Worthy Of Note

A beautiful piece of small-scale design: That’s a corner masonry pier encasing a steel column. The light-blue things at the top of the photo are canopies shading the storefronts. You can see the storefronts on the left at a very narrow angle, receding into the distance; the door on the far right is part of a recessed entry behind the corner column. This the 1898 Williams Building in Chicago, designed by Holabird & Roche, an early steel-frame skyscraper that is not particularly famous because (a) at 10 stories, it’s at the bottom end of the height range to even be considered, (b) like a lot of early skyscrapers in Chicago, it’s more of a cube than a tower, and (c) it’s got fairly utilitarian facades. But look at that pier. I can think of nothing that would improve it. I’m back from APT and semi-normal posting will resume tomorrow.