On Architecture and Industry: Lou Linden Interview Excerpt

On Architecture and Industry: Lou Linden Interview Excerpt

Excerpt from an oral history interview with Louis Linden. The interview was conducted in Baltimore, Maryland on March 19, 2013.

Aiden Faust

Station North Oral History Collection

University of Baltimore Special Collections & Archives

audio/mp3

Two minutes and forty seconds

LL: This is the last generation of industrial buildings to be ornamented. When you leave, we’ll go outside and you can look up. There are these great Romanesque arches. There are carved faces with little carved lions and clowns and shit. And the whole two-block long factory complex was all built at the same time. And it’s all ornamented in the same fashion. And that went away immediately after that.

This portion over here—this addition to the Copy Cat Building—was built in 1906. And if you look at it, that ornamentation is gone completely. It’s totally utilitarian. This is kind of the end of the 19^th century, when your industrialists demonstrated their power and their sophistication by decorating. Even the factories are decorated.

And the brick work, it’s exquisite brick work, it’s just really quite remarkable. It really is one of the last pure brick piles. You know, basically this is a hollow shell. The floors are supported with cast-iron posts that hold those steel I-beams. But structurally, it’s all masonry. There’s no structural steel in these walls at all. And there is no pre-cast concrete. Interestingly, the Copy Cat Building has a lot of cast concrete floors. This building does not. And I’m not at all sure why.

But this really is, I think of the whole complex, far and away the most attractive building. And, indeed, it is really the most manageable in terms of its size. It’s only about 40,000 square feet, the whole building. And that makes it possible for a small number of impecunious artists to own it and keep it going.

Aiden Faust

Lou Linden

Baltimore, Maryland