Ten stories of white terracotta tile rise here in the Kearns Building, constructed between 1909 and 1911. Designed by Los Angeles architects John Parkinson and George Bergstrom and constructed 1909–1911, it wears a white terracotta tile facade over a steel reinforced concrete frame. The architects borrowed the style of Louis Sullivan, and the building is often described as Sullivanesque: notice the bands of windows running between the strong vertical piers and the prominent, highly decorated cornice crowning the top.
At street level the classical form shows itself in prominent window and door openings that invite your gaze upward. Parkinson & Bergstrom didn’t copy Sullivan exactly; instead of Sullivan’s porthole windows under the cornice, they used centered medallions between spandrels recessed behind the plane of the piers to achieve a comparable effect. The building was named for Thomas Kearns, a wealthy former Utah senator and a major stockholder in The Salt Lake Tribune, and it was recognized for its significance when added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Medallions sit centered between recessed spandrels where Sullivan would have cut portholes, under that heavily decorated cornice.