agree on a plan. The debate became particularly polarized after the 1989 demolition of the nearby McCarthy Building, which angered preservationists but satisfied business interests by providing space for a modern office building. Finally, in 1994, the McClier corporation collaborated with the Baldwin Development Company to restore the Reliance Building; these two groups had recently worked together to rehabilitate the Rookery Building. The City of Chicago purchased the property at this time for $1.3 million ($2 million in 2011 dollars). The Reliance Building's rehabilitation was completed in 1999 at a cost of $27.5 million ($36.7 million in 2011 dollars) as the former retail space was converted into a luxury hotel. Canal Street Partners, LLC bought the revitalized space and created the Hotel Burnham. The preservation of this building was championed by the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley was presented with a National Trust for Historic Preservation Honor Award in 2001 for the role of the city in preserving the structure. In December 2016, Pineapple Hospitality purchased the building and renamed the hotel as first The Alise Chicago, then later Staypineapple, An Iconic Hotel, The Loop. Architecture The addition of the remaining floors in 1894–1895 completed the building and marked the "first comprehensive achievement" of the Chicago construction method. The building's plate-glass windows are set within the terra-cotta-tiled facade. Its steel-frame superstructure is built atop concrete caissons sunk as much as 125 feet beneath the footing. The Reliance Building has been called "proto-Modernist" in its lack of the hierarchy found in Classical facades. Its stacks of projecting bay windows and terra-cotta cladding create an effect of extraordinary lightness. Its steel frame construction is physically light as well, being one-third the weight of an equivalent stone structure. It was a direct precursor of the all-glass Friedrichstrasse skyscraper proposed by Mies van der Rohe in 1921. Richardson's Marshall Field Warehouse, built only eight years earlier, seems in comparison to be heavy, ponderous, and of another era. See also Chicago architecture 16 Cook Street, Liverpool, UK Oriel Chambers, Liverpool, UK Notes References External links Staypineapple, An Iconic Hotel, The Loop Skyscraper hotels in Chicago Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Chicago National Historic Landmarks in Chicago 1890s architecture in the United States Commercial buildings completed in 1895 Burnham and Root buildings Historic district contributing properties in Illinois Chicago school architecture in Illinois Chicago Landmarks 1895