Jenney designed this building, located at Washington and Wells Streets, as a department store for Levi Z. Leiter.

This building marked a significant milestone in architectural engineering: it combined, for the first time, four essential elements of a modern skyscraper in one building.

These were: its great height (Leiter I was originally five stories tall, and shortly after expanded to seven stories); an iron skeletal frame; terra cotta fireproofing materials on all of its structural members; and, vertical transportation via elevators.

[1] Although the city building department required Jenney to build one exterior party wall as a traditional masonry loadbearing structure and the floors were of heavy timber construction, the rest of the building was a truly modern innovation.

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