UNIT-1

ECLECTISIM
Sub Topic: Public building
&
Early skyscrapers
LOVELY SCHOOL OF
Lecture 03:
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN MEHAK VIJ
 LEARNING OUTCOME
To appreciate eclectic style
development in and style use
in Public building & Early
Skyscrapers
 Introduction:- Public Building
• Around the turn of the century, city halls, public libraries,
courthouses, churches and private homes on a scale were built
by eclectic architects—projects that remain among the
important structures of every major American city.

• Where planning followed the sound concepts of Beaux-Arts

teaching, and where eclectic historicism was controlled by a
sense of what might be appropriate, the resulting buildings of
what is sometimes called the American Renaissance remain
serviceable and impressive.

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 Introduction
• The New York Public Library by John M.Carrere (1858-1911)
and Thomas Hastings(1860-1919), both Beaux-Arts trained and
both ex-employees of McKim, Mead & White has a complex
plan that arranges many handsomely detailed spaces around
two interior courtyards with admirably efficient circulation.

• The building continues to serve modern needs and recent

restoration has made the interiors as impressive as they were
when new.

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 Carrere and Hastings, Public library,
New York,1902
• The monumental library building was designed in the
style the architects had absorbed when studied at
Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

• The handsome interior of the main reading room with

its surrounding open shelves of book on two levels is
flooded with light from the windows above.

• It remains in current use for its original function.

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Early skyscrapers

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 Introduction
• Tall buildings, increasingly important in major cities as business
needs and elements of civic and commercial pride pressured for
height, posed problems for their designers that were only rarely
well solved.

• The reliance Building Chicago (1890-1895) by the same finally

abandons masonry exterior walls in favors of “curtain walls” of
iron, terracotta and glass that do not supported by a metal
structural frame.

• This is the system that became universally adopted for tall

buildings, even when masonry exterior was desired.
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 George Herbert Wyman, Bradbury
building in Los Angles, 1893
• The emergence of the modern large office building posed new
problems for architects of the eclectic era.

• Wyman introduced the skylights of a central atrium to provide

light for the galleries that took the place of dark corridors and
gave access to the offices on many floors.

• The elevators moving in open cages and the stairs connecting

the various gallery levels present an image more functional
than eclectic.
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 Cass gilbert, Woolworth building,
New york 1913
• Called a “cathedral of commerce,” the outside of the
Woolworth buildings was clothed in Gothic Style detail.

• In the public lobby, however, Gilbert turned to Byzantine

detail, for which he used marble and Mosaics.

• Sculpture provided a setting for entrances to the

elevators that served the many stories of what was, for
some years, the tallest building in the world.

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 Cass gilbert, Woolworth building,
New york 1913
• The symmetrical cruciform lobby welcomes visitors with
spectacular decor.

• It is adorned with Early Christian inspired barrel vault

mosaics, a stained glass skylight, marble walls, bronze
furnishings.

• Ornate exterior cladding of cream terra cotta with blue and

yellow glazed accents

• The final building was an engineering and construction feat

of its time: 792 feet tall, 60 floors, 206 million pounds, 15
acres of floor area, 3000 exterior windows, 24,000 tons of
steel, 17 million bricks and 7,500 tons of terra cotta

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 Record height
Tallest in the world from 1913 to 1930
Preceded by Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company Tower
Surpassed by (be better than 40 Wall Street
ever before)
General information
Location 233 Broadway
Manhattan, New York City
Construction started 1910
Completed 1913
Opening April 24, 1913
Cost US$13.5 million
Owner Witkoff Group

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 Height
Roof 241.4 m (792 ft)
Technical details
Floor count 57
Lifts/elevators 34
Design and construction
Architect Cass Gilbert
Structural engineer Gunvald Aus and Kort Berle

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