Cincinnati Gas and Electric Building

139 East Fourth Street

Garber & Woodward, architects, with John Russell Pope

1930

The Cincinnati Gas and Electric building is a fine example of styles of architecture merging in the late 1920’s.  With its Doric columns and classic architecture elements, this building looks more neoclassical at the street level, but as you look up you see more Art Deco elements such as the set-back design of the tower, the carved figures that depict energy and the pyramid shaped roof. This was common in the early days of the “modern” Art Deco designs to have these hybrid elements merging together.

The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company building (now Duke Energy) was a collaboration of New York architect John Russell Pope (1874-1937), who designed the exterior, and the local firm of Garber & Woodward, who was responsible for the program and massing. 

The 19-story tower rests on a three-story base with a row of Doric columns and bronze-trimmed windows. The building rises to an obelisk crown whose pyramidal copper cap echoes that of the former Union Central Life Insurance building two blocks west. Low-relief stone plaques depict energy at the service of humanity: man warming himself by fire or capturing the power of lightning. The building’s copper cap later influenced the design of the nearby Times-Star building and Procter & Gamble headquarters. The rear addition was appended in 1954.

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