Renovating lobby

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I am currently looking at renovation a lobby to a building built in the 1920's. The hallway tile is white / black honeycomb with floral designed molding, rounded wall features, lobby tile is mauve/grey and black marble accents on stairwell.

Any ideas on where I can get the appropriate look back to it? lighting fixture? Lobby furniture?

Thank you.

LUis

-- luis g. warner (lwarner@gwu.edu), April 17, 2003

Answers

Hi Luis

If you're in a major city--or near one--the thing to do is head to your local library and look for old bound volumes of Architectural Record amd American Architect from the period. High-rise apartment houses were often featured in these magazines, and you'll find a ton of pictures of appropriate lobby treatments. At any rate, research is essential if you want to get a correct look and avoid a cartoonish pastiche of the style. I've seen perfectly handsome spaces that could have been elegant and restrained, but which had been so overdone they looked like the sets from "Batman" which is not what you want.

Once you narrowed thngs down to a particular treatment, then you can go on a search for sources. But the stylized florals and graceful metalwork that came out of the 1925 Paris exposition are totally different than the hard-edged spiky Modernistic styles that became popular in the late 2Os. So chances are that you'll have different sources for the different styles.

Once you get a look decided on, come back for color suggestions. Each sub-style had its own characteristic palette.

Regards, Magnaverde.

-- magnaverde (magnaverde@magnaverde.com), April 17, 2003.


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