The Charleston Municipal Auditorium is a monolithic concrete and steel structure of
massive proportions situated in the southwestern section of Charleston, West Virginia's
central business district. It is an excellent representation of the Art Deco architectural
style in a public building, and one of the finest extant examples in the greater Charleston
area. The major decorated facade is curvilinear and oriented towards the intersection of
Virginia and Truslow Streets. This great curve is representative of Art Deco innovation which broke with, yet reflected in part, the revivist tradition in architectural style.
Revivalist designs (Neo-Gothic, Neo-Classicism, etc.) had been introduced to counter the eclecticism spawned in the Victorian era.
Professor JoEllen Kerr of the Carleton Varney Department of Interior Decoration at the University of Charleston (West Virginia) notes that Art Deco was a prominent art style of the early twentieth century that reached its peak in the United States in the 1920s-30s. Art Deco, variously called Modeme or Modernistic, was a style of decoration applied to
jewelry, clothing, fiimiture, crafts, and buildings. Based on modem materials, repetitive geometric patterns, low relief surface decoration, and highly stylized and classical motifs, it often contained faceted panels, elongated shapes, bold lines, and geometric patterns of Machine Age imagery.
The Art Deco style incorporated bold materials and designs that impressed the eye and represented speed in motion, embodied fantasy, and responded to the modernization of society. It was simple in design, utilitarian in fimction, and typically represented as a decorative veneer or skin that lent itself nicely to architecture through modem building materials like concrete and steel. Some well-known national examples of Art Deco buildings include the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and a number of hotels and other commercial properties in Miami Beach, Florida. Art Deco became a popular revival style in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. With one of the nation's largest Art Deco historic districts, Miami Beach celebrates its outstanding heritage with an Art Deco weekend each January.
True to its characteristic Art Deco design, the Charleston Municipal Auditorium consists of modem steel joist constmction and a steel frame resting on concrete piles. It is surrounded by a watertight subterranean retaining wall, concrete floors and roof, metal lath and plaster ceilings, concrete and cinder block brick-faced curtain walls, and a stylistic concrete facade. Project architect Alphonso F. Wysong of Charleston described the building style as "Conservative Modem," an appropriate term since its classical architectural elements are treated in a modem, shorthand manner that substitutes simple piers for elaborate columns and incorporates simple geometric shapes.
The curved facade is interrupted by three stair tower blocks. A center block dominates the front and incorporates the grand central stair. It rises to nearly the full height of the auditoriumandisthebuilding'smostprominentphysicalfeature. Twosmallerblocksat the southeast and southwest comers are about half the height and bulk of the central unit, giving enhanced importance to the verticality of the main block and the symmetry of the whole. Representative architectural elements prominently displayed on the front facade include many classic angular and rounded geometric design elements of the Art Deco form. At ground level, the facade is pierced by six entrances-four on the front (south) elevation and one at each of the side (east and west) elevations, and two box offices with exterior ticket windows.
Enveloping the front and wrapping around the east and west sides, the molded concrete facade encompasses approximately one-third of the exterior space. In keeping with the building's symmetry and consonance, many of the exterior elements echo the verticality of its Art Deco design. These include a series of eight (four on each side of the center tower) vertical, angular buttressed steel members covered in concrete and extending from ground level to just below the cornice line. Theyreplacecolumnsfoundinmoreclassic designs and tie into concrete piles to provide structural stability for the massive face wall.-
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