The eccentric beauty of late 19th century American architecture

This is a bay facing an alley in downtown Washington,DC. It is inconceivable that in the 21st century such concern would be given a secondary facade. The attention to materials and detail, and the importance of creating a three-dimensional surface with a sense of movement is so Richardsonian.  Even after Richardson, Adler/Sullivan and other Chicago architects emphasized these features.  But with the late 19th and early 20th century classical revival the irregularity of the facade was played down and finally destroyed by the International Style and modernism.  Post modernists pretended to bring these three dimensional and movement characteristics back.  But Frank Gehry really was the first to bring these qualities back to architecture and now he has as much influence as H.H. Richardson did, nearly 125 years ago.