A five-story cast-iron palace of trade, painted pale, on a corner. Every upper floor was a continuous arcade of round-arched windows set between slender engaged columns, each story marked off by its own projecting cornice, so the long Fifth Street front read as four stacked rows of arches. The ground floor was taller and nearly all glass, with plate-glass shop windows between columns over a band of iron grilles at the sidewalk, and a low balustrade ran along the top of it. Paneled piers framed the corners. A deep bracketed cornice crowned the building, topped by a balustraded parapet.
Samuel C. Davis and Company, wholesale dry goods and notions, began its new building on the northwest corner of Fifth Street and Washington Avenue in August 1871 and finished it in March 1873. Five stories over a basement, with a cast-iron front and plate-glass windows, it ran 175 feet along Fifth and 125 feet on Washington, and an open, paved yard behind it handled the firm's shipping. The partners in the early 1880s were Samuel C. Davis, Andrew W. Sproule and John T. Davis. Fifth Street north of Market was later renamed Broadway. The Davis firm stayed in the building for nearly a quarter century. In 1896 Stix, Baer and Fuller took it for their Grand Leader department store, and in 1897 Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge remodeled it into a department store at a cost of $50,000. The Grand Leader moved to its new store at Sixth and Washington starting in 1906. The Davis Building no longer stands.
