May-June 2025.
Aurora’s Graham Building is the tallest Prairie School building that George Elmslie designed within the city. His teacher Louis Sullivan’s influence is very obvious in the ornamentation and massing, but the design takes on Prairie School tendencies.
The Graham Building is located at 33 South Stolp Avenue in downtown Aurora, Illinois. It is bordered by Millenium Plaza to the north, Victorian commercial buildings to the south, Stolp Avenue and the Keystone Building to the east, and the Fox River to the west.
History
The Graham Building was designed by George Elmslie, a student of Louis Sullivan, in 1924. It was built for contractor William Graham, who served as Elmslie’s general contractor across his various works in Aurora. Designed in the Prairie School style, the building has a steel and concrete frame with a brick exterior. Inside, the Graham Building has a typical office floor plan of a foyer area with elevators surrounded by offices, and the finishes are modest. It was completed in 1926.
Standing at eight stories tall, the Graham Building towers above its older neighbors. Its height and relatively bare side facades are signs that it was not meant to have this distinction for long, but if anything they have been further exposed with the construction of Millenium Plaza. Another interesting feature is the treatment of the facade that faces the river, which was typically an afterthought by other architects.
The building has received minor alterations over the years, namely new windows and removal of the original ground floor doors and light fixtures. Its masonry, ornamentation, and some of the side double-hung windows remain intact.
Graham owned the building until his death in the 1950s. It has changed hands since and is now used as an apartment complex.
Photos
The east facade is dominated by two massive piers that project from the otherwise flat facade:
Note that the inner four bays actually recess a bit, which both emphasizes the piers and visually reduces the larger size of the module. The smooth ashlar base also contrasts with the more textured brick above:
Elmslie employs ornamentation on the floors above, but it is mostly used in subtler sills beneath the windows.
Compare this to the Keystone Building across the street, also designed by Elmslie, which has a much more liberal application of its ornament. These long sills work to add horizontality, a typical Prairie School inclination.
The west (river) facade is actually wider, due to the building’s odd shape in plan, and it is expressed in the same manner as the principal east facade:
A better look at the subtlety of the brick detailing:
The top row of windows has a wide brick lintel above instead of a similar band of ornament like the sills below. The bays are recessed by the width of one brick here, not as far as they are on the other side. Importantly, the piers pierce the horizontal sills.
The cornice has the most elaborate ornamentation on the building:
The piers are crowned with a highly decorated terra-cotta cap, which is carved with typical geometric-meets-vegetal Sullivanesque designs. The cornice is lined with repeating motifs--two smaller, more repetitive patterns sandwich larger panels. Its larger scale is meant to make it more visible to pedestrians below.
Even the penthouse has some crowning decoration…a much pointier geometric form:
I always saw this building as the Leland Tower’s little brother, considering its height and proximity to the latter. Its acknowledgement of the river and basically having two front facades was a smart move by Elmslie--neighboring buildings do not do the same.
Sources:
https://web.archive.org/web/20131203044547/http://gis.hpa.state.il.us/pdfs/200197.pdf
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