Walnut Room this way

Walnut Room this way
Rio.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

On the road to Aberdeen: City Hall

 Architect William Drago designed the 1912 Beaux Arts/Neoclassical City Hall in Aberdeen (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Historic Resources Inventory database).  Susan M. Enzweiler (1987, Nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places) said it:
...ranks as one of the finest early twentieth-centur city halls in Mississippi.
Aberdeen's city hall is one of eight Neoclassical or Neoclassical/Beaux Arts styled city halls constructed between 1902-1923 in Mississippi (Enzweiler).
Beaux Arts architecture was an adaptation of Neoclassical and popular in the United States from around 1902 until the 1920s.  Beaux Arts
...depended on sculptural decoration along conservative modern lines...(Klein & Fogle, 1986, Clues to American Architecture)
It included such characteristics as arched windows, classical details including balustrades, pilasters, garlands, and cartouches.

 The Aberdeen building is
...dominated by a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico.
French doors occupy each end, and the center is wooden with glass panes.  The lower half of the center doors are the original paneled door with an X-motif, but the upper panel is glass replacement.  Visible are the cartouche accenting the parapet above the portico, metal balustrades on the arched upper windows, and a semicircular stuccoed area accented by a wreath-like garland (Enzweiler).  A cartouche is an oval or oblong design with a slightly convex surface for a painted or bas relief design, and is edged with ornamental scrollwork (Ching, 1995, A Visual Dictionary of Architecture).
You can see two interior photographs at Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

2 comments:

Optimistic Existentialist said...

Great pics. I love your blog :)

Suzassippi said...

Thanks! I love road trips.