Oriel Chambers

Oriel Chambers features a facade of honeycomb windows recessed behind a heavy stone grid. Completed in eighteen sixty-four, the building was Peter Ellis's attempt to maximize natural light for office workers in the heart of Liverpool. Critics at the time despised the design, famously calling it a glass cage. The Royal Institute of British Architects even refused to acknowledge the building in its journals. Ellis never received another major commission, yet architects now recognize his work as the ancestor of the modern skyscraper.