Second Leiter Building

Brief Information

The Second Leiter Building looks like a large late-19th-century commercial block, but its importance is hidden in its construction: it is one of the earliest commercial buildings in the United States with a metal frame to have survived to the present day. William Le Baron Jenney designed a steel frame for it that was intended to improve fire safety, so behind the granite shell stands an early experiment in the kind of architecture from which business Chicago grew.

The building’s purpose changed along with the city. At first it was leased by the Siegel, Cooper and Company department store; later it had various tenants; from 1931 the main Sears store in downtown Chicago operated here; and in 1998 the campus of Robert Morris University moved in. The same large frame proved suitable for retail, rental use, and an academic building.

What to Notice First

It makes sense to read the building as a grid designed for large open floors. The facade along State Street extends for an entire block and is divided into nine bays; the side facades are shorter, with three bays each. This immediately shows which side was the main one and how the rectangular volume is fitted between three streets.

Wide pilasters between the bays are crowned with simple capitals, and a plain cornice runs above. The decoration here does not compete with the repeated rhythm of the frame: the pink granite covers the steel structure, but does not hide the building’s commercial logic. The high ceilings and large area of each floor explain why the former department store could continue to accommodate new tenants for so long: inside, what was needed was not a multitude of small rooms, but spacious retail and work areas.