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ART DECO SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

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News & Notes From the DecoPhiles 3 Deco in Downtown Las Vegas 5 Art Deco Now and Then: Hoover Dam 15 Expo Special Exhibit: Greetings from Washington 27

ADSW

Board of Directors

President—Jim Linz

Vice President—Vacant

Treasurer—Lou Simchowitz

Secretary—Vacant

At Large Members:

Linda Lyons

Karyn Jarboe

Jonathan Mazur

Steve Knight

Isabelle Yerger

Silver Spring—Richard Striner

Visit us on the web at

www.adsw.org

Webmaster—Jim Linz

Wanna Be a Member?

Join online at

www.adsw.org

Or call 202-298-1100

And request an

application

Trans-Lux

Trans-Lux is published four times a year

by the Art Deco Society of Washington,

P.O. 42722, Washington, D.C. 20015-

2722. Phone (202) 298-1100.

ADSW is a non-profit organization in-

corporated to foster public awareness

and appreciation of the Art Deco period

through volunteer actions to preserve the

era’s decorative, industrial, architectur-

al, and cultural arts.

Editor/Publisher—Jim Linz

Book Reviews Editor—Vacant

Calendar Editor—Lynda

Schmitz Fuhrig

Contributors: Jim Linz Barbara Billauer Bailey Steve Knight

Trans-Lux is looking for a few good writers. Please submit manuscripts and photographs to Jim Linz, PO Box 221011, Chantilly, VA 20153. Please enclose a self-addressed envelope for return of material. Sub-mission of letters/articles implies the right to edit and publish. ©2012 ADSW

On the Cover: Post Card from the Red Room Methodist Dining Room located at 100 Maryland Ave. N.E., three clocks from Union Sta-tion.

http://www.adsw.org

http://www.adsw.org

TRANS-LUX VOLUME 30 NO. 1

News and Notes from the Deco Philes

NEW BOARD MEMBERS ADSW begins to rebuild its Board with three new members—Steve Knight, Isabelle Yerger, and Jonathan Mazur. Additional positions are available.

DATES SET FOR 12TH WORLD CONGRESS Habana Deco recently announced that the 12th World Congress on Art Deco will be held in Havana, Cuba from March 14-21, 2013. During the week, participants will enjoy lectures, exhibitions, tours of the city, and social activities. Post conference visits to other Cuban cities are also be-ing planned.

CALL FOR SPEAKERS—12TH WORLD CONGRESS Habana Deco also issued a call for speakers. Speakers will be limited to 20 minutes. To be considered, explain the material needs for your presentation and provide a brief curriculum vita. DEADLINE FOR SUB-MISSIONS IS JUNE 5, 2012. Submissions should be sent to Geo Darder, international representative of the 12th World Congress [email protected] or Gustavo Lopez, General Coordinator [email protected]

SPECIAL VERSION OF ART DECO NOW AND THEN Barbara Billauer Bailey introduced the series Art Deco Now and Then several years ago. In this special issue, the ―Now‖ is provided by Steve Knight of David M. Schwarz Architects writing about the new Art Deco-style Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas. Barbara puts the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in the proper context through her ―Then‖ article on the design and construction of the Hoover Dam, the design inspiration for the Smith Center.

(Continued on page 4)

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Knight also put together a special exhibit on the construction of the Smith Center for display at the Expo, June 2-3, 2012. The exhibit will include models, drawings, photographs, and product samples.

Expo After Hours Goes Italian

This year’s Expo After Hours Party will feature a choice of Italian entrees including Lasagna, Eggplant Parmesan (Gluten free), Pasta Rustica, and at least one more choice. This will be supplemented by a choice of at least two salads, Italian bread, and a variety of hors d’oeuvres. Desserts

include cream puffs, cookies, and cupcakes. Both red and white wines will be served along with iced tea and soft drinks.

ADSW Gets a Cell Phone

ADSW has gone high tech. With no office, ADSW relied for years on an answering service to help it keep in touch with its members and the pub-lic. It was not very effective. Callers sometimes waited weeks for a re-sponse. Now, ADSW has an Android cell phone so we can quickly check for mes-sages, and may actually answer some calls when they come in, especially at events such as the Expo. With an Android phone, we will also be able to process credit cards using a mobile credit card processor. The change in is process and should be completed in 3-4 days.


