by Maya Drozdz
Now home to Union Institute & University, the Procter and Collier-Beau Brummell Building at 440 East McMillan St. in Walnut Hills is a striking early Tudor Revival structure designed by the prominent local architectural firm of Elzner & Anderson.
The Procter and Collier Company was a comprehensive advertising, merchandising and printing agency founded in Cincinnati in 1893. By 1914, the company also had offices in Indianapolis and NYC. This headquarters was built in 1921, and the company described its new home as “affording the ideal working conditions essential to the best efforts of writers, artists and other creative minds. […] A structure in keeping with the new idea of civic beauty, and typical of the substantiality of the work produced within.”
The Beau Brummell Company, established in 1920, moved its men’s tie-manufacturing facility into this building in 1936. Union Institute & University, which was founded in 1964, acquired and renovated it in 1989, and continues to make its home there.