If you’re on the prowl for some of the best modernist architecture in the United States, your mind might jump to Frank Lloyd Wright houses in and around Chicago, or the skyscrapers of New York.
But your best bet is to make a pilgrimage to Columbus, Indiana, the small midwestern town that plays host to dozens of modernist gems by some of the profession’s biggest names, from Eero Saarinen to I. M. Pei.
How did a town of 46,000 come to be known as a mecca of modernist architecture? Much of this reputation is thanks to industrialist Joseph Irwin Miller, the longtime head of the Columbus-based Cummins Engine Company. Miller commissioned extraordinary buildings in hopes of luring more talent to the region. That’s how buildings across Columbus, from banks to schools, became fascinating examples of U.S. architectural history, in a city that continues to carry a torch for modernist design today.
Here’s a list of 17 buildings that best represent Columbus’s modernism footprint, from the middle of the twentieth century to today.
Read More
Loading comments...