Columbus Landmarks receives grant for LeVeque documentary
A Star is Born! Columbus Landmarks Foundation is proud to announce that the LeVeque Tower will soon be starring in her first major film. Production is under way, with a birth date arrival scheduled for fall 2010.
The Ohio Humanities Council recently announced that Columbus Landmarks Foundation-- working with filmmaker, Seth Moherman—received a major media grant to document the story of Columbus’s major skyscraper, the LeVeque Tower, in “The Citadel: The Birth of the LeVeque Tower.” Built first as the American Insurance Union Citadel (or AIU Building), one of Columbus’s most beloved and certainly architecturally distinct buildings has a fascinating dichotomy of idealism and egotism, architectural hubris and down-to-earth drama.
At 12:30 p.m., on September 21, 1927, at Broad and Front Street, with trumpet cannons blasting 17 salutes, airplanes circling overhead dropping cascades of flowers onto the crowd, the AIU Girls Glee Club singing “Ode to the Citadel,” the architect, C. Howard Crane, in the words of filmmaker Seth Moherman, “…stood upon the stage (the old Keith-Albee Theatre), prepared to hand the keys to the building over to President (John) Lentz, but before he did, he proclaimed:
‘Before I relinquish this building, I must tell you why we have been able to have such a beautiful and such a
wonderful structure…back of this job was John J. Lentz. He is truly a great man…a man of such visions, such high ideals, and capacity for work...I take great pleasure, in formally presenting to you, the key to the Citadel…a symbol of the high and noble ideals of your great company…’”
This program is made possible, in part, by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Arts.