Fourteen stories of granite, limestone, and terra cotta make up the W.W. Griest Building, known locally as the Lancaster Federal Building and PP&L Building. This historic skyscraper, listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places since June 25, 1999, was designed by noted Lancaster architect C. Emlen Urban and built between 1924 and 1925 in the Italian Renaissance Revival. It was named for William Walton Griest, a former Pennsylvania representative and head of Lancaster Public Utilities.
The structure rises fourteen stories on a steel frame and is faced in granite, limestone, and terra cotta. Each floor measures sixty-six feet by fifty-five feet, or 3,600 square feet; the twelfth floor once housed a three hundred-seat auditorium beneath a green and gold frescoed ceiling. In 1976 a fifty-three-foot tall tower was added to the top, and today the Griest Building stands as the second tallest building in the city of Lancaster.
Notice the vertical rhythm of stone and terra cotta rising past the sixty-six-by-fifty-five-foot floors, the level that once held the old auditorium, and the fifty-three-foot tower added in 1976 at the very top.