Look up at this 1917 Chicago School façade, built for The Popular department store in El Paso, Texas. Look up at the masonry and windows that belong to a structure built in 1917 for The Popular, the department-store chain founded here by Adolph Schwartz in 1902. The handsome lines you see are the work of Trost & Trost, drawn in the Chicago School architectural style.
This is the building his heirs inherited and later sold in 1995; after that it became the Fallas Department Store. Its history was honored when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 24, 1980. As you stand here, imagine the shift from the early 20th-century bustle that launched The Popular to the later retail life as Fallas.
Notice how the Chicago School's emphasis on structure and light shapes the façade before you: the window patterns, the proportions, the straightforward ornament. That design is the physical story of commerce in El Paso across decades named in its paperwork. Notice the window patterns and plain ornament where The Popular gave way to the later Fallas Department Store.