By Joe Frey

Completed ten years after the World's Colombian Exhibition, the Sante Fe Center shows the influence of the fair more than any other Daniel Burnham building in the city. The temporary cladding of the White City's buildings has been replaced by glazed terra cotta, but the effect is the same: each elevation is a veritable catalog of classic ornament. Pilasters, columns, dentals and frets everywhere obscure rather than express the steel skeletal frame. Like the Rookery, with its segmented shaft, the tripartite configuration here is also obscured, with an almost false capital above the thirteenth story, four stories below the heavier cornice that overhangs the top floor's round windows. The fussiness of the facade, however, is far greater on the Jackson Boulevard elevation, where it stands alone, stark white on a narrow street. Whereas in the context of the Michigan Avenue wall, it simply becomes one element in a gloriously harmonious cityscape.

More practically, the former Railway Exchange Building has a square donut plan with a two-story sky-lit lobby, an efficient layout that was well established by the time of the bulding’s construction. The main entrance is symmetrically placed on Jackson Boulevard rather than Michigan Avenue, providing some evidence as to the perception of Michigan Avenue and the undeveloped state of Grant Park at the time. This, it seems likely, would have been great inspiration to Burnham and Bennett as they drew up The Plan of Chicago in the offices of D.H. Burnham and Company, high overlooking the barren landfill around the Art Institute.

If from the outside there's any question as to which is the main entrance, the matter is settled once inside. Here the classically-inspired ornament comes into closer view, dominated by a grand view across the lobby from the Jackson Boulevard doors. It's like stepping into a wedding cake. And the pale blue of the skylight trusses alludes to the Mediterranean sky that just might hover overhead. But the skylight no longer keeps out the elements. When the building was renovated in the 1980s, another skylight was built over the airshaft at the roof, with the windows looking in opened to create an atrium. The white brick of the airshaft walls reflect light into the inner ring of offices.