Steele, Sandham and Steele

Steele, Sandham and Steele is an Omaha based architecture firm whose work has been effective at combining the popular Modern style with Historicism in many churches, federal buildings and educational facilities located in Omaha, Nebraska and surrounding areas. The firm’s most principal architect, William LaBarthe Steele, was a prominent member of the Prairie School and was essential in spreading the style to the Iowa/Nebraska region. Prior to joining this firm, he worked under Louis Sullivan, an important member of the Chicago School. Steele eventually moved to Sioux City, IA where he designed dozens of homes and small churches in the prairie style, four of which are now state or national historical monuments. He started Kimball and Steele in 1928 in Omaha, NE with Thomas R Kimball.

The firm’s name changed as principal architects shifted, but the style is unified by the strong style of Steele Sr, and the large scale buildings the firm completed were essential in bringing the prairie and modernist style to the farthest West of the American Midwest. Josiah D. Sandham joined the firm in 1929, making the firm Kimball, Steele and Sandham. Following the death of Kimball in 1946, William Steele Jr. joined the firm as a partner making it Steele, Sandham and Steele.

The first project designed as a firm by Kimball, Steele and Sandham was the Ivy Hotel and Residence located in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1930. The church was supposed to be one of four towers at the corners of a new Second Church of Christ Scientist. However, this tower was the only one ever completed. The design mixes the ziggurat form of Art Deco with mideastern overtones. Its pebbly concrete walls are distinctive.

Their most important work was the Old Federal Building located in Omaha, Nebraska which was built as part of the New Deal Era and is a registered historical monument as of March 2009. It is evident in its design style, stripped classical combined with Art Deco 4, that it reflects the mood of the times it was built in. Its construction as well as well as its completion provided many job during these stark economic times. Construction on the building began in 1933 and was completed in that same year. The Omaha World Herald wrote of the design in 1932:

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