At the very top above the copper cornice is the Rooftop bar. The Palmetto Building, built at the corner of Washington and Main in 1913 as the headquarters home for Palmetto National Bank, is within a week of fully operating as the 135- room Sheraton, replete with 16 suites and five separate venues for food and drink.

The Rooftop bar is on floor 16, the hotel's top floor, but just below on floors 14 and 15 are the luxurious guest-room levels, one called Club Level and the other, Starwood Preferred Guest Level.

The POSH Restaurant, overlooking Washington Street and the lobby from the mezzanine, takes an attitude of elegance from the origin of the acronym POSH: port out, starboard home. Soon after WWI, as the cruise liners leaving Southhampton (London) sailed east, the better accommodations were on the port side, facing away from the sun. For the return, the same preference to look away from the sun prevailed, but this time those seats were on the starboard side. Hence, posh accommodations entered the world traveler's language.

Amanda Allison, the hotel's director of sales and marketing, guards The Vault and its martini bar. The POSH Restaurant is the hotel's flagship gourmet dining experience, the place to plan for first impressions.

Directly below POSH Restaurant is the Perk Up, a Starbuck's coffee lounge near the main entry on the first floor. Also on the ground floor is The Vault, a martini bar nestled inside the bank's converted vault.

Below ground, where Chris and his Sherlock's bar once operated, is the Main Street Tavern. The tavern is accessible from both the elevator and its own set of steps off the Main Street sidewalk, just the way Sherlock's had it. With ample scale and number of flat- screen televisions, the Main Street Tavern is suitable for sports fans.

Beyond the quality of the food and drink, and beyond the quality of the accommodations, there is the architecture. Lovingly restored and brilliantly adapted for its reuse, the Palmetto Building, now the Sheraton Columbia Downtown, still shows all the details put in by New York architect Julius Harder almost 100 years ago.

POSH Restaurant sits above the lobby and check- in. According to the Historic Columbia Foundation, "The base is composed of two floors of Indiana limestone. There are 10 floors clad in glazed cream- colored terra cotta, while the top five floors feature interlaced and intersecting Italian gothic arches. An ornate over- hanging copper cornice and a stone parapet top the building. Motifs of plant life indigenous to the South - including the palmetto tree, cotton boll and leaf, corn, and vine - embellish the building."

Across Washington Street is the meeting room and banquet hall component for the hotel. Formerly the First National Bank Building and later the home of Republic Bank, the 8,000 square feet of assembly space can hold nine different conferences at one time. The largest meeting room, The Parlor, is good for 3,200 square feet.

The hotel parking is 100% valet. Guests are asked to pull their cars up to the curb on the north side Washington Street, and the hotel will secure the car. The hotel is taking reservations.

Call 988.1400 over the next week to hear when the hotel and its five bars/ restaurants are taking in guests and diners.