Deco in Downtown Las Vegas:

The Smith Center Delivers Durability and

Authenticity to a City Built on Fantasy

By Steve Knight

Photographs by Steve Hall with Hedrich-Blessing

“Much of Las Vegas is conceived and designed as an escape

from somewhere else. The Smith Center is conceived to em-

body the soul of Las Vegas, not the fantasy-scape that people

visit, but the place where people live and work.” - Gregory

Hoss, Principal of David M Schwarz Architects

Building a Cultural Life in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is an interesting place. You can find almost every architectural style represented there, both inside and out, except those that reflect the real Las Vegas. On the Strip, we have Paris, Venice, Rome, New York, a medieval fortress, buildings that might well feel more at home in Los An-geles or Dubai rather than Las Vegas, but no real “Las Vegas”. We have

View from across Symphony Park showing Reynolds Hall with the carillon tower on

the left and the Boman Pavilion building on the right, with center pedestrian mews

in between.


both the interior and exterior of The Opera Garnier but in different plac-es; the exterior, appropriately enough, is at Paris, but the interior, oddly, is several blocks down the street in Venice. For roughly the last forty years, Las Vegas has been an importer of culture rather than a creator of it. Now home to over two million people, Las Vegas has greatly matured over the last couple of generations. It is now a place very interested in developing the cultural institutions one associates with major cities. The Smith Center for the Performing Arts was built for the citizens of Las Ve-gas and is intended to be one of those institutions. It is a new multi-purpose performing arts facility designed to host music, theatre, and dance companies and serves as the home of the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Nevada Ballet Theatre. The Smith Center: Finding an Appropriate Expres-

sion in Las Vegas

Our first step in designing The Smith Center was to look for an architec-tural style that was indigenous to Las Vegas and somehow represented something singular to the city and its history. Las Vegas has been built up and torn down so many times now that there is very little of its history left, aside from a history of destruction and renewal. In our search for the “real” Las Vegas it was obvious that the greatest achievement in the area was the Hoover Dam. Not only is it an architec-tural icon, but the dam and the workers who built it were so central to Las Vegas becoming what it is today that it seemed like the obvious choice. Had there not been those five thousand workers a year for all those years, to feed Las Vegas’ growth, it is unclear whether Las Vegas would have won out in the sweepstakes for a gaming capital of the Unit-ed States. Like most of our firm's buildings, The Smith Center draws its architectural vocabulary from many and diverse sources. The predominant influences in the building are Art Deco and Moderne, much like the Hoover Dam. The two primary styles find their origins in the beginning of the machine age. Art Deco was born as the transition from Art Nouveau, a fluid floral style, into a more linear and machine like expression. Moderne took Art


Twilight view of the complex.

Above: View of the interior courtyard.

Left: Detail of the carillon tower.


Deco and simplified it to a more streamlined image, and was often used to express speed or power in many built structures. The Hoover Dam was built at the intersection of these two design movements.

There are several physical parts of the Hoover Dam that provided inspira-tion for the design of The Smith Center, including the elegant massing and articulation of its water intake towers; the care taken with concrete, stone and terrazzo finishes; and the incorporation of art, iconography and ornamentation on both the exterior and interior.

Building and Site

The $470 million venue houses three performance spaces. First, Reynolds Hall, a state-of-the-art 2,050-seat multi-purpose auditorium with 23 box-es on four levels, is intended for first-run Broadway shows, symphony, dance, theatre and special attractions. This building also provides two significant lobby spaces that accommodate large groups for pre-, post- and non-performance gatherings. Second, and housed in an adjacent building called the Boman Pavilion, one finds a major component of the complex: an intimate 300-seat venue, called Cabaret Jazz. The third ven-ue, also housed in the Boman Pavilion, is the 250-seat Troesh Studio The-ater which serves as a black box theater as well as a rehearsal space for music and dance companies. The campus is also home to a 1.7 acre green space fronting Reynolds Hall and the Boman Pavilion, which provides an additional outdoor venue to The Smith Center. The arrangement of the site makes a balanced composition on the park and lets each of the two buildings have its own presence. The facing cor-ners of the Boman Pavilion and Reynolds Hall invite you into a walkway that leads to a private interior courtyard. Those two buildings form two sides of this courtyard. The final enclosure is created by the Donald W. Reynolds Children’s Discovery Center. The courtyard itself serves all three buildings and acts as the heart of the project, a central gathering place. The composition of facades facing the park is quite asymmetrical. The addition of the Carillon Tower on Reynolds Hall, which houses 46 bells weighing almost 15 tons, visually moves the center of the project back towards the center of the block, making for a balanced composition as it addresses the park.


Street corner view of the Boman Pavilion

with the brick-clad Donald W. Reynolds

Discovery Museum in the distance.

