The Keystone Building rises in brick above a granite base. Built in 1875 as the State Printing Office, this six-story office building, plus a basement, was originally seven bays wide and twelve bays deep. The first floor is faced in granite, with brick rising above, a contrast that still reads clearly from the sidewalk.
In the late 1890s the Star-Independent newspaper moved in to print here, and in February 1917 Edward J. Stackpole Sr. bought out the Star-Independent. That same year the Kuhn family remodeled the building, adding a structural steel frame and twelve-inch reinforced floors, changes that transformed its interior strength. Around 1926 the name shifted to the Keystone Building, and in 1979 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Stand close and let the building’s measured bays and material transitions tell the story of its workaday past and its sturdy reinvention. The granite base anchors a long brick rise of offices, the proportions—seven across, twelve deep—giving a steady rhythm to the façade. Granite at the first floor, brick above it: that seam has read clearly from the sidewalk since 1875.