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The Architectural Styles of Urbana's 100 Most Important Buildings

This final list includes a variety of buildings ranging from a modest cottage built around 1850, to a house with an uncanny likeness to a UFO that was built in 1954 for a jazz musician; from a bungalow that was ordered out of a Sears catalogue circa 1920, to the mansions of some of Urbana’s founding fathers. The list also includes many of the historic buildings in downtown—the library, the county courthouse, and many of the buildings on the 100-block of West Main Street—as well as many of the impressive fraternities and sororities that were typically built prior to World War II in eclectic styles and designed by well-known architects.

While each of these buildings have unique histories and are unique intepretations of well known and less known architectural styles, the histories of the styles themselves tell us much about changing technologies and changing values regarding the built environment.

The pages in this section provide more detail about the specifics of the architectural styles represented by this list. Some of the photographs are of buildings in Urbana while others are of stylistic exemplars.

- Last Modified -August 27, 2018 - 10:05am
- Author - SashaC