File:Ellicott Square Building, Main Street and Division Street, Buffalo, NY.jpg

English: Built in 1896, this Renaissance Revival-style building was designed by Daniel H. Burnham and Charles Atwood. The building was the world’s largest office building by floor area at the time of its completion, with 447,000 square feet (41,527.7 square meters) of interior floor space, and stands 10 stories tall, taking up the entire block bounded by Main Street, Division Street, Washington Street, and Swan Street. It was also built with the intention to add ten more floors to the top of the building if needed, which was never carried out, which would have nearly doubled the floor area. The building remained the largest office building in the world by floor area until 1908, when the old, now-demolished Hudson Terminal Complex opened at the site of the present World Trade Center in New York City. After opening, the building was home to the Edisonia Hall and the Vitascope Theater in the basement, which was is believed to have been the first purpose-built movie theater in the world. The basement also was the location of the first hospitality establishment run by Ellsworth Milton Statler, a restaurant that operated from 1896 until 1940, starting as a high-end restaurant before quickly being reoriented towards a more profitable quick lunch model. The site of the building also was the southern third of the estate of Joseph Ellicott, whom platted the village of New Amsterdam in 1797, which became the city of Buffalo, whose heirs still owned part of the block when land acquisition for the present building began in the mid-1890s. The building was among the largest commissions of Charles Atwood and Daniel Burnham’s careers, though Atwood died in 1895, prior to the building’s completion.

The building has a square footprint with a central light court that extends from the roof down to a hipped glass skylight over the central atrium on the first two floors. The exterior is clad in pearl gray brick with matching pearl gray terra cotta accents and trim, and has a facade stylized after an Italian Renaissance Palazzo, but on a much larger scale, with the facade being almost entirely intact and restored except for the large bracketed cornice at the top of the building, which was removed due to deterioration in 1971 and never replaced, with incongruous standing seam metal cladding in its place today. The exterior facades are tripartite, and are identical on the north and south sides, as well as the east and west sides, with the east and west facades having entrance doors with arched transoms featuring roman lattice motif and large decorative surrounds topped with decorative pediments with engaged doric columns, pilasters, and cornices with triglyphs, rosettes, and dentils, and sculptures of angels flanking the arched transom above, two arched windows on the second floor flanking the entrance, and decorative lampposts and hanging globe fixtures lighting the entryway at night. Elsewhere, the base features pilasters with doric capitals, and corners with quoins, with the first two floors being largely faced with two-story curtain walls featuring Chicago-style windows and Renaissance-style windows, narrow spandrels, and pilasters topped with brackets. On the third floor, the building has a band of windows with decorative trim and keystones, which are only interrupted by the ionic pilasters above the two main entryways to the building on the east and west facades. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floors feature recessed paired window bays topped with arched windows on the seventh floor, only interrupted on the fourth and fifth floors by the top of the decorative entrance surrounds on the east and west facades, which feature corinthian pilasters, broken pediments with statues in the middle, and urns atop the lower level of the entry surround. A band of horizontal trim runs around the base of the eighth floor windows, which feature narrower recessed bays only one window wide, with recessed spandrels between them and the arched ninth floor windows, which feature a band of decorative trim that runs along the top of each arch, interrupted by corbeled keystones. The tenth floor windows are flanked by two bands of horizontal trim, with the upper band featuring dentils and egg and dart motif, which was the base of the original cornice, with decorative trim between each window and cartouches flanked by statues at the corners. The top of the parapet features decorative trim with seashell motifs, heads, and acroteria angularium at each corner of the building. Most of the exterior windows are one-over-one replacements of the original double-hung one-over-one windows.

The interior of the building features large lobbies at the east and west entrances which connect directly to a large central two-story atrium, with a glass skylight as the roof with metal trusses underneath, a balcony running around the perimeter featuring a decorative cast iron railing, two grand staircases to the upper level, and ringed with windows and doors, and decorative chandeliers. The most notable feature of the ground floor is the large mosaic that runs from the east and west entrances and throughout the atrium, which was added in 1930-31 and designed by William Winthrop Kent and James Johnson, which helped to unify the three major interior common spaces within the building. Each lobby is clad in marble with staircases featuring decorative cast iron railings, with pilasters, triglyphs, and elevators with decorative brass doors and trim surrounds. The interior has been somewhat modernized for the needs of business tenants, but the common areas have had their historic character largely preserved.

The building today is owned and operated by the Ellicott Development Company, which rents the interior out to various commercial office and retail tenants. The central atrium is sometimes used for public events, such as weddings and social functions, and was featured in the 1984 film The Natural. The building, despite its impressive stature, and historical and architectural significance, is not listed on the National Register, but is a contributing structure in the local Joseph Ellicott Historic District.