North Dakota Republican Defends Modernism: Can the Apocalypse be Far Behind?

photograph: Bobak Ha'Eri, (click images for larger view)

According to an Associated Press report, it all began with a gibe from a Minnesota legislator, calling the State Capitol building in Bismarck, North Dakota "embarrassing . .  . State Farm Insurance called.  They want their building back."  It resulted in North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple shooting back that his state's capital was "one of the most pleasing Capitol buildings in the United States, and I have seen several of them myself."

Not only is the North Dakota capitol modernist, it's a bit of Chicago on the Missouri, a 241-foot-, 8-inch tall tower designed by Holabird & Root to replace the previous building, completed in 1884, which burned to the ground in 1930.

Image: North Dakota Historical Society

In 1931, the state legislature appropriated $2,000,000 for a new building, a spartan amount compared to recent Capitol structures in Louisiana ($4,000,000), and Nebraska ($10,000,000).  "Domed pseudo-Renaissance state capitols are sinking low on the Western horizon," said architect F.A. Gutheim, and in Bismarck, Holabird & Root, working with two leading North Dakota architects, Joseph Bell de Remer and William F. Kurke, came up with an undeniably spartan profile, made even more so when much of the detailing Holabird & Root used in their Chicago skyscrapers was deleted as "unneccessary adornments," moving the design away from Art Deco to something more in line with the emerging International Style.  Because North Dakota was lacking in quarries, the structure used Bedford limestone from Indiana and Black Wisconsin granite for the cladding,  gray-white Tennessee marble for flooring, and polished travertine from Montana for the walls.

In the depths of depression, keeping costs low was primary.  Half of the 320 acres of the Capitol grounds were sold off to raise funds.When workers making 30 cents an hour struck to get 50, the construction site was placed under martial law.  After all was said and done, when the new building opened in 1934, it came in under budget, with an official completion cost of $1,984,488.26. Which is only a little more than the estimated $1,952.490 (and no cents) required to reverse the ravages of time on the building's envelope, as quoted in a 2010 report prepared with the assistance of Wiss, Janney, Elstner.

Still, the final work is striking and gracious, with bronze sculpture by Edgar Miller "representing the Indian, Hunter, Trapper, Farmer, Miner, and the Mothers of the State", and a light-filled, 342-foot-long, 42-foot high memorial hall with striking Art Deco chandeliers providing views of the city, the Missouri, and the distant bluffs.

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North Dakota Historical Society

The legislative chambers are semi-circular, paneled in chestnut and oak, with curving stripes of lighting in the ceiling.

This ;travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Bismarck Day 1

Governor Dalrymple, I'm with you.

Harry Weese, How Chicago Are You?, An Evening with Louis Sullivan, Planning and the Two Mayor Daley's: The May Architectural Calendar Rampages on!

Okay, so you're collapsed in your easy chair, exhausted from running the gauntlet of thirty-plus screenings and panels in this past weekend's Architecture and Design, plus a couple dozen other events so far in May.

Well, we're . . . . just  . . . . beginning!

Even with the Memorial Day holiday, there are still over 30 great events still to come in the
May Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, beginning with the final two festival screenings at the Siskel on Monday, covering Norman Foster and Aaron Betsky.

The big event of the month is Saturday's day-long symposium, Harry Weese Reconsidered, at CAF, who which, as today, there are still tickets. (Sunday's bus tour of Weese's Chicago's buildings with Bob Bruegmann is sold out.).  On Friday the 13th, Ward Miller will sign copies of the great new book, The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan at a benefit for Preservation Chicago at Sullivan's last commission, the Krause Music Store, now Studio V. Design.

This Tuesday the 10th, the Graham will sponsor a panel discussion, How Chicago Are You?, pondering "the role of place in the production of creative works", with such luminaries as Jeanne Gang, Dan Wheeler, Geoff Goldberg and Robert Somol, among others, on the panel, Paul Preissner moderating.  This Wednesday at CAF lunchtime, Laurence Okrent discusses his new book, Chicago from the Sky: A Region Transformed, 1985-2010,  while on Thursday the 12th at the Art Institute, John Camp will lecture on The Agora Excavations and the Archaeology of Democracy, while Friends of Downtown will present their Best of Downtown Awards at the Haymarket Pub & Brewery.

Want more?  There's this year's edition of CANstruction, Jonathan Muecke at the Graham, Tim Witman on Henry Hobbs Richardson in the Landscape, at the Glessner House, Elisabeth Logman on the K-Town Historic District in North Lawndale for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center.

Next Thursday, the 19th, the Harry Chaddick Institute will sponsor another blue-ribbon panel including Miles Berger, Ruben Hedlund and others on Plans, Projects and Priorities: The Planning Legacy of the Two Mayor Daleys, on Monday the 23rd, the Häfele America Chicago Showroom co-sponsors with AISC a sessions on Innovations in Steel, while on Wednesday 25th, lunchtime at CAF, Serhii Chrucky discusses Popular Modernism: Chicago's Four-Plus-One.

On Thursday the 26th, Mathew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation lectures at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, in conjunction with its great current exhibition, Public Works.  There's also a new exhibition at ArchiTech Gallery featuring some the early, marketing related work of Edgar Miller,  The Changing Room continues at the Extension Gallery, as does Lee Bey's Chicago Then and Now, at the Water Tower Gallery.

Those are just some of the highlights, and we haven't even gotten to the Festival of the Architecture Book yet.  Check out great shows and over thirty events still to come on the May 2011 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.