Hubbell Building, a historic steel-framed, brick-clad tower in downtown Des Moines, is your stop here. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and even featured on the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, this ten-story building rises 151 feet (46 m) above the sidewalk. It was completed in 1913 to a design by the Des Moines firm Proudfoot, Bird & Rawson, and was built for F. M. Hubbell, Son, & Company, Inc., a real estate firm established in 1887 that located its corporate headquarters here while renting most of the floors to other firms.
Notice the proportions and the brick skin that reveal its steel frame; those are the bones of an early 20th-century office tower. The exterior you see is not exactly the original: the building once wore a more ornate cornice, but after part of it fell onto the sidewalk the cornice was removed in 1948 and replaced with smooth concrete panels. The Des Moines firm Brooks Borg handled that work and later simplified the storefront level in 1950.
Picture the vertical lines climbing to that 151-foot roof, then follow the altered cornice down to the storefronts below.