architecture history

New York Skyscrapers: The Jazz Modern Neo-American Beautilitarian Style Author(s): Arnold Lehman Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 29, No. 8 (Apr., 1971), pp. 363-370 Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3258517 Accessed: 13-09-2017 18:55 UTC

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NEW YORK SKYSCRAPERS:

The Jazz Modern Neo-American Beautilitarian Style ARNOLD LEHMAN Chester Dale Fellow, Twentieth Century Art

The architectural vitality of a city is fragile. It lives on the energetic individual gestures of each structure. It matures on a cooperative spirit among them. However, the disruption of the urban fabric, the destruction of architectural scale, the tediously vitreous development of business and residential areas- all are devastating, enervating acts, settling an absurdist oneness over the city. A quick tour of Third, Park, or Sixth avenues clarifies Le Corbusier's distinction of a half-century ago between construction and architecture: "The purpose of construction is TO MAKE THINGS HOLD TOGETHER; of architecture TO MOVE US."

This post-World-War-li uniformity is distinct from the proudly individualistic towers of the nineteen-twenties and thirties, those "cathedrals of commerce" and castles in the sky, whose success separately and as part of the cityscape came from a demand for individuality- in design, decoration, color, mass.

The American skyscraper school, developed in Chicago primarily within the framework of the eclectic Beaux-Arts tradition, was dominant in New York. The city's Zoning Resolution of 1916, producing the set-back arrangement, forced architects to choose between a tower on part of the site with no height restriction or a pyramidal structure whose mass would be set back several feet for each height increase over the maximum allowed for a vertical elevation using the full site. Most often, a compromise evolved. Also, architects would no longer be able to treat their work simply as facades.

The increasing use of an industrial vocabulary by Austrian, Dutch, and German designers was reinterpreted here less severely, with a continued interest in decoration. To this end, French sources, both from the ever potent Beaux-Arts school and from the elegantly stylized forms from the 1925 decora- tive arts exposition in Paris, were immensely influential. Russian constructivism, Italian futurism, American streamlining, and technological advances in mate- rials and methods became equally important as the third decade of the twentieth century ended.

The New York skyscraper brought antithetical styles together. The stripped- down utilitarianism of the Bauhaus merged with the intense interest in decoration of the French art deco. New materials were employed in highly original ornament. Cost was less a factor when a skyscraper could serve as the primary advertisement for a corporation (although the Depression kept down otherwise astronomical building expenses).

During the nineteen-twenties and thirties, not every New York building was progressive in design or spirit. Those lagging behind said something about eclectic tastes. The leaders, however, reflected more interest in the honest reality of the future than in the subtle fantasies of the past. None were anonymous or speechless.

363

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Chanin Building, 1929 122 East 42 Street

Irwin S. Chanin, architect; Sloan & Robertson, general plan

BELOW, LEFT

"New York-City of Opportunity" was the theme of the Chanin Building's decora- tion. The two series of bronze reliefs and grilles in the Lexington Avenue vestibules were intended to express the opportunity theme by portraying the evolution of men- tal and physical life in a kind of Horatio Alger narrative. The style shows the influ- ences of late cubism, Italian futurism, and a modern classical revival, but the dominant conception was the significance of geometric linearism and its ability to communicate mental and physical force. The abstract motifs of the grilles not only complemented the symbolism of the reliefs but also covered ventilating ducts in a particularly good illus- tration of "beautilization" of forms.

The Effort panel, one of four in the physical life series, is set into Istrian nuage marble and between pilasters of red Altico. The designer's explanation of his work: "The figures stand with feet and hands ready to repel all opposing forces or to thrust aside all stationary obstacles in the path to the goal. Muscular lines denote tremendous physi- cal exertion." The grille continues this interaction of forces, its spiral convulsions thrust- ing forward, breaking through the rigid lines in its path, causing shock waves in an overall display of incredible dynamism.

BELOW, RIGHT

These magnificent gates, brilliantly combining machine, electronic, architectural, and abstract forms, are an expression of what was considered the modern aesthetic, often called "modernistic" or "moderne." The cogwheels suggested the interlocking aspects of business, and the stacks of coins at the base, its rewards.

Bronze relief and grille entitled Effort by Ren6 Chambellan in collaboration with Jacques Delamarre

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Nickel-plated entrance gates to executive offices on the fifty- second floor by Jacques Delamarre

Interior photographs: Albert Rothschild This content downloaded from 128.227.60.219 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 18:55:32 UTC

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This fifty-six-story structure set no height rec- ords. It was merely the third tallest of New York's towers, even before the erection of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings. It was received, however, with unparalleled fanfare and critical acclaim for its vigorous exterior massing and magnificent interior detail. From the bronze entrance frieze and patterned terra- cotta cladding at street level, through its massive base with carefully planned and articu- lated setbacks, to the boldly vertical tower with its strongly modeled forms, the Chanin Building was hailed as a splendid example of the "modernistic" style.

During this period, mail- boxes received an unusual

degree of attention and served as important examples of a building's decorative style. This boldly stylized bald eagle on the lobby mailbox is particularly note- worthy for the designer's ability to render the flat plane of the box into an intriguing three-dimensional space.

