Alfred I. DuPont Building

The Alfred I. DuPont Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Marsh and Saxelbye , and built between 1937 and 1939, for a reported $2.50 million dollars, in Miami, FL.

Its precise street address is 169 East Flagler Street, Miami, FL. You can also find it on the map here.

The Alfred I. DuPont Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Miami and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the Alfred I. DuPont Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on November 21^st 1988.

Marsh and Saxelbye was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

The Alfred I. DuPont Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Alfred I. DuPont Building was completed in 1939 during the last stretch of waht's officially considered to be the duration of the Art Deco movement. As a late-commer of the Art Deco movement and reflects the mature and refined characteristics of the style.

The Alfred I. DuPont Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a base made of Alabama black granite surrounding the first level. Above the base, we find a repeating window pattern, which by playing with the color contrast between the green-tinted spandrels and mullions, and the light color of the facade's limestone-clad, emphasizes the height of the structure. The building is topped by an articulated line of setbacks.

The main entrances are located in the center of its two main facades and consist of double glass doors with brass frames and bars at the top of the entrance.

Other materials found at the Alfred I. DuPont Building include, brass, found in the bas-relief decorations of the elevator doors and general ornamental details, and marble, used for covering walls and columns, floors and balustrades.