About the Starks Building

The Starks Building is a landmark 14-story building on Fourth Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard in Downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was built in 1913 on a site that had been the First Christian Church of Louisville. It was commissioned by local businessman John Starks Rodes and designed by the Daniel Burnham firm of Chicago. It is 202 feet tall (62 meters). It was listed as the 11th largest office complex in Louisville in 2004 by the newspaper Business First.

It was built in the Chicago School of architecture with Beaux Arts details. Cream-colored bricks are one of its signature features. It is decorated with classical motifs, including acanthus leaves, lion's heads and urns. It was originally a "U" shaped structure, but a 1926 addition designed by the firm Graham, Anderson, Probst & White added a new wing to create a rectangular shape with a central sunlight well. At the bottom of the central atrium was a courtyard, and until 1984 it was covered with a Plexiglas skylight.

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