The eleven-story Scanlan Building was, briefly, the tallest of a wave of new eight-to sixteen-story skyscrapers built in downtown Houston between 1908 and 1912. In retaining D. H. Burnham of Chicago as architect, Kate Scanlan, Houston's most important female developer between 1900 and 1910, became one of several Houstonians who turned to nationally known architects for the design of local business and institutional buildings in the period. The steel-framed building is faced with white terra-cotta and glazed brick.