Last year, I had to visit that building once per week during the last quarter. The restrooms feature water-free urinals and other state of the art equipment. Not bad for a building well over a century old.

Can anyone tell what was in the third building on the crossing we see?
"THE NORTH ......CAN" before the "CAN" there must be a B, D, P or R, I think.

[The one at the right is the North American Building. - tterrace]

The big building in the center of the picture is the Annex (or South Tower) of the original Land Title and Trust Building, a sliver of which may be seen to the right of the Annex. Both buildings were the work of the Chicago office of D. H. Burnham & Co. - the first building built in 1897, the second in 1902. The first building adheres closely to the designs of the Chicago School, and it looks very much like a classicized version of Burnham's Fisher Building in Chicago (1895-1896). The second building, designed with contributions by the Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer, fits fully into the Beaux-Arts skyscraper mode, with a tripartite facade composition featuring columns at the bottom and also near the top.

These are pretty much the same today as they were back then I believe. Though these days women can join the Union League -- the smaller red brick building with the elegant curving stairs -- but that's a very recent development.

Click the Hi-Def or View Full Size and bring in just the bottom quarter of the photo - looks exactly like the opening scene of a movie taking place at the turn of the century, perhaps staring Dan Dailey or Betty Grable.