Art Deco in New York City

Daniel Turkel

Chrysler Building with detail from the Chanin Building in front.

FAH !!" # Intro to Architecture Prof. Abramson Fall $!%%

Preface
& The focus of this paper is to examine Art Deco style and its implementation in New

York City. The goal is to answer several essential questions regarding Art Deco and the paper is organized with these questions in mind. The questions are as follows: & & How did the Art Deco style come about? What does Art Deco mean in mediums other than architecture and how does that

philosophy transfer to architecture? & & & & What did it mean to build in the Art Deco style? Why did New York City prove to be such a popular site for Art Deco buildings? What does it mean to reference Art Deco in buildings today? Thus the paper aims to address the origins of Art Deco but also its interaction with

New York City and how the two fed o' of each other. & I consulted a number of while researching for this paper. Richard Striners Art Deco:

Polemics and Synthesis focuses mainly on art critics responses to Deco as well as the idea that Deco synthesized visions of the future with memories of the past. The article was helpful in its information on the context of Decos philosophy and especially how that philosophy was a result of the interwar period. & David Gebhards Art Deco in America was especially helpful for information on

individual buildings while Robinson and Bletters Skyscraper Style gave some more in#depth information on a few buildings as well as copious photographs and writing on the movements origins and progression.

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The articles Art Deco Sculpture and Art Dco: The Last Hurrah were both useful

in looking at Art Deco style outside of the context of architecture. They showed just how the Deco aesthetic was applied to visual art, especially crafts, xtures and furniture. & A quote from Frank Lloyd Wrights Tyranny of the Skyscraper is used as an

epilogue for the paper. Additionally, a French website called Lart Nouveau was used for an image of the Paris Exposition. & Lastly, I used a quote from Rem Koolhaas Delirious New York as an epigraph for the

paper as I felt it embodied the eras sense of urgency to build and expand both literally as well as guratively expanding toward a future that, I think, has become a reality today.

Any photographs not otherwise attributed were taken by me in New York City in November, !"##.

Art Deco in New York City

Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the Skyscraper o'ers business the wide#open spaces of a man#made Wild West, a frontier in the sky. #Rem Koolhaas (Koolhaas 72)

Denition and Origins

& Art Deco is, as dened by Buildings Across Time, ...a slippery term describing a diverse

design idiom that encompassed everything from graphics to ceramics, furniture and architecture, (Mo'ett, Fazio, Wodehouse *+$). The style came about during the period between the World Wars where social, international, economic and political tensions seemed to threaten human history completely. Some schools of artistic philosophy wanted to break with the past entirely and embrace the modern age. This was the modernist view which saw a better future starting now in the technology and industry of the modern age. There were also those who sought to harken back to days before all the tensions of the war. These were traditionalists and classicists who sought out various idealized points in history and tried to emulate them in an e'ort to bring back the corresponding stability and philosophy of the referenced period. Art Deco was a style where classical composition, modernist simplication of form, streamlining, and Parisian#inspired ornamentation were combined,,a middle ground between the clashing ideals of the New Pioneers and the traditionalists (Striner $*). & The style emerged out of the %-$. Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Dcoratifs et

Industriels Modernes, which was also the styles namesake (Robinson, Bletter /, 0-). The

La Matrise Pavillon des Galeries Lafayette features typography and metalwork that would become part of the Art Deco style, however the building itself is still highly classical !Lart Nouveau$.

exposition was supposed to close the design gap that France saw between themselves and the Germans and after World War I delayed the original exposition, there was political tension behind it as well (**). Germany ended up unable to participate in the exposition but France managed to show their innovation in design nonetheless, especially since the rules for submission to the exposition dictated that designs be entirely modern and devoid of emulation of any ancient works (*.). Ultimately the exposition failed, almost by design, to display much avant#garde or shocking , the Parisians seemed to be focused more on catching up and emulating modernism than advancing it, and as a result, Art Deco as it was conceived is not a profoundly revolutionary style. In fact, only Art Decos ornamental style came about in the exposition and, as far as the buildings, it was simply placed on top of classical buildings despite warnings against classical inuence (*/#*+). A number of Americans had been sent to attend and report on the exhibition and furniture in the zig #

zag style of the exhibition started making its way back to America and the inuence quickly took hold of American designers (*"). New York wanted to emulate paris, then other American cities wanted to try it too, and the style quickly became a hit in the US (Gebhard ").

