Steele, Sandham and Steele

The firm's most principal architect, William LaBarthe Steele, was a prominent member of the Prairie School and was essential in spreading the style to the Iowa/Nebraska region.

Steele eventually moved to Sioux City, IA where he designed dozens of homes and small churches in the prairie style, four of which are now state or national historical monuments.

[3] Their most important work was the Old Federal Building located in Omaha, Nebraska which was built as part of the New Deal Era and is a registered historical monument as of March 2009.

The Omaha World-Herald wrote of the design in 1932: The old forms of Renaissance and Romanesque architecture, and the French versions of classical forms, so long the invariable custom of government buildings, are left behind for a structure more closely akin to the Redick tower, Union State Bank building, and the Union Station than to the post office or courthouse.

St Cecilia's Cathedral was also designed by the firm in 1905 by only Thomas R. Kimball which explains the discrepancy in style from both previous and future work.

The then-head of the Department of Architecture, Linus Burr Smith drew up original plans and stated that only four firms in Nebraska were capable of completing the design.

Their brutalist style was fully realized in the 1950s and 1960s in their design of campus buildings for the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and is especially present in the exposed concrete construction and fortress-like structure of Behlen Laboratory.