"Instead of a stack of undifferentiated office rooms, the department store required broad horizontal open spaces where goods could be displayed; at the ground floor the windows were to be showcases highlighting selected wares. Thus in the finished building, constructed in two phases in 1899 and 1903-4, the horizontal line, rather than the vertical, is dominant, with the broad spandrel panels brought up flush with the narrow vertical piers. Nevertheless the tripartite division is present with (a) ground floor windows richly encrusted with cast iron frames by Sullivan and his assistant Elmslie, (b) midsection, and (c) the terminating attic and cornice slab. As in Burnham and Root's Reliance Building, there is a change in color, away from the reds and browns, to glazed white terra cotta."

— Leland M. Roth. A Concise History of American Architecture. p182-3.

"Originally built for the established firm of Schlesinger and Meyer, the first three-bay, nine-storey phase of this department store was erected in 1899, and the second, twelve-storey increment on the corner of Madison and State Streets between 1903 and 1904. The southernmost five bays along State were added in 1906 by D.H. Burnham. Located in downtown Chicago at an important commercial junction, this store was purchased soon after completion by the prosperous firm of Carson Pirie Scott and it is still owned by them. Sullivan's building finally comprised a seven by eight bay loft volume with each structural bay measuring approximately 22 by 20 feet."

— from Kenneth Frampton and Yukio Futagawa. Modern Architecture 1851-1945. p105.