Built by Houston's foremost female developer of the 1920s, Mellie Keenan Esperson, as a memorial to her husband, the thirty-two-story Niels Esperson Building was the tallest building in Texas when completed. Eberson, a Chicago architect best known for his sumptuous movie palaces, detailed the Niels Esperson Building with Italian Renaissance decor, culminating in the terra-cotta-faced tempietto that crowns the building's topmost setback.