Mies' stair at the Arts Club is his own particular version of that old modernist chestnut: the pipe railing. In the 1920s, architects such as Le Corbusier commonly used balustrades made of steel pipes, partly because they admired steamships and factories, and partly to épater les bourgeois. Undecorated, functionalistic, and vaguely industrial, pipe railings—like glass blocks, flat roofs, and white-painted exteriors—became a hallmark of the International Style. At right is a classic: the railing of the rooftop ramp of the famous Villa Savoye (1928-31).