Reliance Building

The Reliance Building is a fourteen-story tower at the corner of State and Washington Streets, defined by its luminous facade of white glazed terra cotta and vast, projecting bays of glass. Completed in eighteen ninety-five, it represents a radical leap in skyscraper design. Its thin, steel-frame skeleton supports a membrane of windows covering more than eighty-five percent of the exterior, a transparent approach that wouldn't become standard in architecture for another fifty years.