Eastern Columbia Building, Los Angeles (California)

The renowned Eastern Columbia Building, or otherwise Eastern Columbia Lofts, shapes a magnificent sample of Art Deco architecture and lies on South Broadway within the Broadway Theatre District and the Historic Core in Downtown Los Angeles, California.

The thirteen-storey edifice was designed by Claud Beelman and was completed within just nine months in September 1930 as the headquarters of the Eastern-Columbia Department Store, crowned by a decorative four-side clock tower to a total height of 80m (264ft).

It was built of steel-reinforced concrete and coated with glossy turquoise terracotta tiles trimmed with blue and gold that along with its prominent clock tower help stand out for miles whilst its façade is adorned with chevrons, zigzags, sunburst patterns and other motifs.

Among others, it has featured in films such as ‘Predator 2’ and ’12:01 PM” as well as the pilot episode of the eminent TV series ‘Moonlighting’ starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis

Fisher Building, Detroit (Michigan)

The Fisher Building, designated a national historic landmark in 1989, is an eye-catching 30-storey scyscraper located on West Grand Boulevard at the heart of the New Center in Detroit, Michigan.

The edifice was designed and built in Art Deco style by architect Albert Kahn, completed in 1928, on account of the Fisher family and was clad in various types of marble, granite and limestone while its hipped roof was originally laid with gold leaf tiles.

Traffic inside the building is served by a a good 21 elevators as it reaches 130m (428ft) high, a slightly higher 135m (444ft) with its antenna on top, while it accommodated three fine art galleries highlighted by the Gertrude Kasle Gallery in the 1960s through to the 1980s.

The original plan aimed for a complex of three towers with two 30-storey buildings standing either side of a central 60-storey tower but the Great Depression dictated a dramatic scale-down to a single tower in the end.

Finally, the Detroit landmark houses Fisher Theatre, among the cities oldest theatre venues, that was originally fashioned in the Mayan Revival style and could entertain roughly 3500 people but a substantial overhaul saw capacity tail off to about 2090 seats nowadays.

Pythian Temple, New York City

The eye-catching Egyptian Revival Art-Deco styled Pythian Temple, built in 1927, lies on West 70th Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway in the neighbourhood of Lincoln Square, Upper West Side in Manhattan (New York).

It was designed by noted Thomas W. Lamb, specialised in theatres, and served as a meeting place, or ‘castle’ in their quarters, for the 120 Pythian Lodges of the order of the Knights of Pythias in New York City.

The secret society was founded in 1864 by Justus H. Rathbone inspired, as regards the name, by a play titled ‘Damon and Pythias’ by Irish poet John Banim and numbered a good 2000 lodges in the US and worldwide as well as a membership over 50000-strong even early this century.

The structure contained no less than 13 lodge rooms and an auditorium equipped with Broadway standard facilities for the society’s pageants as well as a gym and a bowling alley while Assyrian-esque heads adorned the ground floor colonnade and the middle section featured four Pharaonic seated figures reminiscent of those of Ramses II at Abu Simbel.

Nevertheless, the popularity of the society slipped from the early 1940s on, counting near a million members in the early 1920s, so they gradually gave way in the building to Decca Records who set up a music recording studio that saw Bill Haley & the Comets record their renowned track “Rock around the Clock” in 1954 among others.

In 1958, the New York Institute of Technology acquired the premises as their main campus while Decca’s recording studio remained employed into the 1960s and today the edifice shapes a luxury condominium building called simply ‘the Pythian.’

Niagara Mohawk Building

The Niagara Mohawk Building, built in 1932, shapes a chef d’oeuvre of art deco architecture lying on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse, Onondaga County in central west New York State.

It was designed by local architect Melvin L. King in consultation with Buffalo firm Bley and Lyman.

The edifice served as the headquarters of the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, US’s largest electric utility company at the time, which has been acquired by the National Grid PLC since.