The Wonderful World of Art Deco : The LeVeque Tower

The LeVeque Tower is located at 50 West Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally built by the rapidly growing American Insurance Union, who called it the AIU Citadel, or the Citadel. They broke ground in 1924, but they didn’t finish until 1927. Inside the building is a bronze plaque with the position of the planets at the time that the cornerstone was laid. The LeVeque Tower is five hundred fifty-five feet tall, intentionally taller than the Washington Monument, making it the tallest building in Columbus at the time (The Rhodes State Office Tower overtook it in 1973).

However, AIU’s luck changed during the Depression. The tower took up a lot of their money, and the company went bankrupt. Leslie Leveque and John Lincoln (the founder of Lincoln Insurance) bought the tower and renamed it the Lincoln-LeVeque Tower. In 1975, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Two years later, its name was changed to the LeVeque Tower. It used to function as a lighthouse for planes and cars, but now it is lit up for a other reasons. To recognize special occasions, such as Breast Cancer Awareness month, Christmas, and the like, the usual white lights are changed into colored ones. Currently, the building is being culturally revitalized and physically restored.

Its current owners are the investors from Tower Ten LLC. They are trying to turn the mostly vacant tower into a more culturally relevant building. Ideally, there would be residences at the top, offices in the middle, and a boutique hotel on the lower floors. Already, the old observation deck on the forty-fourth and forty-third floors serves as a deluxe penthouse to an anonymous renter. Earlier on, a DJ, John Fraim, used the space for living and conducting celebrity interviews.

In addition to being built at the heart of the Art Deco time period, the LeVeque Tower has all the characteristics of art deco. It has a very orderly look. The top of the building forms a zugguraut. There are a lot of icons and symbols of the building, besides the horoscope. I saw eagles (which have 25 foot wingspans), classical figures, and bronze plaques with all kinds of motifs. It’s worth noting that the plaques were made out of metal, and were done in the bas relief style. There are so many windows on the LeVeque Tower, and they are positioned in vertical lines. I did see a few eyebrows, although they weren’t as prominent feature. There are also a lot of curves, especially at the top of windows and doors.