“In planning the Badgerow building,” its architect wrote, “we realized we must start anew and create a free architecture.” 13 The “free architecture” he had in mind was the then-modish Art Deco, with the exterior walls arranged as alternating vertical bands of piers and windows. The ornament is cast bronze and terracotta encrusted with the usual Art Deco patterns—triangles and rows of zigzags—and accompanied by stylized plant forms. Above its entrance and along the parapet of this twelve-story skyscraper is the repeated motif of an Indian head. The building's exterior is sheathed in light-colored terracotta; within, the lobby has walls of black Belgian marble contrasted by pink Tennessee marble and patterned terrazzo floors. The architect consciously sought to play off the past and the present in his design program for the building, which included “symbols of Indian days depicting the past history of our city, and presenting the present in the free lines of action in the spandrel at the second floor—lines typical of present-day dynamic energy.” 14