Goodnight Raleigh - a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night

Education Building, Raleigh, N.C.

Education Bldg_1950_front_web

This week Flashback Friday picks up our postcard tour of the state government buildings encircling Capitol Square. We began our tour nearly a year ago, and have visited the Justice Building, and the former NC Supreme Court and Revenue buildings thus far. Our fourth stop is the former Education Building on Edenton Street.

Education Bldg_1950_back_web

This week’s featured postcard is a photo-retouched and color-tinted ‘linen’ type, popular from the 1930s into the 1950s.

The city of Raleigh is the capital of North Carolina. It has a unique distinction among the other State Capitals of having been planned and established on land bought by the State as a location of its seat of government. It is known as the city of Oaks, is an interesting, beautiful and progressive place in which to visit or live.

I couldn’t agree more!

Feb. 14, 1950
This bldg. looks something like St. Catherine’s.
The Strands

I have yet to figure out what the ‘St. Catherine’s’ reference is. It may have been a Catholic school or hospital in Muskegon, MI.

Ten years later, “Mom” mailed this photochrome postcard depicting the Education Building back home to family in Maine. ‘Chromes,’ with their realistic photographic images, began to emerge in the late 1950s as the preferred postcard among the traveling public.

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North Carolina State Government. Building of Education — As seen from Capitol grounds. Raleigh, N.C.

Education Bldg_1960_back_web

Wed Eve  Dear Lynda & Joe
It is very warm here. Nana says that she has never seen it as warm this time of year. She is doing fine so far but we try to make short days for her. Not much like we travel.
Home soon.
Love to all — “Mom”

Now here’s a coincidence for you: The sender of this postcard, “Mom,” also mailed a similar photochrome card depicting a Raleigh government building back home to friends in Maine — the same handwriting, the same ‘Wed Eve’ January 14, 1960, the same petroleum industry commemorative stamp, and likewise the same Fayetteville postmark. In that card, the Justice Building, which happened to be our first post on this Capitol Square tour, “Ruth,”  aka “Mom,” spoke of “Mother,” aka “Nana,” and raved about her friend’s tuna sandwiches!

Building the Education Building

The Education Building was designed in 1937 by the noted Winston-Salem based architectural firm of Northup and O’Brien in a modernized neo-classical style popular for government-sponsored public architecture during the Depression era.

The most notable features of the building are the stylized architectural details of the facade and entrance doors, and the art deco influences evident in the sumptuous lobby.

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The facade of the Education Building features a tripartite of identical and heavily stylized art deco front doors.

State Archives of North Carolina photo

State Archives of North Carolina photo

The lobby is beautifully rendered in highly polished amber-colored marble, a sculpturally detailed copper-colored ceiling, complete with art deco stylized frosted glass light fixtures, and a boldly-patterned terrazzo floor.

On its exterior, the Education Building is a massive, five-story building sited on the corner of Edenton and Salisbury Streets. It is of steel-framed masonry construction, faced with granite. The entrance corner faces the intersection at an angle, the only such architectural expression among all the other state buildings on Capitol Square. As originally designed, the facade formed a sort of flattened V-shaped plan.

State Archives of North Carolina photo

State Archives of North Carolina photo

The steel framework of the Education Building going up in 1937. Notice that the neighborhood north of Capitol Square was still largely residential at the time. Below is the corner stone.

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The Education Building was completed in 1938. It was occupied by the department of Public Education, as well as by other state agencies, including the Department of Archives and History and the ‘Hall of History,’ predecessor of today’s North Carolina Museum of History.

A massive three-sided brick addition to the rear of the original building in 1950 completed the six-sided ‘doughtnut’ shape, with courtyard, we see today. The street facade has remained unaltered since 1938.

State Archives of North Carolina photo

State Archives of North Carolina photo

This photo was taken in the late 1960s. The facade of the Education Building appears exactly the same today.

State Archives of North Carolina photo

State Archives of North Carolina photo

The facade of the Education Building makes a bold architectural statement — ‘I am state government!’

The State Archives and Museum of History moved to their own building on Jones St. in 1968. In 1994, the museum moved again to a new facility on the Bicentennial Mall, between the State Capitol and Legislative Building. The Department of Public Instruction relocated to the state government mall north of the Legislative building in the late 1990s.

The old Education Building was recently renovated and now houses offices of the Justice Department. Happily, the grand art deco lobby has been restored to its former luster and appears very much today as it did in 1938.

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The art deco styled lobby of the Education Building is resplendent with polished marble, glistening metal surfaces and buffed terrazzo. Just as in 1938, the hard surfaces of the hall reverberate with the voices and footsteps of visitors.

Art deco styled ornament embellishes the facade, as well as the interior, of the Education Building. 

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The Education Building is a part of Raleigh’s Capitol Square Historic District, as well as the National Register of Historic Places-designated Capitol Area Historic District.

In case you missed it, you can revisit the Capitol Square postcard tour from the beginning – Justice Building (1940), the former NC Supreme Court and State Library Building (1913), and former Revenue Building (1927).

 

Our Flashback Friday postcard tour this week includes representative examples of color-tinted, linen finished,  and photochrome postcard types. They were printed by E.C. Kropp Co. of Milwaukee and Tichnor Brothers of Boston.

E. C. Kropp Co. 1907-1956 
Milwaukee, WI

A publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would printed under the E.C. Kropp name.

They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their latter linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. Sold to L.L. Cook in 1956 and they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S.

Tichnor Brothers, Inc.   (1912-1987)
160 N. Washington Street, Boston and Cambridge, MA

A major publisher and printer of a wide variety of postcards types. Their view-cards were produced on a national level.

Their photochomes went under the trade name Lusterchrome. They also produced an early Tichnor Gloss series in offset lithography that was so heavily retouched they floated somewhere between being artist drawn and being a photograph. The company was sold in 1987 to Paper Majic.

“Flashback Friday” is a weekly feature of Goodnight, Raleigh! in which we showcase vintage postcards depicting our historic capital city. We hope you enjoy this week end treat!

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