The Ingalls Building
4th northeast corner Vine Streets;
Elzner & Anderson; 1902-1903

The Ingalls Building is recognized as the first reinforced-concrete high-rise office building in the world. This daring engineering feat was deliberately, however, encased in a conventional, if finely detailed Beaux-Arts Classical exterior so as to make it stylistically palatable to the public. At the turn of the century, the financial and business center of Downtown Cincinnati moved up from 3rd to 4th Streets, with a spate of new high-rise construction. Although A.O. Elzner had designed the first "fire-proof" steel-skeleton Cincinnati high-rise office building, the Neave Building, in 1890 (demolished), Cincinnati’s financial leaders called upon the great Chicago firm of D.H. Burnham & Co. to design a group of steel-skeleton skyscrapers after the turn of the century. The local firm of Elzner & Anderson, however, staked their own - and Cincinnati’s - claim to innovation with the Ingalls Building.

Cincinnatian Alfred O. Elzner (1862-1933) was trained at M.I.T. and in the office of H.H. Richardson near Boston. He returned to Cincinnati in 1886 to supervise construction of Richardson’s Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Building on the southwest corner of 4th and Vine Sts. (1885-88; burnt 1911; replaced by the present tower by Cass Gilbert with Garber & Woodward). Elzner practiced on his own until he was joined in 1897 by George M. Anderson (1869-1916), member of a prominent Cincinnati family and brother of an officer of the Ferro Concrete (now Turner) Construction Co., which built the Ingalls Building. Melville E. Ingalls was a farsighted entrepreneur who consolidated the "BigFour" railroad system, with offices here. NHL; NCEL.

Other outstanding buildings in the downtown "Skyscraper District" include Burnham’s Union Savings & Trust/Bartlett Building (1900), 4th NWC Walnut; 1st National Bank (1903), 4th SEC Walnut; 4th National Bank (1905), 18 E. 4th; and Traction/Tri-State Building (1902), 5th SEC Walnut. Burnham& Co. also designed the present entrance pavilion (1907) of the Cincinnati Art Museum in Eden Park. With the local firm of Garber & Woodward (see 1), John Russell Pope of N.Y. designed the CG&E/Cinergy Headquarters (1927-29), 4th SWC Main. Also of interest is Garber & Woodward’s Dixie Terminal Building (1913-21; 4th SWC Walnut), with its Adamesque barrel-vaulted concourse and Rookwood Architectural Faience entry arch.