Niagara Mohawk Building

The Niagara Mohawk Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Melvin L. King and built between 1930 and 1932 in Syracuse, NY.

Niagara Mohawk Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Niagara Hudson Building.

Its precise street address is 300 Erie Boulevard West, Syracuse, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The Niagara Mohawk Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Syracuse 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 Niagara Mohawk Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on June 25^th 2010.

At the time of its completion in 1932 the Niagara Mohawk Building incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included vertical strips of light highlight the shape of the building at night.

Melvin L. King was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about Bley and Lyman.

Melvin L. King and the other architects already mentioned were in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Niagara Mohawk Building a reality:

• Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation as the Main Developer
• Makwirth Brothers Construction as the collaborating Artist

The Niagara Mohawk Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Niagara Mohawk Building was completed in 1932, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The Niagara Mohawk 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.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features mostly grey brick, with reinforced black glass known as vitrolite and steel being two other characteristic materials. The base of the Building is crowned with horizontal steel and aluminum strips. Every surface of the building is accentuated by angular geometric flourishes, while each consecutive level thins to a central tower. The metal strips used to decorate the building, along with some detailing in the grey brick run vertically, emphasizing the verticality of the building.

At the sixth-floor level, towards the center of the building, is a winged figurine sculpted out of stainless steel called Spirit of Light. As the headquarters of an electrical company, lighting elements were incorporated in the different corners and niches outside so that the facade, which are illuminated at night. Vertical light strips highlighted the shape of the building at night, a new way to illuminate a previously unused structure.

Other materials found at the Niagara Mohawk Building include, steel, used for elevator doors with stylized art motives, sleek stairway railings and interior decorations, and glass, a black color variant know as vitrolite was used on the lobby's murals, relating to various aspects of power generation. The murals are titled: Gas, Illumination, Generation and Transmission.