Champlain Building, corner of State and Madison Streets. Holabird and Roche, 1894 (demolished, 1916). View from southeast. (120 Photographic Views of Chicago, Rand McNally, 1909)

. . . . criticism was leveled at Holabird & Roche’s 1894 Champlain Building. The elevations of the Champlain, according to D. Everett Waid of Brickbuilder, “are a dead white terra cotta, whith such an effect that the first syllable of ‘Champlain’ has been replaced with a word usually represented by a blank. The building is offensively plain to incite such profanity.”

Taken from Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (University of Illinois Press, June 2013).