Fisher-Latham Building

111/113/115 North 6th Street
Springfield, IL

The Fisher/Latham Building represents a once-common, but now comparatively rare style—the mid 19^th Century classically-inspired commercial building. The structure is actually a pair of three-story buildings dating from the 1850s.  The smaller section to the south was updated and remodeled about 1900 and includes projecting bay windows on the second and third floors.  This remodeling expressed the post 1890s Columbian Exposition’s Classical Revival influence.  The simple cornice and metal window hood ornaments are hallmarks of the earlier style, with the window hoods being especially important to the Greek Revival style.      

The Fisher/Latham Building shows the standard formula for 19^th Century commercial buildings with public spaces like retails stores, banking rooms, offices or hotel lobbies on the first floor and more private spaces, including apartments, hotel rooms, or meeting halls on the upper floors.

Springfield residents Richard Latham and Samuel Fisher had the buildings constructed in 1856.  They were part of a building boom in 1850s Springfield in which earlier, wooden buildings were being replaced with substantial brick structures like these. Businesses from a farm implement dealer, milliner and a funeral home, to saloons, a shooting gallery, theater, and a Chinese laundry occupied the buildings in their first century of existence. The buildings were rehabilitated in the 1990s.