Universal Building

 office building  Add category

150-foot, 11-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1909. Designed by Clinton and Russell, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story limestone base. The facade is five bays wide, with the center bay the widest and the end bays the narrowest. The main entrance at the east end has been refaced in red polished granite; the service entrance at the west end retains the original stone enframement, inscribed address panel, and rounded pediment featuring a carved beaver. In between is a tall storefront with large plate-glass windows and central entrance. The storefront bays are framed by slender, paired, beige cast-iron columns with subtle fluting. They extend to the 2nd floor where they have small Corinthian capitals. This floor also has large plate-glass show-windows, with a beige cast-iron spandrel between the 1st & 2nd floors on which the ornament, including garlands and rosettes, is painted dark-red. The 3rd floor is separated by grooved stone spandrels with red rosettes and square bases with red outlined stone shields for additional paired columns between the bays. The 3rd floor has thin pilasters dividing the three windows in the center bay, and two windows in the flanking bays. The end bays on both the 2nd & 3rd floors are rusticated, with single-windows and stone sills. A dentiled cornice caps the entire base, above a panel in the center that is inscribed with "UNIVERSAL BUILDING".

The 4th floor is clad in brick and capped by a dentiled stone cornice. There is are three windows in the center, two in each side bay, and single-windows with stone surrounds in the end bays. The upper floors have the same fenestration pattern, with stone sills. The end bays at the 5th floor have stone surrounds topped by cartouches and rounded pediments and fronted by low wrought-iron rails. The end-bay windows above have keyed stone surrounds. At the 10th floor, the end-bays have matching cartouches and pediments, with a dentiled cornice running between them.

The top floor is also crowned by a dentiled cornice. The ground floor is occupied by a Bank of Hope branch.