Philosophical Considerations
& The Parisian exposition was by no means the only source of inuence for the Art

Deco style. Art Deco combined a number of burgeoning art movements in its attempt to signal its novelty: cubism, constructivism, futurism, and even Art Nouveau, which in many ways it rejected (Mo'ett, Fazio, Wodehouse *+$). More important, however, was the philosophical inuence for Art Deco. David Gebhard wrote in National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America that Art Deco (and its close sibling, streamline moderne) expressed the prevailing attitude toward change, (%). Art Deco was about change and modernity, just as the Paris Exposition was. The period between World War I and II was full of confusion and an attempt to order the seemingly chaotic world. Modernism meant a break from the past that had brought about this chaos. But traditionalism simultaneously meant returning to peace and order before the chaos. And thus a schism formed with the traditionalists and neoclassicists on one side and the modernists and avant#garde on the other. & Art Deco may, on the surface, seem like it stayed on the modern side of the ever#

widening gap of design philosophy, considering the ban on referencing antiquity at the Paris Exposition, but the truth is that Art Deco fell squarely in between. As Striner wrote in Art Deco: Polemics and Synthesis, ...art deco in the %-$!s and %-0!s proved to be a middle range between antagonistic ideologies...an important channel between radical and traditionalist design responses to twentieth#century challenges ($%). Striner goes on to 6

write that Deco sought to capture the spirit of the times,rhythmic, lively, and even bombastic,but he proposes that Art Deco also captures the tremendous tension and anxiety of the period ($%). The period was lled with both visions of a brilliant future as well as visions of a dismal one. So when radicals looked to an ordered future and the traditionalists sought to bring back the ordered past, art deco designers sought to blend ancient imagery,from classicism to the symbolic repertoire of ancient Egyptian and Aztec art,with the futurist imagery of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon ($$). & In addition to aesthetic and philosophical inspiration, there were practical

motivations behind the rise to popularity of the Art Deco style. Zoning laws introduced in %-%/ to New York City aimed at preserving sunlight would have massive e'ects on the way people designed skyscrapers , setbacks would be needed at certain heights and one could only build indenitely up on part of the site (Robinson, Bletter "). Eliel Saarinens design entry for the Chicago Tribune Building t with new zoning laws and became a model (+#"). The design was perfect for New York. It t with the necessar y setbacks of the zoning laws, the decreasing width as it rises makes it appear taller so as to make the building even more monumental, the towering structure is a symbol of modernity and yet the zig # step staircase shape seems to reference ancient ziggurats so as not to lose historical frame of reference. & Art Deco ornamentation with Saarinens
Saarinens Chicago Tribune Building Design !Robinson, Bletter 7".

building style replacing the overly classical base architecture of the Paris Exposition would become the perfect style for New York. The ornamentation style perfectly t US architects need for a new way to decorate skyscrapers that could be expressed in any number of various materials (Mo'ett, Fazio, Wodehouse *+$). Bletter writes in Skyscraper Style that The strength of the Beaux#Arts tradition in New York, still alive in the early twenties, would lead one to suspect that most architects, from the outset, were not interested in an overtly revolutionary style or a total break with the past, but more in a rephrasing of given modes (0.). New York did not need any innovation in building or a totally new way of designing but rather a blend of traditional and ancient forms with the skyscraper form which serves as the archetype of American commercial progress. The message that Art Deco sends is one of being economically progressive, e1cient, and modern,with whatever meanings come attached to the at#the#time buzzword,and yet cultured and by no means ignorant of precedent. New York could perfectly t the bill of the futuristic metropolis, not a cold and inhuman future but one that seems to carefully curate past beauty. & It certainly did not hurt that the economy set the perfect conditions for the style to

ourish. Robinson writes that ...the occasion for Art Deco in New York City was a building boom that started in %-$. and lasted until %-0% and goes on to say that The buildings they designed were marked by European decorative inuences but were also a'ected by certain ideas from Chicago, by the theater and by an image of a future New York that had long had popular currency (*). It would make sense that any city might want to be the one to embrace the new style and thrust itself into the future with Art Deco but New Yorks economic conditions and position as a cultural center gave it the helping hand in lling that

roll, ( though it was not the only one , numerous Art Deco works would spring up all over the country as well as overseas).

