Joel W. Solomon Federal Building
Designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon—the firm that completed the Empire State Building two years earlier—this 1933 federal courthouse at 900 Georgia Avenue in Chattanooga brings the same Art Deco and Art Moderne vocabulary to the Tennessee River city that the Midtown Manhattan tower applied to the New York skyline, in a civic-scale expression appropriate to the federal government’s Depression-era building program in the American South.
At a glance
The Joel W. Solomon Federal Building and United States Courthouse at 900 Georgia Avenue in Chattanooga, Tennessee was built in 1932–1933, designed by the New York firm of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon in collaboration with Chattanooga architect Reuben Harrison Hunt. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 29, 1980 (NRHP ref. 80003827), it is an example of Art Deco and Art Moderne styling described by Wikipedia as a combination of “Art Deco” and “Stripped Classicism.” The building’s interior preserves significant original Art Deco character documented in Library of Congress HABS/HAER survey photographs: a postal carrier bust sculpture, elaborately detailed stairways, and decorated hallways that represent one of the most complete Depression-era federal interior environments in Tennessee. The building was later named for Joel W. Solomon, administrator of the General Services Administration in the Carter administration and a leading figure in Chattanooga civic life.
Key facts
- Built: 1932–1933
- Architects: Shreve, Lamb and Harmon (New York); Reuben Harrison Hunt (Chattanooga, associate architect)
- Style: Art Deco / Art Moderne / Stripped Classicism
- Address: 900 Georgia Avenue, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37402
- NRHP: ref. 80003827, listed 29 February 1980
- Notable: Design by the Empire State Building firm; documented postal carrier bust sculpture and original Art Deco interior ornament
- Name: Named for Joel W. Solomon (1929–1986), Carter-era GSA administrator
History
Shreve, Lamb and Harmon is the New York architectural firm best known for completing the Empire State Building in 1931 — the world’s tallest building for forty years — and for a series of major Art Deco commercial and civic buildings in New York and across the country in the early 1930s. William Lamb was the primary designer of the Empire State Building, and the firm’s 1932–1933 commission for the Chattanooga federal courthouse came in the immediate aftermath of that project, bringing the same design vocabulary to a government civic program in the South.
Reuben Harrison Hunt (1862–1937) was Chattanooga’s most prolific architect, responsible for hundreds of buildings across the region from the 1880s through the 1930s. His role as associate architect on the federal courthouse commission connected the New York firm’s Art Deco modernism to the local architectural tradition and the practical knowledge of regional building conditions. The collaboration produced a building that successfully translates the federal government’s Depression-era civic architecture into the Tennessee context.
Chattanooga in 1933 was in the midst of its transformation by the Tennessee Valley Authority, established the same year, which would electrify the Tennessee Valley and position Chattanooga as a center of the regional industrialization that the TVA enabled. The federal courthouse, completed the same year the TVA was created, represents the federal government’s civic presence in a city that was simultaneously being transformed by the largest peacetime public works project in American history. The building was renamed in honor of Joel W. Solomon (1929–1986), a Chattanooga native who served as Administrator of the General Services Administration under President Carter.
What you see
The Joel W. Solomon Federal Building’s exterior presents the Art Deco/Stripped Classicism synthesis characteristic of Depression-era federal construction: the formal vertical organization of classical civic architecture with the geometric ornamental vocabulary of Art Deco applied at the entrance surrounds, window spandrels, and cornice. The limestone facade and the building’s civic scale on Georgia Avenue announce the federal government’s institutional presence in Chattanooga’s civic landscape.
The interior’s Art Deco character is documented in extraordinary detail in Library of Congress HABS/HAER survey photographs that capture the original ornamental program: a bust of a postal carrier executed in the round ornamental tradition of the Art Deco period, stairways with period ironwork and terrazzo, and hallways whose proportions and surface treatment reflect the original design intent. The decorative program represents the federal government’s investment in ornamental quality that characterized the best New Deal civic buildings, and its survival into the present day is architecturally exceptional.
Practical information
- Status: Active federal courthouse and government building; exterior freely viewable
- Interior access: Federal building public areas accessible during business hours; security screening required
- Photography: Exterior from Georgia Avenue sidewalk freely permitted
- Time needed: 15–20 minutes exterior; Chattanooga’s Tennessee Aquarium waterfront is 0.5 miles north
Getting there
Chattanooga, Tennessee is at the junction of I-24 and I-75, 115 miles southeast of Nashville and 120 miles northwest of Atlanta. Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA) is 6 miles east. The federal courthouse is at 900 Georgia Avenue in central Chattanooga, 0.5 miles south of the Tennessee Aquarium on the riverfront. Parking is available in nearby city lots; the Chattanooga Choo Choo historic terminal hotel is 0.4 miles south on Market Street.
Nearby
- Tennessee Aquarium — 0.5 miles north on the Tennessee River waterfront; one of the largest freshwater aquariums in the world, housed in a 1992 postmodern building; anchor of the city’s Tennessee River revitalization
- Chattanooga Choo Choo — 0.4 miles south; Terminal Station (1909, Don Barber, Beaux-Arts), now a hotel and entertainment complex; the historic station that inspired the 1941 Glenn Miller song
- Hunter Museum of American Art — 0.7 miles north on the river bluff; collection of American art from colonial period to present in a 1904 Classical Revival house and 1975 and 2005 additions
- Lookout Mountain — 5 miles southwest; Civil War Battlefield (Battle Above the Clouds, 1863) with Rock City Gardens and the site of the southernmost engagement of the Atlanta Campaign
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Joel W. Solomon Federal Building and United States Courthouse” — primary narrative source
- National Register of Historic Places, ref. 80003827 (29 February 1980)
- Library of Congress HABS/HAER documentation photographs, LCCN2014630076 (Public Domain)
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