Circle Tower Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology

Circle Tower is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Washington Street—Monument Circle Historic District. The tower is one of the city’s prime examples of Art Deco architecture and is especially noteworthy for its excellent metal work.

Architects Rubush & Hunter secured yet another significant commission next to the Circle Theater, which they had designed nearly 15 years earlier. Finished in 1930, Circle Tower was designed by the firm and built to house prime office space, with commercial storefronts on the ground floor.

Faced in smooth-dressed Indiana limestone, the building rises to stepped back top stories, ziggurat-like upper stories that recede from the outer façades in terraces, punctuated by Art Deco sculptures.

Top of Circle Tower Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology

Each pier top is ornamented with capital blocks carved as stylized foliate panels. The north entrance has a massive one and one-half story arch lined with foliate banding. The ziggurat crown, sculpture façade panels, granite sculptures of the arched entryway, and the design of the interior lobby, elevators, and street-floor shops are highly illustrative of the Art Deco style.

Circle Tower was completed only eight years after archeologist Howard Carter’s sensational discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. The intricate bronze screen over the north entry arch reflects the widespread interest in Egyptology at the time. Sculptor Joseph Willenborg filled the bronze grille with hieroglyphic-like images, stylized into the Deco mode.