Historic buildings, Ann Arbor, Michigan / by Marjorie Reade and Susan Wineberg.

Foreword

BEAUX ARTS CLASSIC (1900-30)
The Beaux Arts 220 N. Main St.
Classic style represented a new sense
of formal order. By
the end of the
nineteenth century,
the romantic
attachment to picturesque effects L
was waning. Architects developed a
renewed interest in
classical simplicity, symmetry, and well proportioned restraint. The name Beaux
Arts Classic comes from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the prestigious center
of architectural education at the time. The style was by no means universally
popular. It was one of several styles embraced in this period, collectively
described as eclectic, meaning that they looked to history for inspiration. Beaux
Arts Classic, an extreme reaction to the frenzied concoctions of the Victorian
age, was best adapted to commercial and institutional structures of great size and
solemn function. Beaux Arts Classic buildings possess formal symmetry, rectilinear walls and details, strong horizontal exterior lines, and elaborately decorative
detail on plain backgrounds. Roof forms are submerged behind facades.
ART DECO (1910-40) 106 N. Fourth Avenue
The 1920s represented a period of optimism and
growth following "the war to end wars." Technological progress, given momentum by war,
was beginning to reach the consumer. A spirit of
modernity prevailed; in architecture this spirit J"
rejected the historicism of previous designs.
The Exposition des Arts Decoratifs held in Paris
in 1925 supplied both the impetus for a new
approach to design and the name which
describes it. Art Deco is also known as"Modernistic."

RICHARD NEUMANN

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