A four-story corner commercial block sheathed in cream glazed terra-cotta, its glossy blocks catching the light against the darker masonry around it. Polygonal bay windows project through the upper floors, framed by slender Corinthian pilasters with foliate capitals and separated by recessed spandrels. Heavy scrolled consoles carry the projecting bays, and a bracketed cornice above a swagged, cartouche-set frieze finishes the parapet. Broad plate-glass storefronts fill the ground floor along both elevations, the corner entrance sheltered by green awnings. Cracks and patches mark the glazing, but the ornamental program survives intact.
Completed in 1908 to designs by the architect H.F. (Harry) Roach, the Pennsylvania Building went up at Tenth and Olive as a commercial-and-office block — stores at the sidewalk and rentable offices on the floors above. Its glazed terra-cotta skin, a fashionable and fireproof cladding of the period, let a mid-block building read as bright and permanent, while the projecting bays gave the upper offices light and angled views along the street. The building sat within the dense business and garment district that filled this part of downtown in the early twentieth century, and it held its four stories as the surrounding blocks rose far higher; the Art Deco Southwestern Bell tower of the 1920s stands directly behind it. Like much of downtown, the Pennsylvania Building lost its offices as tenants left the core in the postwar decades. It returned to use in the loft boom of the early 2000s: in 2003 its upper floors were renovated into apartments while a furniture store took the ground floor. The storefronts today hold a corner bar and other small tenants, and the terra-cotta front — cracked and patched in places — still carries its original Corinthian pilasters, scrolled consoles, and swagged cornice.
