Beaux Arts in Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina was hit hard by the Civil War.  But in the ensuing years, it experienced a Renaissance.  The city saw a rebirth of literature, art and architecture.  The Beaux Arts architecture, popularized by the City Beautiful Movement, made its mark on the former Confederate city.  

The Library Society courtesy http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/a-second-sunday-guide-to-king-street-architecture/Content?oid=4795805.

http://charlestonecorealtor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/King-Street-Urban-Outfitters.jpg

Gibbes Museum of ARt courtesy https://carolinaartsnews.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/gibbes-museum-of-art-in-charleston-sc-presents-gibbes-on-the-street-may-7-2015/ 

Custom House courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/498914464944533677/.

Forgotten Buffalo: A City of Untold Beauty

"Buffalo is home ot some of the greatest architecture of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, with major architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright building marvels here.  Together they shaped one of the grandest early visions of the democratic American city." (Nicolai Ouroussoff)

Ellicott Square Building courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/243475923576376759/.

Buffalo was built by architects who dared to break with the European architecture and create a new American architecture "rooted in American ideals of individualism, commerce and social mobility".  The city began to grow with the opening of the Erie Canal, paving the way for trade with the West.  By the end of the 19th Century, Buffalo was known for its grain silos and steel mills.  Enter Daniel Burnham and the City Beautiful Movement.

Guaranty (now Prudential) Building facade design courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential_(Guaranty)_Building#/media/File:Prudential_Guaranty_Building_02.jpg/.

Daniel Burnham designed the Ellicott Square Building in 1896, with an Italian Renaissance facade.  A block away is Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building built a year earlier, decorated in floral terra cotta tiles.  At the other end of town, Henry Hobson Richardson designed the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane (1870), featuring two soaring Romanesque towers and tall windows.  Frank Lloyd Wright swayed the most from the traditional European architecture with his designs, the Larkin Building (1904) and Darwin Martin House (1905).  Wright invented floor to ceiling glass doors and double window panes.  "The light filled atrium piercing its five floors...turned traditional office hierarchy on its head".  But no blog about historic Buffalo is complete without the wedding cake city hall.  Built in 1932, the 32-story art deco building was designed by John J. Wade and Andrew Jackson Warner.

Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/arts/design/16ouro.html

Buffalo City Hall at night courtesy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buffalo_City_Hall_-_Judges_and_Police_Executives_Conference.jpg.

How Andrew Carnegie Built the Architecture of American Literacy

"A library is the best possible gift to a community for it gives people a chance to improve themselves." (Andrew Carnegie)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie

The United States had 1689 of these buildings while Canada had 125.  They were known for their turrets, columns and arches, "the architecture of American literacy".  

                                

Former Carnegie Library in Washington DC courtesy http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/10/how-andrew-carnegie-built-the-architecture-of-american-literacy/381953/.

Andrew Carnegie, an immigrant from Scotland to the United States, had been denied access to a Pittsburgh library was he was a boy (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2014/06/andrew-carnegies-letter-to-editor.html).  After accumulating his wealth in the steel industry, he vowed to use it to educate those less fortunate.  Between 1893 and 1919, Andrew Carnegie donated $1.3 billion to finance the building of libraries dotting the American landscape.  Carnegie's legacy reached every state in the contiguous United States except Delaware and Rhode Island.  The majority, however, sat in what is now the Rust Belt (Indiana had the most at 165) and California.   

The castle like Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania courtesy http://andrewcarnegie.tripod.com/photoalbumCL-AllegCo.htm.

"It was an expectation in communities across the country -- if you didn't have a library somehow you weren't supporting culture...What Carnegie did was simulated the desire for libraries in communities across the country," explains Wayne Wiegand, professor emeritus of library studies at Florida State University (http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/10/how-andrew-carnegie-built-the-architecture-of-american-literacy/381953/).

The St. Petersburg, Florida Carnegie Library reflects the local architecture courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_Florida.

Many Carnegie libraries are known for their architecture.  While architects and librarians argued over the design of the buildings, Carnegie sided with the latter.  "Architecture was to be avoided.  Architecture was what was going to make the library expensive."  Like a true Scotsman, Carnegie wanted to preserve costs.

The plain design of the Ritzville, Washington Carnegie Library courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritzville_Carnegie_Library.

Carnegie's secretary, James Bertram, sent a pamphlet to communities planning the construction of a Carnegie library titled "Notes on the Construction of Library Buildings".  The pamphlet contained a crude design for six different templates; built into every design was a community centre or auditorium.  Ironically, the growth of each library's book collection crowded out its community centre.

Greenville, Ohio Carnegie Library featured both an auditorium and a range of classrooms for the city's students courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenville_Carnegie_Library. 

Today, libraries are once again oriented around services to the community.  Close to 800 Carnegie libraries are still in use while 350 have been re-purposed as offices and cultural centres.  Sadly, 275 have been razed or destroyed.  Some, as in the case of the Cambridge Library in Southern Ontario, sit vacant, their massive columns standing testament to the Architecture of American Literacy.

Galt Carnegie Library in Cambridge, Ontario courtesy http://publish.uwo.ca/~gbushel/carnegielibrariesofwaterlooregion/waterlooregioncarnegielibraries/galt.html.