The skyline in the city center of Columbus would be changed forever when the ground was broken on September 23, 1924 to build the so -called Leveque Tower.
The President of the American Insurance Union (AIU), John J. Lentz, developed the idea for the tower in the city center of Columbus and directed the fraternal organization and the insurance company. At that time, AIU was at the head of the rapidly growing personal property and life insurance industry.
AIU was founded in 1894 and promoted its services for customers with medium -sized incomes. The company became one of the country's largest life insurers. The company exceeded its offices in Broad and Front Streets and prompted Lentz to choose something new in the same location.
Lentz selected the architect Howard Crane to design the building. The grounds on September 23, 1924 attracted a large number of local business people, heads of state and government and politicians.
The 47-story tower was completed in 1927, which made the first skyscraper from Aiu Citadel Columbus. With a little more than 555 feet high, the tower was specially designed to cross the height of the Washington monument, which makes it the highest building in Columbus and the fifth highest building in the world at this time.
In addition to the AIU housing construction, the building included the Palast Theater rented by the BF Keith Company with 8,500 seats. A pedestrian path combined the tower with the nearby Deshler Hotel, which expanded into the tower. The top of the building should tie Zeppelin, who at the time before the pioneer in flight (although this never actually happened).
The tower is a brick building with terracotta and offers Art Deco designs and large-scale outdoor decorations, including eagles, angels and other decorative elements. Some of these elements were removed from security concerns in the 1940s, which they could fall, but others remain.
Unfortunately, the global economic crisis struck only a few years after the construction of the tower and AIU bankrot.
Columbus developer Leslie Leveque and John Lincoln from Cleveland bought the building in 1934 and it became a Leveque-Lincoln tower. After Leslie's death in 1946 and his son Frederick's death in 1975 – both in separate plane crashes – Frederick's wife Katherine bought the interest of the Lincoln family on the tower, and the skyscraper became officially a Leveque tower.
Initially, Katherine Leveque spent $ 3 million for the restoration of the Palace Theater and then began an investment of $ 17 million to renovate the tower in the 1980s and convert the upper floors into residences.
The economy had shifted until 2002, which Levque prompted to sell the building, even though it retained its 41st floor residence. The building was sold several times with additional renovation work by 2017, when a further overhaul of almost $ 30 million converted a large part of the building into a luxury hotel on the floors 5-10 as well as residences, offices and a restaurant.
Today the tower contains the hotel, the Keep, a bar and a restaurant on the second floor, which is accessible to the public, apartments and condominiums as well as office space and amenities. The local architects Schooley Caldwell designed the offers of the revitalized building.
The 69 apartments in the historic Leveque tower in the city center are from Kaufman Development Corp. converted into condominiums that the apartments developed as part of the broader renovation of the tower a decade ago. Kaufman announced The Dispatch in April that it is planning to sell the units because your rental contracts will take place in the next 18 months.
More photos of the historic Leveque tower from the shipping archive can be found here.
Grace Freeman is a librarian of Columbus Metropolitan Library.