St. Ann Building

 office building, Moorish Revival (architecture), Renaissance Revival (architecture)

118-foot, 8-story Renaissance Revival office building completed in 1896. Designed by Cleverdon & Putzel as a store-and-loft building, it is clad in limestone and white terra-cotta created by Excelsior Terra Cotta Co. The terra-cotta ornament took inspiration from the Art Nouveau and Moorish Revival styles. The ground floor has a dentiled string course and the entryway is framed by two polished grey granite Doric columns, supporting a frieze with the building name "St. Ann" carved in it. A ground-story, modern stone and glass alteration features similar, probably original, columns. The three large bays at the 2nd floor each contain two deeply-recessed windows set below transoms and divided by a decorated metal muntin and a small column.

The 3rd floor is broken into six bays by heavy, fluted terra-cotta columns which support a terra-cotta cornice with a wide decorated frieze. A 3-bay, 3-story arcade, with arched terminal windows, unifies the 4th, 5th & 6th floors. Engaged, twisted, Moorish columns between the arches support the small bracketed cornice over the 6th floor. The columns are paired flanking the arcade. Four cartouches bracket the three double-windows of the 7th floor, while a highly decorated band surrounds the 6-bay, 8th-floor with its five heavy engaged columns. The building is capped by a large, black, pressed-metal cornice with dentils.

This building replaced the St. Anns Protestant Episcopal Church and Rectory. Tenants of the current building included: Mason & Hamlin Pianos, from around 1897-1900; A. C. Armstrong & Son, publishers, about 1905; a lace curtains business and a perfumery, about 1905; several cloak and suit, shirt waist businesses from around 1906-1913; and the National Temperance society on the second floor around 1897.

The ground floor was occupied by The City Bakery until it closed in 2019.

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