Art Deco!

[MayorOfChicago]

I work in an Art Deco building in Chicago, so I'll share a few.

333 N. Michigan:


Board of Trade Building:




Palmolive Building:


Old Daily News Building ( I work on the 19th floor )


Our twin across the street, the civic Opera House:

[pdxstreetcar]

Providence's Industrial Trust Bank now Bank of America Tower, 1928

[mglan80]

^Wish we had that building downtown.

Wilmington really has only one example, the Nemours building. It was built by DuPont in the 1930's. It's doesn't have alot of the daring Deco design, which is probably because DuPont was such a staid company. The lobby has some cool Deco touches on the doors, elevators (another thread), and the lettering and clocks. To bad I don't have any photos of it. Anyways here it is:

[pdxstreetcar]

Portland doesnt have any art deco towers but Seattle has a nice one, the Seattle Tower...

Look very closely at the brick on this tower... it gradually and very carefully fades from dark brown brick at the base to lighter brown brick at the top. this is not an accident but was intended by the architect to imitate a snow capped mountain.

[ultimate builder]

How about the AIG... an old photo.... note the guy on top changing the beacon.

A rare night closeup of the top.

[vanhattan]

Hi, here are some photos of the Vancovuer City Hall building, completed in 1936. The building's style stands at a transitional point between the vertical, highly ornamented Art Deco style and the simpler, more horizontal Moderne. and the Marine Building;

[LostInTheZone]

The streamlined moderne 1360 Montgomery Street, San Francisco:

I noticed this building last month when I was going up Telegraph Hill. I just came across the name of it now, looking for info on how high the hill was. The murals are silvery foil against white stucco:





See the view of the Bay Bridge, mirroring the mural?

The apartments were built in '38-'39, at a time when the Hill was changing from a difficult-to-reach working-class enclave to a place appreciated by wealthier people who moved there for the views. The murals celebrate the newly opened Bay Bridge, as well as reflecting the areas's character and the 1930s preoccupation with workers and socialist themes in art.

[LostInTheZone]

the real thing, from Cushman, in 1940:



this is all gone, isn't it?

LMich: that Knapp building reminds me a lot of one of my favorite overlooked buildings in DC, the Hecht warehouse on New York Avenue. Possibly the most full realized use of glass block in architecture, in my opinion (with the exception of Renzo Piano's Hermes store in Tokyo):





sorry for the crappy pics. DC actually has a lot of 1930s architecture, probably because FDR's expansion of the government provided jobs.

[¿buen diseño?]

Houston City Hall

[RamsayHank]

Some more Pittsburgh examples:

From the old Buhl Planetarium (now part of the Children's Museum) on the North Side:





The Three Sisters Bridges across the Allegheny:





And the University of Pittsburgh's own towering innuendo, the Cathedral of Learning:

[texcolo]

Texas Hall of State







I'm not sure if this motif is technically art deco, but it's definately Texan.





Band Shell



Cotton Bowl



Women's Museum: Instead of Venus on a clamshell, we have Venus on a Saguaro Cactus.





Automotive Building / Esplanade





Centennial Building / Esplanade





View of the Esplanade from the Hall of State.



Dallas Aquarium



Tower Building





I've lived in Dallas for 33 years, and have been to Fair Park a million times, but I don't remember seeing this. It's known as "the Woofus."

[Stavros]

which was the first art deco building?

[DecoJim]

Originally Posted by Stavros

which was the first art deco building?

I do not know about all buildings but my guess as to the first Art Deco skyscraper would be the Barclay-Vesey Building (begun in 1923) in New York.

(not my picture - shows building undergoing repair after 9/11 damage.)

The following link has a number of vintage photo and postcard images of the Barclay-Vesey.
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/LM/LM070.htm

The American Standard or Radiator Building (1924) also in New York is the first that perfected the setback designs used in so many Art Deco skyscrapers since then.

(not my picture)

[Via Chicago]

It was built for the Chicago "Century of Progress" in 1933. And it was demolished after the fair. But damn, I love it: The Chrysler Building

[rockyi]

^I used to collect items from the 1933-34 Century Of Progress while out "junking", that is until such items have become very collectable and priced beyond what I can afford.
I too have always loved the looks of this Chrysler building. It's a damn shame they were temporary.

[Nowhereman1280]

I love Art Deco! Its such a great expression of feeling in architecture. I love the incorporation of the symbols of progress and human achievement that are frequently incorporated in the architecture. Art Deco is Conservative (though it can get quite extravagant), yet classy, and don't forget badass all at the same time.

I hope that we get a Neo-Art Deco movement or something like that sometime. I would be great to see what kind of grand buildings we could build with todays technology. Imagine the kind of vertical lines you could get on a 1500 foot wall! I have noticed that, as mentioned before, a few designs in Chicago, i.e. One Museum Park, are remeniscent of Art Deco.

It would also be good to get a few pics of the new Marquette innerchange thats going up in Milwaukee, its actually very Art Deco. Some pictures can be found by paging through the flash feature at this website: http://www.mchange.org/page.jsp?&key=vps

Other than the geometric lines and pale yellow coloring, the historcal mural/raised concrete figures depicting the citizens of Milwaukee freeing escaped slave Joshua Glover from slave hunters. This art is all very reminescent of the imagry that you find on these historic buildings. I'm very excited that they decided to do something cool with the interchange project!

[Snoshredder21]

1180 Raymond Blvd. and National Newark & Essex Building.....Newark NJ

[POLA]

great thread... all of that miami stuff reminds me more of bauhaus then art deco to be honest.

[¿buen diseño?]

some interesting examples in Austin

[¿buen diseño?]

The old Gulf Oil bldg in houston