You are here

Iowa » Central » Des Moines » Des Moines, South Side » Lincoln High School

Lincoln High School

-A A +A
1922–1923, Proudfoot, Bird and Rawson. Northwest corner of S.W. 9th St. and Loomis Ave.

Lincoln High is one of a series of public schools within the community that are highly successful, both in their wonderful landscaped siting and in the design of their buildings. Seen from a distance through groves of trees, the principal frontispiece of the Lincoln School conveys the romantic impression of a seventeenth-century English house. The three-arched entrance is set between two narrow turrets, each with a second-floor bay window. With the exception of small panels of brick on the first floor, this entrance piece is realized in stone, and it contrasts strongly with the long projecting brick wings on each side. These two-story wings contain a repeated pattern of wide, five-window units, each providing an almost complete glass window wall for each of the classrooms. An industrial atmosphere is avoided by the architects' having treated each upper and lower pair of these windows as a slightly projecting bay. Stone trim was used around these windows, as spare ornamentation, and for occasional finials projecting from the roof parapet.

Writing Credits

Author: 
David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,