Roberts, Johnson & Rand Shoe Company Building

A ten-story steel-frame building faced in pale stone at the northwest corner of Washington Avenue and 15th Street, ten bays wide on Washington and sixteen deep on 15th. Piers shaped as engaged columns run the full height, rising from chamfered bases as polygonal shafts and becoming round columns at the top floor, where they end in deep leafy capitals under a coffered soffit and a cornice banded with Greek key fret. Above the two-story base, ROBERTS, JOHNSON & RAND SHOE CO. is carved across the frieze on both streets, and green-patinated cast-iron panels of swirling foliage and oval cartouches fill the spandrels of the base. The Washington entrance has a Greek key lintel and carved heads at its upper corners. A later Art Deco entrance, carved INTERNATIONAL SHOE COMPANY, sets three doorways between stone piers, with bronze grilles holding the number 1509, a figure of a workman, a sunburst and plaques naming the Peters and Friedman-Shelby shoe companies.

Theodore C. Link designed the building for the Roberts, Johnson & Rand Shoe Company, and it went up in 1909–10. In 1911 the company merged with the Peters Shoe Company to form the International Shoe Company, whose name joined the original one on the facade. A ten-story factory annex followed in 1930–31 on 15th Street, joined to this building by an enclosed ten-story bridge. After the shoe company years the building was redeveloped as a hotel, and The Last Hotel opened here in July 2019 with 142 rooms. Its name refers to the last, the foot-shaped form shoemakers build shoes around.