Art Deco Crafts in the Home

& Before looking at specic buildings, it is

worth looking into Art Deco crafts and their relation to the architecture. Since the style is in many ways ornamental in origin, it should was no great stretch to see Art Deco furniture,
Snake Dancer by Dimetre Chiparus !Art Deco Sculpture 132".

sculpture, and other xtures,and indeed items decorated in the Art Deco style became

extremely popular for order through catalogs perhaps because of the way they embodied the Jazz Age zeitgeist, often featuring appers, owers and other spirited images that idealized life at the time. Unfortunately, such images became elaborate fantasies when the Great Depression and World War II arrived and the pieces would go out of fashion (Art Deco Sculpture %00$. But while they were still in vogue, they were considered the perfect decorative accoutrement for any room (%00). Art Deco was the antithesis of Le Corbusiers function over form or Bauhaus practical approach to design,instead, furniture doubled as art and the aesthetics were as important, if not more, than function (Hunter $.-#$/%). Art Deco furniture and xtures, then, perhaps miss some of the philosophy that would be part of the architecture. The architecture blends modern e1ciency with ancient ornamentation and yet the Deco pieces for the home seemed only to embrace the eclectic blend of aesthetics spanning distant periods and places. 9

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In a way, Deco did not make sense in the home or as design for a home itself,the

style was rarely if ever used to build houses and never gave o' the feeling of home. The style symbolized function and economy, technology and progress and so it made perfect sense to use it for a commercial building, but it was simply irrelevant for a home. Gebhard writes that In a fundamental sense, most Americans perceived the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne as fashions of the moment. The American Middle class would never abandon its belief that permanency or at least the illusion of permanency, was preferable to a world of continual change ($). So Americans wanted permanency in their homes, a sort of psychological constant and stability, and yet ux, progress, and change elsewhere. There was a sort of cognitive dissonance in the way people desired to keep things as they were in the domestic realm and yet have the urban environment shoot towards the future.

Art Deco Buildings in New York City

& Perhaps one of the best ways to discuss New Yorks growing Art Deco building

collection is to examine a few examples. The number of Deco skyscrapers in New York City speaks volumes to just how well suited the city was to be Art Decos guinea pig. The rst major New York City Art Deco building was the Barclay#Vesey Building (now the Verizon Building) which was completed in %-$/ (Gebhard *$). Its architect, Ralph T. Walker, wrote that In sharp contrast with the vertical rigidity of the bu' brick piers...the ornamental stonework is carved with a free and owing ornament so designed to be an integral part of the wall it decorates (qtd. in Gebhard *0). The buildings emphasis seems to be in verticality and monumentality as the main tower comes o' of two smaller ones which sit in front of it. The building was designed with a number of economic and practical constraints in mind and yet still elaborately ornamented on the interior, though its exterior is relatively 10

bare compared to what would soon become typical. But the building manages to show the essential philosophy of an eye to the future with its towering scale and economical planning and yet the past kept in mind with its eclectically inspired interiors. & One of the most iconic Deco skyscrapers is the Chrysler Building. William Van Alen

designed the Chrysler Building which was completed in %-0! and immediately, though not for long, gained the title of the worlds tallest building. The fact that it was the tallest building shows Decos attempts to grab for the future and the magnicence that would come with it. Showing progress and an idealized beautiful form of industrialization were key ideas. One design feature of the building is abstracted car wheels and radiator#caps (Mo'ett, Fazio, Wodehouse *+0). The automobile was often abstracted and used as a motif as an allegory for technological progress. In addition, the building features murals in the ground#

Furnishings and ornamentation of the Chrysler Building.

level lobby with images of blimps and planes to further epitomize the technological advances of the day. But as is required, the building it not all about the future. The exterior features gargoyles, near#cubist patterns, and ornamentations inspired by numerous di'erent times and places (Gebhard *0). The zig #zag pyramidal form of the building, which is equally referential to Saarinen as to ancient ziggurats, is constantly echoed on the interior with even more zig #zag forms. It also served as the centerpiece of the growing New York

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City skyline with its iconic crown which features stacked arches with sunbursts on them in a highly geometric fashion typical of Decos ornamentation style.

