Memorial Hall Eagle - Kansas City, Kansas - Figurative Public Sculpture on Waymarking.com

This building has been a center of activity since 1925. This building has hosted concerts and athletic events. Not only is it an historic building, but a beautiful one, also. The entablature on the building reads:

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
Dedicated to the Heroes who Fought and Died for Their Country Justice actuated their heroism - Liberty inspired their courage Let us resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

There are a pair of carved eagles, one on either end of the building near the cornice. Each of the eagles are perched on a pair of olive branches. The wings of the eagles are spread wide. The eagles are facing right and the beak is barely open.

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building is a masonry building measuring 213 by 168 feet, with a single entrance portico projecting to the east and a corresponding projection of the stage loft on the west. The side walls linking the stage projection to the main north and south facades are angled due to the interior auditorium layout. The structure is reinforced concrete tile block, faced on the exterior with a warm brown brick trimmed with limestone and cream-colored terra cotta. The building contains three stories and a basement, with a raised attic running the length of the middle third of the building from the attic screen of the front portico to the higher stage loft at the rear. The portico is classical in design, but the remainder of the exterior is more nearly Georgian in its restraint, a feeling emphasized by the predominance of eight-over-eight double-hung windows.

The entry portico consists of six stone Tuscan columns, three stories in height, set in antis between flanking blocks containing fire stairs. The entablature above the columns is plain, in keeping with the Tuscan order, with a frieze unornamented save for incised letters giving the name of the building and paired swags in relief at the ends. The cornice is very pronounced, with details borrowed from the Doric order. Above the entablature is a high parapet or attic screen. The base and cap of the parapet are of stone and the wall is brick with terra cotta panels including inscriptions and two flanking eagles in high relief.

Behind the columns of the portico, five double doors topped with elaborate stone cartouches containing small bullseye windows open into the Memorial Hall. This two-story space measuring 45 by 73 feet functions both as a memorial and as the building's lobby. On the west side of the Memorial Hall is a second set of five double doors, leading into the foyer of the auditorium. Above these doors on the second floor is an arcaded gallery looking out over the Hall, the five arches matching those enframing the entry opposite, while three corresponding arches grace the north and south walls.

Appropriate to its purpose, Memorial Hall is the most elaborately detailed space in the building. A wainscot of Carthage marble runs around the perimeter of the room, supporting twelve engaged Corinthian columns and four corresponding corner piers executed in plaster, the columns and piers separating the sixteen arches. Other decorative plaster work includes multiple mouldings, large bas reliefs of laurel and olive branches surmounting the arches, and decorated ceiling beams. Under each of the arches is an inscription of a patriotic or memorial quotation. Two large bronze chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The ceiling lights in the gallery are handsome milk glass globes with incised or painted classical decoration. Similar globes are placed within the Memorial Hall chandeliers. In the central arches of the north and south walls are two large bronze plaques enframed with Carthage marble, giving the names of the honored dead. Originally, ticket windows were set into the easternmost arches between the memorial plaques and the outside doors. These openings were subsequently filled in to allow the placement of plaques giving the names of the World War II dead.

- National Register Application

Name or use 'Unknown' if not known: Eagle Figure Type: Animal Artist Name or use 'Unknown' if not known: unknown Date created or placed or use 'Unknown' if not known: 1926 Materials used: marble Location: on the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Building

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