The Bradbury Building was built in 1893 and finished in 1894 at a cost of $500,000, about three times its original $175,000 budget. Lewis L. Bradbury, a mining and real estate millionaire, began planning it in 1892 and died that year, some months before it opened.
Bradbury first hired Sumner Hunt, then dismissed his design and hired George Wyman, a draftsman who earned $5 a week and had no formal architecture training. Wikipedia says there is no concrete evidence that Wyman changed Hunt's design, which is why some people dispute who the true architect was.
The five-story central court has a skylight, open bird-cage elevators, wrought-iron grillwork made in France and shown at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and yellow and pink brick. It was a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and appears in Blade Runner (1982).