The site Taylor chose was strategically located adjacent to the then County and City Municipal building and near a number of institutional structures.

The intention was to attract high quality tenants such as lawyers through proximity, desirable amenities, and the captivating design of an avant garde architect like Sullivan.

This structure, still extant today, exhibits an alternate exploration in the possibilities of new commercial urban architecture by Charles B. Atwood and Daniel Burnham.

As Buffalo's downtown rose above Lake Erie, further engineering feats were achieved including securing the future of the city and the built environment.

His platform of reform against entrenched political machines, bossism, and patronage was desperately needed, especially in major urban centres such as New York and Chicago.

He and Adler divided the building into four zones: 0) The basement containing the mechanical and utility area; 1) The lower levels which were public areas for street-facing shops, public entrances and lobbies; 2) The office floors with identical office cells clustered around elevator shafts; and, 4) The attic consisting of elevator equipment, utilities and water tanks.

Writing in his Kindergarten Chats, Sullivan said that a tall building "must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line.

"[7] Likewise, William J.R. Curtis wrote that the Guaranty expressed "the idea of a tall building as a living organism, whose weight, pressure, tension and resistance might be experienced through empathy in a direct, almost physical way.

"[3] Similarly, David Van Zanten found the Wainwright Building's ornament performed a "traditional, even if exceptionally conspicuous, role in its design" compared to the Guaranty.

This restoration, undertaken in the early 1980s by architects CannonDesign was part funded from the federal preservation tax credit program.