...

and shows strong influences of architect Louis Sullivan. The arches in the top floor windows are modeled after Louis Sullivan's designs, which in turn were influenced by Henry Hobson Richardson's

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesque ...

style. The corners of the building are subtly

chamfer A chamfer or is a transitional edge between two faces of an object. Sometimes defined as a form of bevel, it is often created at a 45° angle between two adjoining right-angled faces. Chamfers are frequently used in machining, carpentry, fu ...

ed in at the bottom and rise toward a flaring

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

at the top, echoing John Wellborn Root's design of the Monadnock Building in Chicago. The building has now been converted to loft apartments.

References

National Register of Historic Places in Minneapolis Commercial buildings completed in 1910 Warehouses on the National Register of Historic Places Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota PPG Industries {{Minnesota-NRHP-stub