Spingler Building

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125-foot, 8-story Italian-Renaissance office building completed in 1897. Designed by William H. Hume & Son, it is L-shaped, with a narrow wing extending to 15th Street. The main facade on Union Square is divided into five bays of paired windows, and has a 2-story limestone base, now painted white. The piers, projected forward at the outer bays, sit on brown-painted bases and have egg-and-dart moldings at the top of the 2nd floor. The central entrance is set under a round-arch and framed by brown polished stone Ionic columns, paired front-to-back and supporting a small portico bearing the words "SPINGLER BUILDING", with a dentiled and egg-and-dart molded cornice that, in turn, supports the base of the white metal fire escape. To either side of the portico, the spandrels have intricate foliate carvings. A projecting white modillioned cornice caps the base.

The upper floors are clad in light-orange brick with horizontal stone banding on the 3rd floor, which is capped by a cornice. The three center bays of the 4th-7th floors feature white spandrels with carvings matching those at the base, and are topped by round-arches at the 7th floor. The outer bays at the 7th floor have paired round-arched windows with keystones. A molded band course sets off the top floor, which is faced in white terra-cotta with intricate designs around the square-headed windows. A white, bracketed and dentiled roof cornice crowns the facade.

The 3-bay 15th Street wing has a grey brick ground floor with a stone cornice, and another cornice over the 2nd floor, which has white stone banding across the orange brick. The upper-floor windows have small stone sills and splayed brick headers. The 7th-floor windows are round-arched with keystones. Like the main facade, a molded band course sets off the top floor, which is also faced in white terra-cotta with intricate designs around the square-headed windows. Another white, bracketed and dentiled roof cornice crowns this facade.

The building bears the same name as its predecessor (a mid-1800s building that was destroyed by fire in 1895), named after Henry Spingler, the German-born previous owner of the land from 1778 until his death. The upper floors of the new Spingler Building filled with light manufacturing and office tenants. A somewhat surprising use of the building came about in 1921 when the Maryland Casualty Company installed a hospital for treatment of injured compensation claimants. A long-term retailer was Joseph Mayer Co., Inc. dealers in “distinctive picture frames.” The firm would remain in the building from the 1940s through the 1960s. Following the turn of the 21st century nearly half of the Spingler Building was leased by Rockwell Group, a “cross-disciplinary architecture and design practice.”

The retail space at street level, where fashionable Edwardian gentlemen shopped for collars and cuffs, is now home to an expansive Staples store.