Detail of the curved corner entry with stainless steel art panel in the

foreground.


Ornament & Materials

The incorporation of ornament and detail into facades and interiors is an integral part of our design process. In public buildings like The Smith Cen-ter, we believe that detail helps break down the somewhat overwhelming scale of facades and spaces, making them more approachable. Addition-ally, detail provides a level of visual richness that we believe is appropri-ate for significant buildings like this one. We were fortunate with this project to have had such a rich palette of iconography with which to work, both in terms of the unique location of the building and the uses there. Nevada is known as the silver state; we took this designation to heart and incorporated a collection of stainless steel, aluminum and aluminum leaf details throughout the project. The exterior and interior stair and balcony railings in this project are notable, as are the three dimensional stainless steel panels that decorate the exte-rior façade (which tell the story of how the dam gave life to the desert), the bar fronts in the lobbies (which express the sun’s rays) and many of the air grills (which use mountain motifs in their design). The iris was the favorite flower of Mary Smith, one of the project’s main donors. We developed several unique variations of the iris to use in hand-painted friezes in the main lobby and some of the other front of house public rooms. You will also find many references to the arts throughout the building: in the Cabaret Theatre we developed return air grills with a piano motif; in Reynolds Hall, the end stanchions incorporate the lyre; the Upper Lobby has stylized base clefs in the carpet border and ceiling frieze; and the ex-terior stainless panels on the east façade include musical instruments in their design. The choice of materials and colors in The Smith Center is the result of a series of discussions, quarry visits, mockups and several studies with our client. The desert in this area is comprised of two very dramatic and different colors, the red of Red Rock and the sand tones of much of the rest of the desert. We looked at stones in both hues. Our original plan was to use Nevada Metaquartzite (the red hues) for the exterior cladding but we were not able to satisfy ourselves of its structural integrity. We then decided, after an exhaustive search, that it was wiser to use a more


Reynolds Hall Auditorium—

View looking towards stage

with the orchestra shell in

place.

Aove: Reynolds Hall Auditorium—View from the

stage.

Left: Reynolds Hall auditorium—Ceiling detail.


Reynolds Hall-Balcony parapet detail with stepped sidewall pilaster in the background.

Below: Reynolds Hall-Grand Lobby with marble floor, stone clad walls, stainless steel railings and custom designed chan-deliers.

Below: Reynolds Hall Auditorium– Detail of seat end stanchion with stepped forestage in the back-ground.


traditional building material and settled on limestone, which picks up the sandier hues of the desert.

Not having been able to use the red tones for the exterior, we decided to use them on the interior. We found two beautiful Italian marbles that we all agreed would be stunning for the walls of the Grand Lobby in Reynolds Hall: Rosso Asiago and Rosso Verona. These color stones are quite remi-niscent of the reddish rocks one sees in some of the mountains in and around Las Vegas, and the color of these stones also provides an appro-priately warm backdrop. For the Reynolds Hall auditorium the client chose a cognac colored chair fabric that we used to develop the entire color scheme for the room. We developed about 40 uniquely mixed shades of paint based on this fabric color and ended up using over 20 of these on the walls, pilasters and ceilings of the hall. The configuration of the hall, its coloration and detail make this room a unique performance space.

The Smith Center opened with a gala celebration and concert in March of 2012. It continues to receive accolades in the local, national and interna-tional press. Journalists and the community continue to speak of the Cen-ter’s elegance and sense of permanence, noting it will change the land-scape of Las Vegas and what is to come in the future. And one thing is certain: The Smith Center will be around for a very long time to play a

Reynolds Hall-Founders room paneled in Santos rosewood and American burr walnut.

Reynolds Hall-Detail from the main stair upper landing with stainless steel framed laylight above.


part in that future.

A Little Bit about Our Firm and Our Work

David M. Schwarz Architects is a Washington, DC-based architecture firm founded in 1976. Our early work included several preservation and adap-tive reuse projects in Washington DC's historic neighborhoods. One, the Penn Theater conversion, won the first ADSW Preservation Award in 1984. We now maintain a design-oriented practice with a national repu-tation and have completed projects across the country. We design a wide variety of building types, including houses, civic buildings, retail, sports, healthcare and performing arts facilities. For more information, visit www.dmsas.com "I stepped into the Grand Lobby and had to remind myself I still had my feet planted in downtown Las Vegas.....in the lobby of a cathedral to the arts that's meant to stand for generations to come. The lobby sends that message with Italian stone, 19-foot-tall chandeliers and sculpture.....The Smith Center is telling you it is here for the long haul. For you, for your children and their children. In Las Vegas, that message is nothing short of game-changing." - John L. Smith, reviewjournal.com

Boman Pavilion—Upper lobby with terrazzo floor, Venetian plaster walls, suspended mezzanine and custom designed chandeliers.