Views of the Empire State Building.

&

Equally iconic if not more is the Empire State Building. Taller even than the Chrysler

Building, William Lambs skyscraper was completed in %-0% (**). It features Deco#nishing above the columns of vertically stacked windows and the now#typical ziggurat pyramidal shape. Its crown was at rst meant to be a airship mooring station but this idea was scrapped due to a number of logistical problems, but the famous spire was still included and ended up symbolizing the love of the airships futuristic ideal (*.). Though it may not be as heavily ornamented as other Deco skyscrapers, it still features a number of typical motifs while simultaneously reaching towards a futuristic vision of Manhattan with ultra#tall towers and common air#travel. & A close neighbor to the Chrysler Building (and thus testament to the building boom

which permitted these ornamented skyscrapers) is the Chanin Building. Its lobby decorator, Ren Chamebellan, said that the ornamentation shows the story of a city in which it is possible for a man to rise from humble station to wealth and inuence by the sheer power of 12

his mind and hands (qtd. in Robinson, Bletter $%). Exterior ornaments seem to focus equally on natural scenes of leaves and animals and images of the industrial,machines and energy.

Detail from the Chanin Building !left" and the American Standard Building !right".

&

The American Standard Building (formerly the American Radiator Building) is also

worth noting. Perhaps a pre#cursor to pure Art Deco, Raymond Hoods %-$* tower takes ample inspiration from Gothic architecture and yet uses Saarinens Tribune structure for the building itself (Gebhard *$). Additionally, the building features dramatic night#lighting , perhaps a reference to the growing theater scene which would become a favorite source of Deco ornament inspiration. Gold terra#cotta against black brick create a dramatic contrast and give the building its instantly recognizable look. & & Another Raymond Hood building (this time with John Mead Howells), The Daily

News Building, was built in %-0! (**). The building still has setbacks at higher heights but comes to form more of a solid tower than the ziggurat#inspired towers discussed earlier and stood out with great mass as a result (Robinson, Bletter $/; Gebhard **). The lobby of the building features an enormous globe that seems to celebrate the planet and what society has

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Interior and exterior of the Daily News Building.

done with it. The facade of the building is covered with vertical stripes which hide the windows (Robinson, Bletter $/). The building does not feature any sort of crown so that, as Howells put it, the verticals can terminate naturally against the sky...in the same way that a growth of pines or a palisade or cli' ends up against the sky (qtd. in Gebhard **). Rendering natural inspiration in such a futuristic and modern building ts in with the Deco ideal of the blend of the old and the new. The entrance also features stonework depicting a group of all sorts of modern#type people in front of a skyscraper#skyline with a piece of Abraham Lincolns quote, God must love the common man, he made so many of them. Similar to Chambellans idea of the embodiment of an American Dream type of message, there was to be a developing theme of a successful future society where man can prosper (and of course there was the idea that this man would be represented by the Daily News). & The General Electric Building (not to be confused the with the GE Building in

Rockefeller Center), formerly known as the RCA Victor Building, is a particularly ornate and interesting example of Deco architecture. Electricity is a theme in its various zig #zagged and pointed ornaments, especially at its crown. The crown of the building simultaneously 14

The General Electric Building.

references electricity as well as a sort of verticality and sharpness that might be seen in the spires of a Gothic church. The various references to electricity mark GE as a company of the future and yet the Gothic inspired crown seems to give the building a subtle religious feel as if it is a church of electricity or a shrine to technological advances of tomorrow.

