Central Shoe Company Building

A nine-story loft building of buff-colored brick over a stone-faced base, in the Sullivanesque manner of the nearby Wainwright Building. Broad brick piers rise almost uninterrupted to the top floor, framing wide three-part windows. Between them, recessed spandrels of patterned tapestry brick carry small cast-stone cross-shaped ornaments on the lower floors. The piers end in plain stone capitals beneath a frieze with an oval cartouche over each one, and the facade is closed by a deep, sharply projecting cornice whose coffered underside is set with round bosses.

Built in 1919 to the design of Albert B. Groves for the Central Shoe Company, one of the shoe manufacturers along Washington Avenue. The building later became known as the Arts and Crafts Building. Around 2004 it was converted into 91 residential lofts as the Ventana Lofts; an ornamental cresting along the cornice was removed during the renovation.