Design for Several Bays of a Public Building

Ely Jacques Kahn's architectural elevation drawing demonstrates the Beaux-Arts principles that shaped early twentieth-century American civic design. The facade employs classical proportions and ornamentation—rusticated base, arched windows, decorative cornices—organized across multiple stories with precise symmetry. Kahn, who would become a leading Art Deco architect, here shows the disciplined draftsmanship required of École des Beaux-Arts trained designers. The detailed rendering, complete with sectional studies at right and ornamental detail variations below, reveals how architects communicated vision to builders and patrons before modernism reshaped the profession.