Home

SA1039AV_B05F04A_010_1

Reference URL

Add tags

Comment

Save to favorites

To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or document
To embed the entire object, paste this HTML in website To link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or document
To embed this page, paste this HTML in website

American Insurance Union Citadel and Ohio State Office Building

you wish to report:

Your comment:

Your Name:

...

Title	American Insurance Union Citadel and Ohio State Office Building
Creator	Ohio Federal Writers' Project
Subject	Columbus (Ohio)--Buildings, structures, etc.--Pictorial works Municipal buildings--United States MacMorris, Leroy Daniel, 1893-1981 Leveque Tower (Columbus, Ohio) Crane, C. Howard (Charles Howard), 1885-1952 National Register of Historic Places
Time Period	1930s 1940s
Place	Columbus (Ohio) Franklin County (Ohio)
Description	This photograph shows the American Insurance Union Citadel, located at 50 West Broad Street at the corner of Front Street, was designed by architect C. Howard Crane in the Art Deco style with touches of a more modern version of the Byzantine. The 47-story tall skyscraper, designed mainly as office space, rises to an elevation of 555.5 feet, and was built to be 6 inches taller than the Washington Monument. Two 18-story wings flank the building; on the east, the 4,000 seat Keith-Albee Theater (now the Palace Theater), and on the west the 600 room Deshler-Wallick Hotel. The steel-frame building, completed in 1927 at a cost of $7,800,000, was the first building in Ohio to be erected on a caisson foundation. It was the fifth tallest building in the world for a time, and the tallest building in the city until 1974. Due to the Great Depression the American Insurance Union went bankrupt, and sold the building. The tower was purchased by John Lincoln and Leslie L. LeVeque in 1945. LeVeque was the designer of an automatic pinsetter for bowling which became known as the Columbus pinsetter. The Lincoln-LeVeque Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and in 1977, the name was officially changed to the LeVeque Tower. The building changed hands to Lennar Properties in 2004, and then again to the new owners Finsilver/Friedman Management, a Michigan based regional developer and property manager. This photograph is one of the many visual materials collected for use in the Ohio Guide. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration by executive order to create jobs for the large numbers of unemployed laborers, as well as artists, musicians, actors, and writers. The Federal Arts Program, a sector of the Works Progress Administration, included the Federal Writers’ Project, one of the primary goals of which was to complete the America Guide series, a series of guidebooks for each state which included state history, art, architecture, music, literature, and points of interest to the major cities and tours throughout the state. Work on the Ohio Guide began in 1935 with the publication of several pamphlets and brochures. The Reorganization Act of 1939 consolidated the Works Progress Administration and other agencies into the Federal Works Administration, and the Federal Writers’ Project became the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio. The final product was published in 1940 and went through several editions. The Ohio Guide Collection consists of 4,769 photographs collected for use in Ohio Guide and other publications of the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio from 1935-1939.
Date of Original	ca. 1936-1943
Collection	Ohio Guide Photographs
Source	State Archives Series 1039 AV
Submitting Institution	Ohio History Connection
Rights	Online access is provided for research purposes only. For rights and reproduction requests or more information, go to http://www.ohiohistory.org/images/information
Type	StillImage
File Name	SA1039AV_B05F04A_010
Image Height	3009
Image Width	3714
File Size	3357.633 KB
Display File Type	image/jp2
Format	picture
Date created	2018-02-22
Date modified	2018-02-22

Title	SA1039AV_B05F04A_010_1
Creator	Ohio Federal Writers' Project
Collection	Ohio Guide Photographs
Source	State Archives Series 1039 AV
Submitting Institution	Ohio History Connection
Rights	Online access is provided for research purposes only. For rights and reproduction requests or more information, go to http://www.ohiohistory.org/images/information
Type	StillImage
File Name	SA1039AV_B05F04A_010_1.tif
Image Height	3009
Image Width	3714
File Size	3357.633 KB
Display File Type	image/jp2
Format	picture
Date created	2017-03-06
Date modified	2017-03-06

American Insurance Union Citadel and Ohio State Office Building

Object Description

Description

Tags

Comments

American Insurance Union Citadel and Ohio State Office...

American Insurance Union Citadel and Ohio State Office...