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Architectural Significance of the Building
The 1967 Home Federal Savings and Loan Building has exceptional architectural significance as a rare surviving and outstanding example of a small-scale, Modernist office building from the postwar period in downtown Charlotte (Woodard and Wyatt 2000). Now surrounded by high-rise bank towers in the center city, the seven-story Home Federal Savings and Loan Building is a locally unusual expression of the Modern Movement that shaped the city's commercial and institutional architecture between the 1940s and 1960s. Modernism engendered abstract sculptural forms that expressed function while employing new materials and technology. It reflected a postwar optimism that industrialization was the answer to contemporary needs and aspirations. While the architecture of the Home Federal Savings and Loan Building has these traits, it also stands in sharp contrast to the rectangular, steel-and-glass designs that marked the city's Modernist skyscrapers. The building's exposed, rough-surfaced concrete walls, projecting sunshades/balconies, and connection to the landscape display Japanese-inspired elements of design unusual for downtown Charlotte.
Home Federal Savings and Loan Building is a seven-story, concrete and glass office building located on South Tryon Street in the heart of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. The building's Modernist influence is demonstrated in its modern materials, abstract sculptural form, and clear expressions of function and structure. The tall, recessed first story supported by concrete columns defines the lobby and the mezzanine, which originally contained the savings bank offices. The upper floors have bronzed, aluminum-frame ribbon windows expressed as sheep-shadowed penetrations of the façade. The windows are recessed between distinctive, horizontal concrete sunshades/balconies that designate the floors and emphasize the building's concrete construction.
While the simplicity and elegance of the design is in keeping with Modernism, it is also evocative of traditional timber architecture of Japan. Asian architect, Kenzo Tange, first fused traditional Japanese prototypes with Modernism in a series of Japanese government buildings, notably the Kagawa Prefecture (1955-1959) in Takamatsu. The façade's textured concrete, sunshades, and exposed blocks of concrete that evoke tenon construction are all key elements of the Home Federal's design as well. Moreover, like Tange's Japanese Modern work, the Home Federal Building is raised on columns that allow a clear connection with the landscape. The savings bank's long, aggregate-stone planter and distinctive water garden with a small wooden arched bridge, a fountain, and a planter, are all consistent with traditional Japanese design (Kahn 2001: 210-212).
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