I spent the past weekend with Mrs Eggerhaus in the lovely burg of Des Moines, Ia. We stayed at the Downtown Marriott…which was interesting in itself as it’s a paragon of 1960’s architecture and decor. But I digress…
Across the street, east of the Marriott, is a building called the Ruan Building. The exterior is steel. Rusted, ruddy red steel. It looks awful…like a piece of Soviet architecture in the MIdwest! :rolleyes:
Are there any Des Moinihans who can fill me in on the particulars of this tower?
The Ruan Building is a pretty conventional shoe box high-rise office building. The only remarkable thing about it is that the exterior is rusted steel. It is supposed to look like that. At the time it was built (mid 1970s) it was a significant innovation. Like the green patina that forms on copper and bronze, the coat of iron oxide on the exposed steel seals the surface from further corrosion. The coating took a couple years to develop and in time will turn the building exterior a dull red, like deep terra cotta or burnt umber. Like the patina on copper and bronze the oxide coat will serve to prevent corrosion and eliminates the need to paint or wrap the building. It is a minimum maintenance thing.
Uh-oh…don’t get their backs up, Eggerhaus! They’ll beat you with a cornhusk broom and run you out of town on a rail! Or buy nonexistent band uniforms from you. One of the two.
If it’s what I think it is, it’s a trademark steel alloy called COR-TEN, although Wikipedia calls it generically “weathering steel”. The idea is that it doesn’t need to be painted periodically.
Clearly, but don’t you think it sends out a slightly odd self-image? “We’re going to build a building that will go rusty within a couple of years!”
Not that I can talk - London has plenty of ugly POS architecture.
I think it’s a great shame that modern building materials, seemingly without exception, do not weather attractively. Old brick and stone mellow wonderfully with age. Concrete just gets nasty water streaks on it and slowly turns black. Glass and metal streak and corrode. I don’t think any new building will look better as it gets older - once it’s built, that’s as good as it will ever look.
Colophon, I’m not sure just how much static I’ll put up with from someone from a country whose leading popular architectural critic is the Queen’s over aged perpetually adolescent son.
While semi-civilized rubes from an over grown stockyard town whose leading civic monument is a paved drainage ditch bordered by a fake Spanish village, may look down on their neighbors to the north, the Ruan Building is the leading example in the Mid-west (not excluding Chicago and that Missouri city with a legitimate claim to metropolitan status, St. Louis) of a rational marriage of form, function, utility and material.
If you want older mellow stone and brick buildings try the State Capitol and the refurbished commercial area running from the capitol down to the river. If you want hideous, cold and sterile fake Roman Imperial style, try the new state courts building – called in honor of the former chief justice and its builder, the Palazo Lavarato. To mock the Iowa State Fair, the best state fair in the world, is just ignorant. There are plenty of things about Des Moines to make fun of and to generally disparage, but the Ruan Building and the state fair are not properly on that list.
I’ve been there several times and had a blast. Where else can you see a butter sculpture of the Last Supper? Although having said that, the Wisconsin fair in Milwaukee, while it may not be as big - is more fun.
Bravo! As someone who has lived in central Iowa (in the City of Ames, not to be confused as being a suburb of Des Moines) for 3 years, on purpose, I can agree! Yes there are other things to make fun of in Des Moines. My favorite is a local tow truck company called Fred’s Towing. Their motto is ‘Car dead? Call Fred’
BTW Court Ave is very convenient. There’s a bail bond place right next to the hottest clubs and taverns.
