Ellicott Square Building, once the world's largest office building, awaits you. Completed in May, 1896, this historic office complex was designed by Charles Atwood of D. H. Burnham & Company and, at the time it rose, was the largest office building in the world. For a moment imagine 1896 and 1897, when the building hosted Edisonia Hall and the Vitascope Theater, the earliest known dedicated motion picture theater in the world.
You can feel the ambition in its scale: 10 stories high—with the capacity to support 10 more floors—and 447,000 square feet (41,500 m2). It remained the largest office building by floor area until 1908, when the Hudson Terminal buildings opened in New York City. Built at a cost of $3.5 million in less than one year, it was named for Joseph Ellicott, the planner and surveyor who laid out the then-village of Buffalo.
The Ellicott Square Building was conceived in the Italian Renaissance style and its exterior is made of granite and iron. Remember the credo of Daniel Burnham that helped shape this ambition: "make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood; think big. Picture Daniel Burnham's credo to make no little plans, still echoed in this building's granite and iron scale.