
The top of the Union National Bank Building (now the Carlyle luxury apartments) reflected in the Patterson Building.
Why should the beautiful die?
This is very definitely a corner building, and architects MacClure and Spahr made the corner the most identifiable thing about it. That curved corner runs all the way up to the top, and the main entrance is right on the corner of Fourth and Wood.
Notice the capitals on those prominent columns. How do you adapt square Doric capitals to a fairly tight curve? Making them octagonal is a solution that might have given Vitruvius a stroke, but works very well in this context.
The building is now luxury apartments under the name “The Carlyle.”
Built in 1907, this small skyscraper (originally the Jones & Laughlin Building) was just barely spared by the Boulevard of the Allies a decade and a half later. It was designed by the always-tasteful McClure & Spahr in the restrained Gothic style popular in the early twentieth century.