State Office Building

The State Office Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed in 1929 by Arthur Peabody and built between 1930 and 1931 in Madison, WI.

Its precise street address is 1 W Wilson Street, Madison, WI. You can also find it on the map here.

The State Office Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Madison 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 State Office Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on January 28^th 1982.

The building has been restored 3 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1942, 1959 and 2013.

Arthur Peabody was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Arthur Peabody was 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 at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was state of wisconsin as the Main Developer.

The State Office Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The State Office Building was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The State Office Building uses a frame structure made of conrete 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 a gray granite masonry cladding.

Other materials found at the State Office Building include, bronce, seen in the frames, doors, and decorative details of the building's main entrance, as well as in the tall lamps from the two-story lobby, marble, used for the seats located along the lobby's entrance, and terrazo, used to create different patterns on the floors.