The Charles E. Shea High School was built at 485 East Avenue in quaint Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1938 by architect John F. O’Malley. Shea High School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and to this day Shea remains an important landmark and a site of reflection upon the rich history and skill of American engineering.
Special thanks to our friends at the Pawtucket Preservation Society for access to historical documents
A Brief History of Art Deco
The Art Deco movement, often referred to simply as Deco, was a highly-popular and significant period of design and creation in the arts that began in the beginning of the 20th century and helped to define nearly three decades of American expansion, growth, and achievement. Originating in France in the Interwar period, the Art Deco style derives its name from the Exposition International des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, a world’s fair exhibition in Paris, France in 1925. Although the term Art Deco would not find widespread use and become architectural and art historical canon until the 1960s, the Deco movement was thoroughly established and respected as the quintessential style of a generation.
Contributed by Henry Gilbert
The beginning of the 20th century was a period marked by tremendous economic growth and booming industry, as major cities across the globe began to revitalize their cities with the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution. As a reaction to the previous Art Nouveau stylings of the end of the last century, engineers and artists in the early years of the 20th century began to explore new themes and motifs that could capture the sensations of the mechanization and modernization of the modern city. The signature of Art Deco, in this sense, is this appropriation of machinery and industry in the imagery, iconography, and textural elements of Deco structures. Deco projects began to create a style that was both boldly powerful and beautifully articulate. Images of industrial might reflected the strength of man, and only the finest, most technologically-advanced building materials like steel, iron, brass, and Vitrolite were suitable for most deco projects. Adornments upon and within structures reflected the age, with interior fixtures and structural elements crafted to resemble lofty skyscrapers. The Deco movement borrowed thematic elements from a wide variety of artistic modes and intellectual circles, incorporating the stark geometry of the Cubists in Deco works and motifs of Classical revivalism in the plaques and relief sculptures to enhance the feelings of power and authority marked by Deco structures.
All examples of Art Deco design elements photographed by Providence College students at Shea High School (2016).
Text by Henry Gilbert
Text by Henry Gilbert
In the United States, Art Deco architecture proved to be wildly successful with the wave of construction projects in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Many of the most famous examples of Deco architecture were constructed with great speed and efficiency in the United States in the 1930s, including William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building in 1930, Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon’s Empire State Building in 1931, and Raymond Hood’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1933.
Images from ArtStor
Text by Henry Gilbert
Text by Henry Gilbert
With the Stock Market Crash in the end of 1929 bringing about the onset of the Great Depression in the United States, many architectural building projects and the Art Deco movement were temporarily sidelined. In 1935, the Roosevelt Administration began the Works Progress Administration, or WPA, to provide millions of unemployed Americans with unskilled laboring jobs in infrastructural revitalization. The New Deal legislature’s nearly five-billion-dollar appropriation succeeded in finding temporary income for those left without work and left a lasting impact on the face of American architecture. During the course of the WPA projects at the end of the 1930s, almost 6,000 new schools were constructed through Federal tax dollars, including Shea High School in Pawtucket in 1938. As one of the premier landmarks of Art Deco architecture still standing in the State of Rhode Island, Shea High School serves as a lasting and crucially important reminder of both the rich history of Pawtucket itself as well as the industrial mastery and insurmountable spirit of perseverance of the American people
Images from ArtStor
Text by Henry Gilbert
Text by Henry Gilbert
The Art Deco Elements of Shea High School
Images by students at Providence College (2016)
The Exterior:
Shea high school uses a lot steel in its structure. The exterior is a steel framed structure, with wall is made out of cast iron, glazed green brick, limestone, and yellow brick. It is three stories tall with a cast stone staircase in the entrance. Shea has a flat roof and cubic patterns panels running down the walls. The walls have eleven different words along the school to encourage the students in good and bad times. Six words are negative: Insolence, Indifference, Lawlessness, Fear, Carelessness, and Disaster and five words are positive: Determination, Effort, Ambition, Endurance, and Activity. The words around the wall are a symbolic message to the students that the journey of success has volatile moments of temporary failure that will be persevered. It is supposed to inspire the students to never give up in hard times. Incorporating messages into the structure is a classical Art Deco characteristic. On top of each word is a panel with a classic motif presented in a geometrical form. For example, the motif over “Effort” depicts two ancient soldiers battling. The geometrical style emphasizes the lines, thus making the soldiers stand out above their rock wall background. Shea’s entrance has inspirational quotes surrounding its balustrades.
