The Dixon Building is one of the city’s finest and most intact commercial buildings. The paint and wallpaper business of Robert Smith Dixon occupied the first story, and his family lived upstairs. Cast-iron posts linked by cast-iron brackets support a double-tiered gallery that shelters the Italianate facade of scored and penciled stucco, arched windows with hood molds, a bracketed first-story cornice, and a shaped parapet with a central tablet flanked by scroll brackets. Inside, a columnar screen, composed of four composite box columns supporting an entablature, divides the commercial space. Scottish immigrant Dixon partnered with Samuel Houghton in the 1850s. They advertised their services as “House, Sign, and Ornamental Painters, Imitators of Woods and Marbles, Gilders, Glaziers, Paper Hangers, Wall Colorers.”