Art Deco Delights: The Hills Building

 

 Syracuse, NY. Hills Building, seen from southeast.  Melvin King, arch., 1928.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

 Syracuse, NY. Hills Building, south facade.  Melvin King, arch., 1928.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Syracuse, NY. Hills Building, seen from southeast.  Melvin King, arch., 1928.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Art Deco Delights: The Hills Building
by Samuel D. Gruber

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Art Deco New York Telephone Building on East Fayette Street, built in 1928 overlooking Fayette Park.  Another Art Deco Tower, the Hills Building, went up the same year just a block away, on the northeast corner of East Fayette and Montgomery Streets.  The sleek soaring corner tower, designed by Melvin King, connects with its new Art Deco neighbor in form and height, but it also nods to the historicist architecture of Montgomery Street, especially the rich Gothic Revival cathedrals.  In the Hills Building, King emphasized its verticality with uninterrupted rising pilasters that create an almost Gothic Deco, and he included Gothic-like detailing the ground floor retail facades, in the high-up gargoyle that extends toward the Montgomery-East Fayette intersection, and in the deocrative application of cast stone (?) shields above the second floor (carrying images of the Zodiac) and at the very top of the tower. 

Syracuse, NY. Hills Building, 217 Montgomery Street.  Melvin King, arch., 1928.  Detail of zodiac signs on shields above second floor.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

 

 Syracuse, NY. Hills Building, East Fayette St. facade, ground level.  Melvin King, arch., 1928.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

 

Syracuse, NY. Hills Building, Montgomery St. facade, ground level with main entrance.  Melvin King, arch., 1928.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2007

The Hills Building is named after the local real estate magnate Clarance A. Hills.  The building is one of several designed by Melvin King in this period where he and his firm (the successor form to Archimedes Russell, with whom King worked and made partner in 1906) switched from the classical style to the popular and more economical Art Deco.  King almost certainly designed the little First Trust & Deposit Wolf Street Office on the north side, the first Art Deco bank building in Syracuse, and he would soon collaborate on the Niagara Mohawk Building
 

Other Art Deco Delights:

Grant Middle School

Former First Trust & Deposit Wolf Street Office  

The New York Telephone Building