{"nrhp_refnum":"91001123","name":"Highland Building","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"121 S. Highland Mall","address_restricted":false,"city":"Pittsburgh","county":"Allegheny County","state":"PA","lat":40.46007881700007,"lon":-79.92461112799998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1991-09-06","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"The Highland Building is a thirteen-story steel-framed office building with brick, terra cotta and granite cladding on Highland Avenue near the Baum and Penn Avenues junction in East Liberty, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County. It was commissioned in 1909 by Henry Clay Frick as a speculative office building with ground-floor commercial space.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the building is significant as a local work by the Chicago firm D. H. Burnham & Co. and as a product of the early twentieth-century commercial growth of East Liberty. It is presented as one of the few large-scale survivors of the area's commercial core after 1960s urban renewal, and as a clear example of the evolving tall office building type with a distinctive top-floor window treatment.","narrative":"Built in 1909 to a design by the Chicago firm D. H. Burnham & Co. for Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Clay Frick, the thirteen-story Highland Building on Highland Avenue in East Liberty is a steel-framed speculative office block with brick, terra cotta and granite cladding. Its classical base, shaft and capital division is most fully expressed on the Highland Avenue face, where the first two floors are granite, the shaft is white terra cotta, and the top floor has arched windows. Offices were designed for dentists and doctors, reflecting East Liberty's growth as a commercial centre outside downtown Pittsburgh in the early 1900s. The building is considered important because it is one of the few large-scale survivors of that period after 1960s urban renewal cleared neighbouring buildings and isolated the business district. Its tall-building form and surviving terra cotta facade are the features that make it noteworthy. Much of the exterior survives, although the front cheneau was removed and aluminum windows replaced wood sash on the principal elevation.","period_of_significance":"1909-1941","architect_builder":"D.H. Burnham Co.","architectural_style":"Chicago","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The document describes the building as in continuous use for over eighty years, with the mezzanine skylight covered with asphalt roofing compound and first-floor retail spaces altered by tenants.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:37.848252-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/91001123.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/91001123/f293d81905-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/91001123/f293d81905-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 2.0","author":"Eli Pousson","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highland_Building.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Eli Pousson</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highland_Building.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71997702","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5758682"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/allegheny-county/highland-building-91001123/"}