Art Deco Now and Then:

The Design History of the Hoover Dam

By Barbara Billauer Bailey

Truth be told, the design process for the Hoover Dam proceeded in exactly the opposite fashion from the Smith Center. First and foremost was the need to design for functionality and the technical difficulties to be over-come in constructing such a monolithic project. Only after these issues were addressed was attention paid to the architecture and overall design.

Since about 1900, the Black

Canyon and nearby Boulder

Canyon near the Arizona border

had been investigated to support

a dam that would control floods,

provide irrigation water and

produce hydroelectric power.


A concrete arch dam was selected for the construction, the largest of its kind at the time. It continues to provide power to Arizona, Nevada and California and improvements continue to be added all based on the art deco motif.

The Bureau of Reclamation, at the time of construction, however, were more concerned with the dam's functionality, and adorned the dam with a Gothic inspired balustrade and eagle statues. Although the engineers' design was highly functional, the unbalanced outlet houses, government-office power-

house, and massive eagles set on the roadway towers clashed violently with the image projected of Hoover Dam as a modern structure.

Work on the tunnels began in May 1931, but before construction on the dam could begin,

the Colorado River had to be diverted from the project's foundation site. This occurred

during the winter of 1932 through specially constructed tunnels, a technological marvel.

Each tunnel was 4,000 feet long, 56 feet in diameter, and lined with three feet of concrete,

making them the second largest tunnels ever made.

In June 6, 1933, the first round of concrete was poured for the dam's base. To allow the con-crete to dry properly and prevent cracking, 230 individual blocks of con-crete were poured All in all, 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete were used, enough concrete to pave a highway 16 feet wide from New York to San Francisco.


There are four towers sticking up from the top of the dam. The middle two are elevators and they are decorated with bas-relief. The five bas-reliefs on the Nevada elevator tower, done in concrete, show the multipurpose benefits of Hoover Dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water stor-age, and power.

But the initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam, invit-ing criticism by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale. Only after the functional components and general en-gineering schema was decided, was the design and architecture reevaluat-ed and scrapped. The original design for the dam's facade by Bureau of Reclamation engineers made it clear that an architect needed to be brought in.

To protect the construction site from flooding, two cofferdams were con-structed. Construction of the upper cofferdam began in September 1932,


even though the river had not yet been diverted. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During excavations for the foun-dation, approximately 1,500,000 yd³ (1,150,000 m³) of material was removed. Since the dam would be a gravity-arch type, the side-walls of the canyon would also bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin (un-weathered) rock which had not experienced the weathering of centuries of water seepage, win-tertime freeze cracking, and the heating/cooling cycles of the Arizona/Nevada desert.

Finally, two years after construction began, Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, was brought in to re-design the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design, and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project. He designed sculptured turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on and only then did the dam begin to take on its famed art deco motif.

Kaufman ―simplified and modernized the various parts of the dam. On the crest, the overhanging balcony and four unequal towers gave way to a series of observation niches and towers that rise from the wall and continue upward unimpeded. The emphasis, according to Kaufmann, was on 'an or-derly series of small vertical shadows punctuated by the larger shadows of the elevator and utility towers.' He treated these extrusions as continuations of the dam face, not as separate moldings. The four large towers have

Gordon Kaufmann's design for dam façade submitted in Janu-ary 1933. Most of it was accepted by the reclamation committeehttp://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma98/haven/hoover/modern.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma98/haven/hoover/modern.html




cutback corners and tops reminiscent of the set-back Los Angeles Times Building, but were treated much more simply. The two outer towers were for utilities and public restrooms, while the two inner towers acted as public entrances to the dam; from them, elevators descended inside the concrete to the internal galleries and powerhouse. Appropriately, these inner en-trance towers contained the only ornament on the dam--two large cast-concrete panels by sculptor Oskar J.W. Hansen. These panels depicted such subjects as flood control, irrigation, power, and the history of the area. Their low-relief, semiclassical, cubist style typified Art Deco sculp-ture." (Wilson, 302-303).

Kaufmann also redesigned the spillways to be more streamlined, added lights to the top of the intake towers for nighttime effect, and reworked the powerhouse in a modernist, stripped-classicism style (Wilson, 304-305).

