Liebes's first major commission—color scheme and draperies for Timothy Pflueger's SF Stock Exchange Building—opened October 29, 1929, launching her career.
On October 29, 1929—the very day the American stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression—the new San Francisco Stock Exchange Building, designed by noted architect Timothy Pflueger, opened to the public. Dorothy Liebes had been commissioned to design the color scheme and draperies for the building's interiors, marking her first major architectural commission.
This project was a pivotal turning point in her career: it moved her from small-scale studio weaving into large, prestigious architectural interiors, establishing relationships with architects that would define her professional trajectory for decades. The irony of the timing—a celebratory design unveiling coinciding with financial catastrophe—did not derail her momentum; if anything, the visibility of the high-profile commission helped establish her reputation among San Francisco's architectural and business elite during a difficult economic era.
This early success set a precedent for Liebes's career-long pattern of collaborating directly with modernist architects to create bespoke, richly textured, color-forward textiles integrated into total interior design schemes, a practice that would culminate in her later work for institutions like the United Nations and major airline and hotel corporations.