{"nrhp_refnum":"96000080","name":"Boyce Building","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"500--510 N. Dearborn St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Chicago","county":"Cook County","state":"IL","lat":41.891009033000046,"lon":-87.62998495999994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1996-02-29","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Communications","Social History"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 12-story plus penthouse steel-frame office building clad in red brick and gray granite at 500-510 North Dearborn Street, on the northwest corner of Dearborn and Illinois streets in Chicago's Near North Side. It was built in three phases from 1911 to 1923 for publisher William Dickson Boyce.","why_significant":"The building housed the W. D. Boyce Publishing Company, whose weekly papers the Saturday Blade and Chicago Ledger reached more than a million readers through a network of newsboys. It is also significant as a commercial building whose construction can be traced in stages, from a Burnham-designed four-story base to the Eckstorm-designed upper floors. The form lists the period of significance as 1912-1929.","narrative":"Rising twelve stories above the corner of Dearborn and Illinois streets in Chicago, this office building was built in stages between 1911 and 1923 for the publisher William Dickson Boyce. D. H. Burnham & Co. designed the first phase as a loft building for his publishing company, and a four-story structure was completed by 1914. Burnham's drawings showed a ten-story building with a mansard roof, but records indicate only the lower four stories were built then. In 1921 Boyce hired Christian Eckstorm to add eight floors of rental offices, finished in 1923, without the mansard roof. Steel-framed and clad in granite and dark red brick, the building expresses its structure through projecting piers and grouped windows. Boyce's company, publisher of the Saturday Blade and the Chicago Ledger and employer of thousands of newsboys, occupied the lower floors. The building is listed for its link to that enterprise and for its layered construction history, with a period of significance of 1912 to 1929.","period_of_significance":"1912-1929","architect_builder":"D. H. Burnham & Co. (original design, 1911); Christian Eckstorm (eight-story top addition, 1921-1923); built for William Dickson Boyce; contractors Britten and O'Sufern and B. H. Lichter and Company","architectural_style":"Commercial Style; Classical Revival (a variation of the Chicago Commercial style)","criteria":[],"status_note":"Still a rental office building. The exterior has good integrity, though the entrances, first-floor windows and principal cornice have been altered. The original terra cotta cornice was removed in the 1980s.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:37.267405-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/74/8925/28892574/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_IL/96000080.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/96000080/2b43d9cf5e-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/96000080/2b43d9cf5e-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"TonyTheTiger","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20090909_Boyce_Building.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">TonyTheTiger</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20090909_Boyce_Building.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28892574","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyce_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18706042"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/illinois/cook-county/boyce-building-96000080/"}