February 16, 2017

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This weeks Epstein Throwback Thursday takes us back to August, 1984 for the opening of the State of Illinois Revenue Center in Springfield, Illinois. This 740,000 sf building, located at 101 W Jefferson Street, was planned, designed, and engineered by Epstein and at the time of completion was the largest single-public agency office building in Illinois. The Illinois Revenue Center houses State of Illinois departments and staff that are responsible for collecting state revenues and maintaining revenue records. When it opened nearly 3,000 state employees called this building their work home. Besides providing significant office space, the Revenue Center also had a 25,000 square foot computer center, a 15,000 square foot cafeteria, and a 145,000 square foot parking facility.

The Revenue Center was designed as a three-story base building out of which rise two structures of four stories each. The base building is an expansive structure which occupies nearly the entire building site and provides the strong horizontal element of the overall design. The three floors in the base building provide a spacious, open office area and the central atrium core, running the length of the building, interrupts these open spaces, allowing natural light to reach the floor spaces and creates an opportunity for indoor landscape elements and modern art displays. The two four-story structures, which sit upon the base structure, are the vertical components of the design, and a reflective solar reflective glass canopy joins these two structures, as well as covering the pedestrian bridges that connect the buildings.


Today, this building, which looks much like it did back in 84, is still the home for the State of Illinois revenue collection operations, an agency that collects state taxes, operates the state lottery, oversees the state's casino industry, oversees the state's thoroughbred and harness horse racing industries, and regulates the distribution of alcoholic beverage licenses throughout Illinois.