The Round Building at Mid Century

The modern resurgence of the round building probably started at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels Belgium– Expo 58. Edward Durell Stone designed the United States Pavillon.

A few years later, in 1964 Stone also did the Beckman Auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

During the Mid 60s the round building became more common.

    LA Forum,Los Angeles, California, Charles Luckman, 1967.

      Famous Barr (now Macy's), Northwest Plaza, St. Ann, 
      Missouri, c.1965.

   Phoenix Financial Center, Phoenix, Arizona, 
   Wenceslao Sarmiento, 1964.

    Bank of Commerce, Seattle Washington, 1968.

   Western Savings at Metrocenter(now Souper Salad), 

   Phoenix, Arizona, 1974.

Busch Memorial Stadium was built from 1964-66 and then demolished in 2005. Edward Durell Stone designed the 96-arch "Crown of Arches." The stadium was a good example of the ubiquitous multi sport donut hole.

                                         

Millennium Hotel Tower I (Stouffer's 

Riverfront Inn, Regal Riverfront Hotel),

1968 St. Louis, Missouri.

  

The restaurants at the top of large round buildings revolved very slowly. You barely noticed any difference in the view. For a significant rotation between the first and second course of your over priced meal, a tower with a smaller circumference was the place to go. The revolving restaurant became the rage after the Seattle Space Needle opened 1962 for the Seattle Worlds Fair.

In the Space Needle, a complete rotation takes only 47 minutes. It is the oldest operating revolving restaurant in the world.

The slanted widows in towers gave a much better panorama to enhance the dining experience.

The Heinrich Hertz Tower, Hamburg, Germany. 1968.


Modern technology has decreased the size of the metal panels for a less obstructed view.

Eye of the Needle Restaurant (now Sky City) at the Seattle Space Needle.

Probably the most iconic mid-century round building is the Capitol Records Building (Capitol Records Tower), 1956, 

               Capitol Records Tower,Vine Street, Los Angeles 
               California, 1956.  


Several round buildings were originally Holiday Inns.

Angeleno Hotel, Los Angeles CA, 1970. Originally a Holiday Inn. The 405 Freeway is in the foreground and the Getty Museum is on the hill.

         
Raleigh NC, 1969. Originally a Holiday Inn, then a Clarion Hotel, and now it is the Holiday Inn Raleigh Downtown. 

                  
                      Syracuse, New York

                      
                      Tallahassee, Florida, c.1968

                       Holiday Inn, Long Beach CA, 1969.


Sometimes the round building had  large projecting curved forms.

 Radisson Riverfront, Covington, Kentucky, 1970. 

                    Carillon Tower, San Francisco CA, 1964

              Marina City, Chicago, Illinois, 

              Bertrand Goldberg, 1967.

Detail of round balconies at Marina City.


Probably the isolated single round building has had its day for a while. It seems to have been replaced with buildings with complex curves, unusual shapes, or attached to more conventional rectangular structures.

   IAC Building, 555 West 18th Street NYC, Frank Gehry 2007.

   Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue (behind and to the left), 2010.

Galaxy SOHO,  Beijing, China, Zaha Hadid 2009 – 2012.

                              

                                    

   Oracle Corporation, Redwood Shores CA c.? 2001.

The round building has a long track record. The yurt on the steppes of Central Asia has been used for over 3.000 years. 

A yurt in Mongolia.

Brackets and Braces in Mid Century Modernism

Fifty years ago, when I fist saw the First Missouri Bank on Olive Road in Creve Coeur MO, I thought that the decorative elements on the sides were like the Gothic Flying Buttress. 

       First Bank. 11901 Olive Boulevard, Creve
       Coeur Missouri, 1967.

People told me I was suffering from an overactive imagination. There was no internet at that time, to search for images for comparison.

A more post modern version is at a Sports Center in Alora Spain.

     Culver Federal Savings and Loan Association
     (now Chase Bank), Manhattan Beach CA, 1965.

 Washington Dulles International Airport, 

 Eero Saarinen, 1962

Saarinen was influenced by le Corbusier's brutalist Chandigarh Capitol Complex in India that was started almost a decade earlier.  

Capitol Complex, Chandigarh India, le Corbusier, c.1953-1968.

The additions to the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester Minnesota have striking similarities to Dulles International and Corbusier's Capitol Complex.

Mayo Civic Center, Rochester MN 

Brackets and braces were very common during the New Formalism style of Mid Century Modernism.

Saint Louis, Missouri

                           Kennedy Memorial, 1966, Jerusalem 

               Coachella Valley Savings and Loan Association 

               Building #2,Palm Springs CA, 1961

Open Bible Colleges, Des Moines IA

San Mateo, California

Long Beach, California

Usually the brackets are on smaller buildings. Sometime they can be on high rise towers.

          Tucson, Arizona

                  Tucson, Arizona

   Creve Coeur, Missouri. 1980

          Wake County Court House

          Raleigh NC

          1970

5775 Campus Pkwy, Hazelwood, MO 63042

Formerly Boeing 270 Building

1973

Brackets can be found in the Brutalist style of Modernism. Large brackets supporting a waffle slab can be seen at Galbraith Hall of the University of California San Diego. The waffle slab uses considerably less cement than a solid slab without losing strength. The waffle slab is solid on the top and waffled on the lower side. The edible waffle has the pattern on both sides.

Galbraith Hall, UCSD, 1964. The first library at UCSD was renovated in 2013. Layers of dated remodel work were removed to expose the building’s concrete structure, especially the beautiful waffle slab. 

There are over 30 stations in the Washington DC Metro with large waffle slabs.

U Street Station, Washington Metro, Harry Mohr Weese, 1976,

Washington, D.C.

There are several waffle slabs here at the Meramec Campus. This is another reason why I say Meramec has Brutalist features. The campus also has New Formalist features. However, there is a lot of brick work, which is not typical of either style.

                   Saint Louis Community College, Meramec 
                   Campus. Kirkwood, Missouri, c 1969,
                   Harry Mohr Weese, 

The term brutalist is derived from the French term beton brut which means unfinished cement. In French, the word brut has a much wider and different meaning than the English word brutal.  

                    pétrole brut    crude oil 
                    salaire brut    gross salary
                    sucre brut      unrefined sugar
                    produit  national brut     gross national product
                    diamants bruts      uncut diamonds, rough diamonds
                    émotion brute        raw emotion



William James Hall at Harvard University, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, and built in 1964, has the flying butress type of brace and the Brutalist feature of exposed aggregate cement.

                       William James Hall, Harvard University, 

                       Cambridge MA, Minoru Yamasaki,1964.