[ALTERNATE LSC Photos] Comparing 1 St. Thomas to the Past - Louisiana State Capitol
One of the more intriguing buildings in the US is the
Louisiana State Capitol built in 1932. It followed on the heels of another skyscraper state capitol built in Lincoln, Nebraska. And many believed the
Louisiana State Capitol (or
LSC) also shared/borrowed/copied a number of design points of its
Nebraska State Capitol predecessor. But I will turn the comparison away from that one and back towards what is more relevant - Stern's
1 St. Thomas building. Duly noted here at the outset, the
LSC is by definition a government building rather than a residential tower. Why is it relevant?
LSC will be used as an entry point into what is being brought forward into the present from the past by Stern, and reworked, not updated. This is a subtle distinction, that will not be appreciated by the casual observer, but without which recognition is misplaced or subordinated unfairly.
When this Louisiana building came in under budget, projected to be 5,000,000 USD, it could have been assigned, quite properly, to a skyscraper style now known as "Classicism". But with the monies leftover this building was tweaked with added Art Deco ornamentation that has caused confusion to this day. This building is routinely grouped under the Art Deco style by nearly everyone, despite the still dominant Classicism in evidence in both the exterior and interior. The three photos below, in the first row, are of the exterior of this magnificent building. The
legerdemain in the transition from rectangular floor plates at the base and shaft to octagonals at the top is sublime.
After viewing these images, imagine the same building without the Art Deco ornamentation: then compare literally, and in your mind's eye (sans ornament), this Louisiana skyscraper to
1 St. Thomas (the latter images selectively drawn from previous posts, and placed in the last row). These two buildings while obviously not identical, bare a very strong resemblance, worth analyzing. Architectural detail has to be understood by its syntax to best appreciate what looks like major difference within a style. In reality that difference may simply be a matter of what the architect emphasizes, rather than a substantial change. One of the best aspects of the
LSC is its suppression but not elimination of setbacks to create the feeling of greater verticality. The Stern building, on the other hand, mutes some of its verticality by employing a repetition of detail from the top and varying the pattern of repetition, symmetrically downward to the base. As a consequence, the Stern building emphasizes the setback pattern a great deal more than LSC. Moreover, the exterior panels of the shaft, those in relief versus those raised, are also reversed between the two buildings. But both buildings gather around similiar window patterns off each side at the top, and define the structure in a discrete build from the base to the cupola that are within the bounds of the overall design type of Classicism.
There were many such buildings constructed in urban areas of North America throughout the 1930s, with occasional stragglers largely in that next decade. Most of these buildings, even those with considerable merit, were eventually demolished, but photos and sketches remain. These historical designs anticipate nearly every aspect of Stern's exterior design if the time is taken to examine them carefully, but you will need an open mind to see this if you start with the idea that this is not possible given that this style is so far back into a prior era. I hope to make an attempt to demonstrate these lines to the present in periodic posts in future. I still maintain that Stern's
1 St. Thomas is primarily derivative - including those few selective elements that are erroneously referred to as "Stern updates" in places where the historical record has been lost or simply ignored.
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The Louisiana State Capitol is thankfully with us today in Baton Rouge, La., and was the product of the then politically connected New Orleans architectural firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth. The exterior uses a beautiful "Alabama Limestone" that is not given justice in these photos. It is a 34-storey skyscraper that is roughly 140 metres high. When built, it was the tallest building in the Southeast United States region - which included Atlanta, Miami, and Dallas which we might have thought would be taller. The history that surrounds this building in the time of Huey Long, is legendary, and has become the subject of several fictional books in its wake. Finally, it is on the American "National Register of Historic Landmarks" in order to preserve it for future generations.
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