The Van Antwerp Building is a high-rise in the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 city of Mobile

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

. Completed in 1907, the building rises 11 stories and was the first skyscraper

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...

 in the city. It is regarded as the first reinforced concrete

Reinforced concrete

Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...

 skyscraper in Alabama and the Southeastern United States

Southeastern United States

The Southeastern United States, colloquially referred to as the Southeast, is the eastern portion of the Southern United States. It is one of the most populous regions in the United States of America....

. The 120 feet (36.6 m) structure now stands as the 8th-tallest building in Mobile.

The building, an example of Beaux-Arts architecture, was designed by architect George Bigelow Rogers

George Bigelow Rogers

George Bigelow Rogers was an American architect, best known for the wide variety of buildings that he designed in Mobile, Alabama. Born in Illinois in 1870, he studied painting in France, then apprenticed from 1894 to 1898 as an architect in Hartford, Connecticut. He stopped in Mobile in 1901,...

 for Garet Van Antwerp, a wealthy Mobile druggist. The tower was built to house his pharmacy store, which remained in operation on the building's ground floor until the 1960s.