Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/154



A CAPITOL native to Oregon, interpreting the history and tradition of the state, and molding into architectural form the feeling and temper of the people, was the conception of the architects who have been commissioned to design a new capitol to replace the one destroyd by fire the night of April 25, 1935. The winners of the architectural competition, concluded May 26, were Trowbridge and Livingston and Francis Keally, associated architects of New York City. The groundwork of their effort, before they began their sketches, was a perusal of Oregon history rather than a study of the plans of other capitols. Out of this study grew the inspiration embodied in the design which won the competition.

The building design defies conventional dating, because it is not copied from a pattern; yet its originality is tempered by conformity to sound principles of mass and of line. The design springs out of the good ancestry of the Greek, with its simple rectangular form, its balance and its restraint. It departs from the Greek in absence of details, such as the cornice and decorated capitals. It breathes the modern in its effective use of flat planes and vertical lines.

The structure includes the rectangular mass which forms the body of the building, and the circular tower which rises from the center of the base, topped, not by the conventional dome, but by a low conical roof supporting a statue of heroic size, an effigy of the pioneer. The longitudinal plane is broken on the front by the projecting facade and on the rear by a shallow wing. Imposing entrance doors of the recessed entrance are surmounted by a replica of the great seal of the state. Two features give architectural accent to the whole. One is the cylinder tower as substitute for the dome, which is unique in all architectural literature. The other is the design of the columns or buttresses which emphasize the vertical. In the base these columns divide the great windows of the legislative halls. They are rectangular to conform to the general line of the structure, and are not bound by capitals at the top. These are matched by similar columns in the tower, alike without capitals, creating the illu-