Starks Building

Louisville, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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The Starks Building is a fourteen-story office tower completed in 1913 on South 4th Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, designed by Daniel Burnham for local businessman John Starks Rodes. Rising 202 feet, the structure exemplifies the Chicago School with Beaux-Arts detailing, distinguished by cream-colored brick walls and classical ornamental elements including acanthus leaves, lion's heads, and urns. Originally U-shaped, the building was reconfigured into a rectangular form with a central light well by a 1926 addition designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White; the resulting courtyard was enclosed beneath a Plexiglas skylight until 1984. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.