Denver artist Allen Tupper True then was retained to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors, incorporating motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region.] With the assistance of the National La-boratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs

from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. Although there was some initial opposition to this construct., images and colors were

Photo: Ansel Adams, 1942


based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and lo-cal animals — lizards, serpents, birds — and on the Southwestern land-scape of stepped mesas. In these works, integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the oper-ation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern.

The Indian motif was repeated throughout the construction. On the Arizona elevator tower is a series of five bas-reliefs, also in concrete, depicting "the visages of those Indian tribes who have inhabited mountains and plains from ages distant." Accompanying the illustrations is the inscription, "Since primordial times, American Indian tribes and Nations lifted their hands to the Great Spirit from these ranges and plains. We now with them in peace buildeth again a Nation." With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised an innovative color coding for the pipes and machinery.True’s work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in The New Yorker, part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme." A competition to find a monument for the dam was arranged; the winner was Oskar Hansen, whose strange winged figures, seated but still thirty feet tall, now adorn the site. Most of the rest of the sculptural aspects were also the work of Norwegian-born, naturalized American Oskar J.W. Han-sen. For Hansen, building the dam represented the building genius of America, "a monument to collective genius exerting itself in community ef-forts around a common need or ideal," he was quoted as saying. He com-pared the dam to such works as the great pyramids of Egypt, and said

Terrazzo floor designed by Alan True for the Hoo-ver Dam, using local Indian motifs.


that, when viewing these man-made structures, the viewer often asks of their builders, "What manner of men were these?" The sculptor, according to Hansen, tries to answer this question objectively, by "interpreting man to other men in the terms of the man himself." "In each of the se monuments," he said, "can be read the characteristics of these men, and on a larger scale, the community of which they are part. Thus, mankind itself is the subject of the sculptures at Hoover Dam."

Hansen's principal work at Hoover Dam is the monument of dedication on the Nevada side of the dam. Here, rising from a black, polished base, is a 142-foot flagpole flanked by two winged figures, which Hansen calls the Winged Figures of the Republic. They express "the immutable calm of intel-lectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment.

The great commentator, Wilson notes that "these surrealistic apparitions underscored the unreality of a dam and lake in the middle of a hostile desert" (309). Hansen also was responsible for a star map set in the floor of the monument; this map, indicating dates of historical importance, linked the moment the Hoover Dam was dedicated with such events as the build-

ing of the pyramids and the birth of Christ. Hansen believed that "in remote ages to come, intelligent people" would be able to discern "the astronomi-

Oskar Hansen's winning sculptures

The winged figures are 30 feet high. Their shells are 5/8-inch thick, and contain more than 4 tons of statuary bronze. The figures were formed from sand molds weighing 492 tons. The bronze that forms the shells was heated to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and poured into the molds in one continuous, molten stream. The figures rest on a base of black diorite, an igneous rock. In order to place the blocks without marring their highly polished finish, they were centered on blocks of ice, and guided precisely into place as the ice melted. After the blocks were in place, the flagpole was dropped through a hole in the center block into a predrilled hole in the mountain.


cal time of the dam's dedication" (Wilson, 310). Hansen also designed the plaque commemorating the 96 men who official-ly died during the construction of Hoover Dam, as well as the bas-relief series on both the Nevada and Arizona elevator towers. The plaque, origi-nally set into the canyon wall on the Arizona side of the dam, is now locat-ed near the winged figures. It reads: "They died to make the desert bloom. The United States of Ameri ca will continue to remember that many who toiled here found

their final rest while engaged in the building of this dam. The Unit ed States of America will continue to remember the services of all who labored to clothe with substance the plans of those who first visioned the building of this dam."

Surrounding the base is a terrazzo floor, inlaid with a star chart, or celes-tial map. The chart preserves for future generations the date on which Pres-ident Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Hoover Dam, September 30, 1935. The apparent magnitudes of stars on the chart are shown as they would appear to the naked eye at a distance of about 190 trillion miles from

earth. In reality, the distance to most of the stars is more than 950 trillion miles.

The apparent magnitudes of stars on the chart are shown as they would appear to the naked eye at a dis-tance of about 190 trillion miles from earth. In reality, the distance to most of the stars is more than 950 trillion miles. In this celestial map, the bodies of the solar system are placed so exactly that those versed in astronomy could calculate the precession (progressively earlier occurrence) of the Pole Star for approximately the next 14,000 years. Conversely, future generations could look upon this monument and determine, if no other means were available, the exact date on which Hoover Dam was dedi-cated.