Conclusion
& These are certainly not the only Art Deco buildings in New York City. The Brill

Building, McGraw Hill Building, Rockefeller Center stand out among others not examined in this report. Some generalizations can be made based o' of the large number of Deco buildings in New York. Art Deco buildings in New York City stood out from the numerous modern International Style or traditionalist buildings with which they coinhabit the city. Deco buildings attempt to evoke a drama and liveliness that embodied the period but they are also symbolic of the historic tension. This paradox, that a building can be simultaneously celebrate what it is like to live in its time and yet grapple with the historical tensions and crisis occurring, is what makes Art Deco so profoundly expressive.

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New York experienced this paradox as well as any place in the United States could.

The growing economic and cultural metropolis was the perfect spot to experience the joy of living that one thinks of with the roaring twenties. And yet images of Depression Era New York and an awareness of the events leading up to World War II (after World War Is intensity that Americans thought would not be matched any time nearly so soon ) simultaneously recall that New Yorkers were just as aware of the fact that this was an era of confusion and angst. And so they built for their lives. New York grew vertically in a desperate attempt to dream up an advanced future of progress and industry, dream of the peace and order of antiquity, and dream away the real tension of the present and what lurked on the horizon.

Epilogue #
What was to happen to the Art Deco style? Foremost, World War II put a halt to the

building boom that had been its lifeline. Even more importantly, it put an end to the end to the need to avoid the problems of the present and the historical catastrophe they represented because those problems had come to a head and could no longer be avoided. After World War II, art, and society (as life tends to imitate art), stopped trying to order the chaos,any attempt would be an overly optimistic exercise in delusion. There was no need to look to a productive future or try to rebuild the order of the past. Post#modernists came about and were content to accept the chaos and stop looking for some idealized truth or solution. The past was abstracted when it was referenced and buildings allowed for a sense of fun and drama on occasion,both ideas borrowed from Art Deco (Gebhard %.). Of course, when post#modernists referenced past architectures, Art Deco was included. Today,

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Art Deco is seen as the sudden creative burst of excitement and drama that came about thanks to the cultural renaissance of the roaring twenties (with some creative help from Paris Exposition) and a bit of fear of what the future held. Needless to say, Art Deco will not soon be forgotten but rather live on as an emblem and symbol of the spirits and emotions, good and bad, of its time.

Therefore the public of this Republic will, more than ever now, nd its love of commonplace elegance gratied either by the sentimentality of the ornamental or the sterility of ornaphobia. The Machine Age, it seems, is either to be damned by senseless sentimentality or to be sterilized by a factory aesthetic. Nevertheless, I believe that Romance,this quality of the heart, the essential joy we have in living , by human imagination of the right sort can be brought to life again in Modern Industry. Creative Imagination may yet convert our prosaic problems to poetry while modern Rome howls and eyebrows of the Pharisees rise. #Frank Lloyd Wright (Wright *!)

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Works Cited "Art Deco Sculpture." Bu%etin &St. Louis Art Museum$ 14.4 (1978): 132#33. JSTOR. Web. 17 Dec. 2011. Gebhard, David. The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996. Print. Hunter, Penelope. "Art Dco: The Last Hurrah." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bu%etin 30.6 (1972): 257#67. JSTOR. Web. 17 Dec. 2011. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Moacelli, 1994. Print. "L 'Exposition Des Arts Dcoratifs Paris En 1925." L'art Nouveau. 01 May 2001. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://lartnouveau.com/art_deco/expo_art_deco_1925.htm>. Mo'ett, Marian, Michael Fazio, and Lawrence Wodehouse. Buildings Across Time: An Introduction to World Architecture. Boston: McGraw#Hill, 2009. Print. Robinson, Cervin, and Rosemarie H. Bletter. Skyscraper Style: Art Deco, New York. New York: Oxford UP, 1975. Print. Striner, Richard. "Art Deco: Polemics and Synthesis." Winterthur Portfolio 25.1 (1990): 21#34. JSTOR. Web. 2 Dec. 2011. Wright, Frank L., and Neil Levine. "The Tyranny of the Skyscraper." Modern Architecture: Being the Kahn Lectures for 1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2008. Google Books. Web. 11 Dec. 2011.

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