Architecture
The study took three years to finish, from 1895 to 1898, and cost $25,000-$30,000 to build. Wallace built the eclectic structure with influence from Byzantine, Greek, and Romanesque styles. It is one-story and made of garnet-colored brick. The domed copper roof is 30 feet (9.1 m) tall, with a cupola of copper, glass and steel protecting a large skylight over the main room. Bedford limestone, native to southern Indiana, was used for the porches and exterior trim. The limestone frieze, crowning the top of the walls, was hand-carved. A face in the center of the frieze on each side of the building represents characters from two of General Wallace’s books. On the tower is Princess Irene, on the back is the Prince of India, both from The Prince of India; to the east is Ben-Hur’s sister, Tirzah, and over the entry is Judah Ben-Hur, both from Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The small curved room in the back of the building was the mechanical room, housing light switches, levers that opened windows in the cupola on the dome, and other features related to the building. The bricks used to make the semicircle are curved. The study includes a 40 feet (12 m) tall tower on the west side. The tower was designed with Roman arches that were originally bricked in except for two stained glass windows. The tower, besides being decorative, served as a chimney and storage for the water tank that supplied the original bathroom in the basement. The full basement can be seen through round porthole windows on the east side of the building. It holds the workbench which General Wallace used when creating his nine inventions, the furnace used to heat the building, and the Wallaces’ carriage. The underpinnings of the study are also visible: Carnegie steel I-beams, corrugated metal, and concrete.
Read more about this topic: General Lew Wallace Study
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