Near the figures and elevated above the floor is a compass, framed by the signs of the zodiac. "The building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring. The winged bronzes which guard the flag, therefore, wear the look of eagles. To them also was given the vital upward thrust of an aspirational gesture; to symbolize the readiness for defense of our institutions and keeping of our spiritual eagles ever ready to be on the wing."


The Dam itself is replete with modernistic features and art deco design – and in my opinion is a stellar example that imitation cannot compete with the original. Note the hallway and the elevators below:

Turbines reminiscent of a scene from a Jules Verne Novel (picture taken in

1942)


But the design story of the dam is not finished. In 2009 construction of a new bridge 900 feet above the Colorado River began, providing a new link between Nevada and Arizona. The incredible feat of engineering is supported on two massive concrete arches which jut out of the rock face. The arches are made up of 53 individual sections each 24 feet long cast on-site and lifted into place using an improvised high-wire crane strung be-tween temporary steel pylons.

The arches measure more than 1,000 feet across. In the photo above, the structure looks like a traditional suspension bridge. But once the arches were complete, the suspending cables on each side were removed. Extra vertical columns were then installed on the arches to carry the road. The bridge has become known as the Hoover Dam bypass, although it is offi-cially called the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, after a former governor of Nevada and an American Football player from Arizo-na who joined the US Army after the 9/11 attack and was killed in Af-ghanistan.

The completed bridge as seen from Hoover Dam


While the Smith Center is a tremendous tribute to the dam, the alliance between the modernism of the engineering and architecture of the Hoover Dam renders it a coherent and cohesive structure of unusual and inimitable beauty. Because of Kaufmann's design, the engineering feat is appropri-ately reflected in the magnificence of the facade. Indeed, as an icon of modernism, the Hoover Dam helped to usher in a new era. The Great Beauty Herself:

For Further Reading: Hoover Dam: An American Adventure by Joseph E. Stevens; published Sep-tember 15, 1990 by University of Oklahoma Press.

About the Author Barbara Billauer Bailey, a retired lawyer is the author of Baronial Bedrooms, The Kama Sutra of Grand Design. She can be reached

at [email protected]


Expo Special Exhibit

Greetings From Washington:

Postcards 1910-1960 The following pages show a few of the more than 100 postcards included in the Art Deco Society of Washington’s special exhibit of historic postcards from Washington, D.C. that will be displayed at the Exposition of 20th Cen-tury Decorative Arts, June 2-3, 2012. The exhibit consists of 11 x 17 prints of the original postcards together with the narrative on the address side of the card. The prints will be available for sale following the Expo. Many of the buildings were demolished years ago. Others still exist, but are seen in their original state. For example, the original interiors of Union Sta-tion are shown with the expansive waiting room and train concourse.

Among the ―facts‖ gleaned from the backs of the cards:

The Red Cross memorial was built at a cost of $800,000 made possible

through an appropriation of $400,000 and donation from four citizens totaling $400,000.


The New National Museum on the Mall is larger than any other Gov-

ernment building except the Capitol.

The statue of Freedom on the Capitol dome towers some 307 feet

above the esplanade.

George Washington laid the cornerstone for the Capitol in 1793.

The Masonic Temple was erected at a cost of $500,000.


The State, War, and Navy building with a frontage of 342 feet on

Pennsylvania Avenue has two miles of marble halls.

The Connecticut Avenue bridge is the largest concrete bridge in the

world.

The Lincoln Memorial is surrounded by 36 columns, one for each of the

36 states at the time of Lincoln’s death.

The Hotel Annapolis offered rooms from $2.


The Library of Congress was completed in 1897 at a cost of over

$600,000.

National Airport was built at a cost of $15,000,000.

The U.S. Treasury building was built at a cost of $6,000,000.

The Pension Building (now the National Building Museum) was the larg-

est brick building in the world at the time it was constructed.


18,000 people gathered in the Pension Building’s court for inaugural

balls.

Washington Auditorium, at 19th, E, and New York Aves. NW had a

seating capacity of 6,000 and cost $850,000.

The train concourse at Union Station has standing room for 50,000

people in its vast area.

Top of the Park Room, one of the most fabulous rooms in America.

Sightseeing Fare on the Sister Ship of the Spirit of St. Louis was 5

cents.

The Red Room Methodist Dining Room offered 50 cent lunches.

Many hotels offered a radio in every room.


Advertisement for Armstrong Aluminum featuring a floor design by Lurelle Guild for a Kensington showroom.

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