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The Pontiac Building is a historic high-rise building located at 542 S. Dearborn St. in the
Printer's Row
Printers Row, also known as Printing House Row, is a neighborhood located in the south of the Chicago downtown area known as the Loop. The heart of Printers Row is generally defined by Ida B. Wells Drive on the north, Polk Street on the south, P ...
neighborhood of Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
.
History
Built in 1891, the building is the oldest surviving work in downtown Chicago designed by the architecture firmHolabird & Roche
The architectural firm now known as Holabird & Root was founded in Chicago in 1880. Over the years, the firm has changed its name several times and adapted to the architectural style then current — from Chicago School to Art Deco to Modern ...
. The fourteen-story building represents the Chicago school of architecture and is designed as a steel frame covered in brick. The building's Dearborn Street facade features three tiers of bay window
A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room.
Types
Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...
s, while the facade on Federal Street features one tier of bay windows flanked by two tiers of flat windows; while the outer two tiers on both facades each span two bays, the middle tier spans only one. The bottoms of these tiers of windows, located at the second floor of the building, feature terra cotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...
soffit
A soffit is an exterior or interior architectural feature, generally the horizontal, aloft underside of any construction element. Its archetypal form, sometimes incorporating or implying the projection of beams, is the underside of eaves (to ...
s; the building's 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 ...
is also terra cotta. The first two floors of the building feature limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...
piers Piers may refer to:
* Pier, a raised structure over a body of water
* Pier (architecture), an architectural support
* Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name)
* Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...
with decorative capitals. Due to the building's architectural significance, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
on March 16, 1976.
References
Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Chicago Chicago school architecture in Illinois Commercial buildings completed in 1891 Skyscraper office buildings in Chicago Projects by Holabird & Root 1891 establishments in Illinois {{Chicago-struct-stub