Shea high school uses a lot steel in its structure. The exterior is a steel framed structure, with wall is made out of cast iron, glazed green brick, limestone, and yellow brick. It is three stories tall with a cast stone staircase in the entrance. Shea has a flat roof and cubic patterns panels running down the walls. The walls have eleven different words along the school to encourage the students in good and bad times. Six words are negative: Insolence, Indifference, Lawlessness, Fear, Carelessness, and Disaster and five words are positive: Determination, Effort, Ambition, Endurance, and Activity. The words around the wall are a symbolic message to the students that the journey of success has volatile moments of temporary failure that will be persevered. It is supposed to inspire the students to never give up in hard times. Incorporating messages into the structure is a classical Art Deco characteristic. On top of each word is a panel with a classic motif presented in a geometrical form. For example, the motif over “Effort” depicts two ancient soldiers battling. The geometrical style emphasizes the lines, thus making the soldiers stand out above their rock wall background. Shea’s entrance has inspirational quotes surrounding its balustrades.
Contributed by Brendan Delia
The Interior:
The interior of Shea makes use of steel as well because all of its lockers are made out of stainless steel, even to this day. The grand staircase, leading to the auditorium, is made out of steel. It incorporates Art Deco railing patterns, that complement the strictly linear, geometric pattern of the auditorium’s door. These were Art Deco characteristics because most items, of the period, were made of steel, utilized a trapezoidal or zig zag pattern, and used gold paint and brass to attract attention with a clean and classy appearance. Above the auditorium’s entrance and around Shea’s hallways, are gold motifs. They illustrate hand fans and shells, which makes sense because most Art Deco theater designs would use the same motifs. It was influenced by the fans of showgirls and flapper girls who used those type on stage for a performance. The school’s hallways also have a gold painted vitrolite along them. This addition was from a renovation to the school in the 1980s. They wanted to make sure the vitrolite matched the style and Art Deco theme/history of the high school. Its motif is in the form of a zig zag pattern, which matches the geometric Art Deco style. The motif has a leaf-like design with specific curves to illustrate that natural talent, purity and growth of Shea students. All of the gold and brass motifs illustrate scenes from ancient mythology and modern industry. Each of the classrooms’ door knobs have an Art Deco style front and back plate. They have multiple layers of strict linear patterns that create an overall hexagonal three-dimensional design that stands out when a person sees it. This matches the common art deco characteristics of steel use and emphasized geometric patterns. Shea’s hallway ceilings and auditorium ceilings implement ceiling roses, which was a common characteristic of the art deco period because the high amount chandeliers and other geometric lights used. The ceiling roses at Shea have a nice zig zag pattern that extend the lights away from the ceiling and closer to the ground. The ceiling roses easily complement the strictly linear and geometric lights the school uses.
The interior of Shea makes use of steel as well because all of its lockers are made out of stainless steel, even to this day. The grand staircase, leading to the auditorium, is made out of steel. It incorporates Art Deco railing patterns, that complement the strictly linear, geometric pattern of the auditorium’s door. These were Art Deco characteristics because most items, of the period, were made of steel, utilized a trapezoidal or zig zag pattern, and used gold paint and brass to attract attention with a clean and classy appearance. Above the auditorium’s entrance and around Shea’s hallways, are gold motifs. They illustrate hand fans and shells, which makes sense because most Art Deco theater designs would use the same motifs. It was influenced by the fans of showgirls and flapper girls who used those type on stage for a performance. The school’s hallways also have a gold painted vitrolite along them. This addition was from a renovation to the school in the 1980s. They wanted to make sure the vitrolite matched the style and Art Deco theme/history of the high school. Its motif is in the form of a zig zag pattern, which matches the geometric Art Deco style. The motif has a leaf-like design with specific curves to illustrate that natural talent, purity and growth of Shea students. All of the gold and brass motifs illustrate scenes from ancient mythology and modern industry. Each of the classrooms’ door knobs have an Art Deco style front and back plate. They have multiple layers of strict linear patterns that create an overall hexagonal three-dimensional design that stands out when a person sees it. This matches the common art deco characteristics of steel use and emphasized geometric patterns. Shea’s hallway ceilings and auditorium ceilings implement ceiling roses, which was a common characteristic of the art deco period because the high amount chandeliers and other geometric lights used. The ceiling roses at Shea have a nice zig zag pattern that extend the lights away from the ceiling and closer to the ground. The ceiling roses easily complement the strictly linear and geometric lights the school uses.
Contributed by Brendan Delia
Citation Information:
- Suzanne Tise. "Art Deco." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed May 1, 2016, http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.helin.uri.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T004334
- Alistar Duncan. Art Deco. Thames & Hudson Ltd. 1988.
- Our Friends at the Pawtucket Preservation Society
- The Pawtucket Public Library
- Professors Ann Norton and Eric Sung