Veseman Building

Address: 444 N. LaSalle St. Year Built: c. 1880 (original two-story building); 1930 (new façade & third-floor addition) Architect: George F. Lovdall Date Designated a Chicago Landmark: December 12, 2007

The Veseman Building is an unusually colorful and detailed terra cotta-clad building designed in the French-influenced version of the Art Deco style. The building's pastel-hued façade reflects the appeal of color in architecture in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as advances in terra-cotta production made possible a vast array of details and colors for building design. At that time Chicago was the national center of terra-cotta manufacturing, and the building reflects the popularity of this building material and the significance of the industry in Chicago. The Veseman Building's current appearance dates to 1930, the result of the widening of North LaSalle Street in the late 1920s as part of the City of Chicago's implantation of the 1909 Plan of Chicago. Today, the Veseman Building is one of the finest surviving and most intact examples of polychromatic terra-cotta in Chicago.