Niagara Mohawk Building

Syracuse houses one of the great examples of Art Deco in architectural design. Art Deco was a stray away from the natural organic forms of the Art Nouveau movement, heading towards a more geometric, modern, and linear style. The Niagara Mohawk building exemplifies Art Deco like no other building in the city. Syracuse, an industrial city in the early to mid-1900s, required a lot of electricity. Many other cites used industrialization as an opportunity to build Art Deco buildings as well, due to their style and use of new technologies. Syracuse was a great place to erect a building housing the Niagara Mohawk Electric Company’s headquarters. This pyramid shaped building stands at seven stories. A new (and lasting) innovation at this time was to use steel framed construction to build these large structures. This technology was employed when building the Niagara Mohawk. At about the sixth story in the center of the building is a winged figurine sculpted out of metal. This is one of the most recognizable features of the Niagara Mohawk Building. The building is made primarily of grey brick, black glass, and decorated with metal. The ornamentation is purely decorative, true to the movement. The metal strips used to decorate the building, along with some detailing in the grey brick run vertically, emphasizing the verticality of the building. Some of the metal pieces are meant to represent waterfalls since that is what generates a large part of Niagara Mohawk’s electric power. The base of the Niagara Mohawk Building is crowned with horizontal metal strips. These, along with v-shaped ornamentation show the importance of geometry in the Art Deco movement. Some of the most distinct features of the building are only showcased at night. The Niagara Mohawk building is lit in a new and innovative way. Vertical strips of light once again emphasize the buildings shape and geometry in the same way at the metal strips, but in a new way. Using new technologies is an important