Cyclorama Building
- Architect
- Cummings and Sears
- Year
- 1884
- City
- Boston, MA
The Cyclorama Building in the South End was built in 1884 to house a single painting: a 400-by-50-foot panorama of the Battle of Gettysburg, commissioned by Charles F. Willoughby's Boston Cyclorama Company and designed by Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears. It's now run by the Boston Center for the Arts.
the building
The dome. At the center of the building is a 127-foot-diameter steel-trussed dome - the largest in the country after the U.S. Capitol's when it was built. Visitors entered through a crenelated archway, walked a dark winding passage, and climbed to an elevated platform to view the painting, lit by skylights by day and 25 arc lamps by night.
After the cyclorama. A second painting, Custer's Last Fight, replaced the Gettysburg panorama in 1889, but the fashion for cycloramas had faded by 1890. New owner John Gardner - father-in-law of Isabella Stewart Gardner - converted the space for popular entertainment, including a carousel, roller skating, and boxing.
the style
Classical Revival on the outside, wrapped around a purpose-built engineering feat inside: a dome sized specifically to hold a monumental circular painting rather than any conventional room.
significance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. An unusual building type - purpose-built to house a painted panorama - that outlived the entertainment fad it was built for.
nearby
- Youth's Companion Building
- Cathedral of the Holy Cross
- John Hancock Tower
- Union Church
- Copley Plaza Hotel (interior/exterior)
- Armory of 1st Corps Cadets (interior)