The United Brethren Publishing House, now known as the Centre City Building, traces its origins to 1853, when the denomination established its publishing operations at the corner of Main and Fourth Streets. Over time, the site evolved into a prominent complex constructed in phases between 1903 and 1924, reflecting Dayton’s emergence as a center of business and progressive thought. Visionary publishing agent William Funk led plans for a modern office tower on the site, intended to generate revenue to support pensions for retired ministers while elevating the organization’s national profile. The building attracted notable tenants, including the Wright Brothers, and stood as a defining presence in the city’s downtown skyline. 

The adjacent Air City Garage was completed in 1960 to serve growing demand for downtown parking. Built in reinforced concrete in the brutalist style, it supported mid-century commercial activity before falling into significant disrepair.

The Carpenter Theatre first opened its doors in 1928 as a Loew’s Theater for moving pictures. It was shuttered in 1979 due to competition from suburban multiplexes and changing demographics, and remained vacant until 1983. At that time, it was restored and reopened as the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts. The Carpenter Center again closed in 2004 for a $50 million rehabilitation by the CenterStage Foundation, that up-dated its acoustics, lobby and amenities while expanding its stage size to draw major touring shows. This project also incorporated the Carpenter into a four-venue performing arts complex, Richmond CenterStage, that provides the community with a rich and varied arts experience in downtown Richmond.

The Mercantile Block, located at 125-135 Washington St, dates back to 1901 and is composed of several buildings that were joined over time. It is owned by AS220, Providence’s leading nonprofit artist support organization, who renovated the abutting Dreyfus Hotel in 2006, which is home to artist live/work studios and a popular restaurant and bar. Both buildings are about a block away from the arts organization’s main space at Empire and Washington Streets.

The Hibernia Building was completed in 1921. The 23-story, 335-foot tall building was the tallest in Louisiana until the State Capitol building in Baton Rouge surpassed it in 1932. The building was New Orleans’ first modern skyscraper and known for its cupola, which is it in various colors for holidays throughout the year and once served as a navigational beacon for ships along the Mississippi River. The building’s original occupant, Hibernia National Bank, was founded by Irish immigrants in 1870 and took its name from “Hibernia”, which was the Latin name for the island of Ireland. Hibernia National Bank was Louisiana’s largest bank until it was bought by Capital One Bank in 2005. Following the purchase, the building’s first floor bank lobby remained in use while the upper floors, comprising 93% of the net rentable area, became vacant.

Constructed between 1917 and 1919 by the Department of Public Works as part of a larger industrial complex called the Navy Yard Annex, the Boilermaker Building was originally used to manufacture boilers for Navy ships.

The Alliance Center, historically known as the Kennicott-Patterson Transfer and Storage Company Building and later as the Otero Building was constructed in 1908 to serve as a warehouse along Wynkoop Street’s “Warehouse Row.” For over half a century, the building served as a warehouse for various Colorado-based companies, including the Tattered Cover Bookstore, a Denver institution, as well as the first official offices of the Wynkoop Brewing Company, owned by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper.

In 2004, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado (now the Alliance for Collective Action) purchased the building and quickly began transforming it into an environmental nonprofit hub. The vision was to create a physical hub where local public interest groups could pool resources for projects. It would provide an incubator for collaboration, offering traditionally tight-budgeted nonprofits an opportunity to share ideas with like-minded advocacy groups and reduce expenses.

The building that now houses the Pacific Northwest College of Art was constructed between 1916 and 1918 and opened in 1919 after being commissioned by the Secretary of the Treasury. The building was one of the last post offices built under the 1893 Tarsney Act and was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 18, 1979.

In 2013, the building housed the Department of Homeland Security offices for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During this time, the agency “modernized” the building, lowering the ground floor ceilings to accommodate central heating and obscuring many of its original elaborate features.

The Pythian building was originally built in 1908 by Smith W. Green, who was reputed to be the richest African American in New Orleans, and one of the wealthiest in the country. It was built for the Knights of Pythias, a late 19th early 20th-century fraternal order that grew out of a Civil War-era organization, and for almost 40 years operated as the organization’s headquarters.

Pythian Temple served for several decades as a hub of the African American community, with lodge rooms, a barbershop, a theater, a bank, an opera house, and an auditorium/dance hall. Tenants through the 1940s included many African American-owned businesses, such as the Industrial Life Insurance Company of Louisiana and the Peoples Benevolent Industrial Life Insurance Company of Louisiana.

In the 1940s, the Pythian became a wartime hiring office for Andrew Jackson Higgins, who built the Higgins boats that President Eisenhower famously said “won the war.” Higgins hired men and women of all races through a single personnel office, one of the first times this had occurred in the South. The Pythian’s top floor was a double-height ceiling dance hall where soldiers and sailors could dance and hear live music before shipping out to fight in WWII. Following its WWII use, the Pythian Building was primarily used as an office. In the late 1990s, the building began falling into disrepair space before ultimately becoming vacant after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Located in the southeastern part of Baltimore, the unique harborside community of Fell’s Point was initially developed by landowner William Fell in the early 1760s. From there it evolved from a forested agricultural area into a bustling, seafaring hub where some of the U.S. Navy’s first ships were built. After the War of 1812, Fell’s Point became the country’s second largest point of entry, surpassed only by New York’s Ellis Island.

Built in 1914, Fell’s Point Recreation Pier originally stored port cargo. The building was later used as a community center and served as a television studio for “Homicide: Life on the Street” but closed after the show ended in 1999. The city approved a plan for a hotel there in 2004. In 2010, it sold the deteriorating waterfront parcel for $2 million to a development team. The Plank venture purchased the site four years later bringing in California-based Montage Hotels & Resorts to operate the hotel under its “new luxury” Pendry brand.

Built in 1928, the main W. G. Pearson Elementary School building was named for William Gaston Pearson, a well-known African American businessman and educator. Born into slavery, his potential was recognized by a factory owner who financed his education at Shaw University in nearby Raleigh, NC. He began teaching at a small Durham grade school in 1886, where he later became principal. In 1922, W.G. Pearson became the first principal of Hillside Park High School, the first African American high school in the city, a position he remained in until his death in 1940 and for which he is best remembered. W.G.Pearson was also active in the city’s business and social life. Among other contributions, he was one of the original organizers of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company; he helped found Mechanics and Farmers Bank on Durham’s “Black Wall Street”; and he served as a trustee for both North Carolina Central University and Kittrell College. Both North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and Mechanics and Farmers Bank continue to operate today.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the growing black population in the Stokesdale district, as well as the philanthropy of both black and white businessmen, led to the construction of several new schools including W. G. Pearson Elementary in 1928. W. G. Pearson is the only school in the neighborhood to survive the late twentieth century intact. The school was most recently a magnet school for gifted and talented students in kindergarten through fifth grades.