Gage, Keith & Ascher Buildings, 18 & 30 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, IL

Significance: All three buildings are significant examples of Chicago School architecture. The Gage Building, with its unique, gracefully-ornamented facade designed by Louis Sullivan, was to be one of the architect's last commissions in Chicago. Today there are only five Sulivan-designed buildings in the city's central business district. The Keith and the Ascher Buildings, although less well known, are typical of the several buildings designed in the 1890s and early 1900s by Holabird and Roche. On the exterior the buildings have little applied ornament; brick piers and spandrels surrounding rows of Chicago windows visually express the building's underlying skeleton. In their simplicity, these facades look ahead to the Chicago skyscrapers of the 1960s and 1970s.
Survey number: HABS IL-1065
Building/structure dates: 1899-1900 Initial Construction