Bronze mailbox by Jacques Delamarre

Photograph: Wurts Bros.

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Chrysler Building, 1930 405 Lexington Avenue William Van Alen, architect

Commissioned by Walter Chrysler, this skyscraper was to symbolize both the prestige and progressive modernity of the company that bore the founder's name. In eighteen months, the tower rose to its completed height of 1,046 feet, becoming the world's tallest until the erection of the Empire State. Van Alen's design of base, shaft, and spire was both elegant and virile. He contrasted classically rich materials such as marble, onyx, and rare woods with modern metals, and his early use of stainless steel and aluminum for the exterior is particularly striking. The stainless-steel-wrapped spire, eight stories high, with its radiating triangular windows, crowns the structure and sets it apart from all others. The 185-foot finial brought the structure to full height. This Nirosta-stainless-steel needle, only eight feet square at its base, rose up from inside the yet-floorless frame of the tower in a ninety-minute publicity stunt. The facade is enlivened with gargoyles in the forms of the winged helmet of Mercury (the Chrysler radiator-cap symbol) at the thirtieth floor and steel eagle heads at the fifty-ninth. A unique brick frieze of racing cars with hubcaps of polished steel circles the thirtieth floor.

The public spaces were to be as exciting and original as the exterior. The main entrance at Lexington Avenue, a four-story glazed portal topped with a huge cast-aluminum reproduction of the Chrysler radiator cap, leads into a triangular lobby. The seemingly unbroken wall surfaces are faced with immense slabs of richly variegated rouge flamme marble. The information booth, across from the entrance, is backed with a tall niche of stainless steel encasing a digital clock. The ceiling mural by Edward Trumbull, filling a space 110 by 97 feet, shows man using natural energy to serve his needs. The elevator doors and interiors of the cabs are outstanding examples of the building's concentrated design, although executed in a more florid, French manner. They are executed in inlaid woods outlined in white metal.

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Film Center, 1929 630 Ninth Avenue

Buchman and Kahn, architects

This thirteen-story brick building, given over primarily to storage and exchange facilities for films (which were of a highly explosive nature at the time of con- struction), is significant for its interiors. Although the brickwork and decorative terracotta cladding on the upper floors is handled well, it is the metal and stonework of the structure's public spaces that are important. The motifs of the elevator doors, mailbox, radiator grilles, and wall and ceiling ornament recall the carefully executed textiles and metalwork of the Americas' earliest civilizations: the wall and ceiling ornament in incised and layered bronze, for instance, suggests a metallic rendering of magnificent feathered robes and hangings. The banded marble walls in the elevator lobby, the abstract patterns of the terrazzo floors, and the intricate metalwork produce an exciting interior of elaborate craftsmanship.

Photographs: Sigurd Fischer

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570 Lexington Avenue, 1931 Cross and Cross, architects

A building noteworthy for its highly original decorative treatment, this mid- town tower became the headquarters of RCA until that company moved to Rockefeller Center several years later. It is now the General Electric Building, and the designs executed for the original occupant continue to express the identity of the new tenant. The terracotta crown of this brick tower, strikingly lighted at night, symbolized the radiowaves and electric power of RCA. These radiating sparks of energy are repeated throughout the structure's decoration, in spandrels and in the friezelike ornament that runs above the first story. The sculpted figures in the crown go as unnoticed as the beautifully detailed clock at the corner of Fifty-first Street and Lexington Avenue.

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Majestic Apartments, 1930 115 Central Park West

Century Apartments, 1931 25 Central Park West

Offices of Irwin S. Chanin, architect

The Majestic, along with a year-younger sister building, the Century, was among the first to use the current office-building design for residential pur- poses. Chanin's use of continuous corner fenestration, horizontal and vertical

banding, and a boldly articulated general design sets these buildings apart from their Beaux-Arts "period" neighbors. These thirty-story structures are closer in spirit to the design of the commercial Chanin Building or to the stark simplicity of Raymond Hood's Daily News and McGraw-Hill buildings, illustrated on the next page.

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i 1**,( Hood's Radiator Building marked the beginning of his career as one of 'iK W'~ New York's most important architects. Simplifying his famous neo-Gothic

design for the Chicago Tribune Tower of 1923, Hood produced a startling contrast in the Radiator Building. The same elegant verticalism was present, which would be later carried to completion in Hood's Daily News Building, but the decoration was drastically reduced. What ornament remained ap- peared gold in color, vividly set off against the black mass of the structure. Hood had not meant his use of dark stone to shock: rather, he disliked the hole-like effect windows produced in conventional buildings, and in black walls they were not as evident.

"! il l Raymond Hood's office building and printing plant for the McGraw-Hill Company entirely reverses the strongly vertical effect that he achieved in the

Bl l ldDaily News Building eight blocks to the east, completed a year earlier. To the stark industrial vocabulary of this design, Hood has added continuous fenestration and blue-green glazed terracotta for the spandrel walls, both running in horizontal bands around the building. The New Yorker, which praised his News building, was highly critical of Hood's new direction,

^ reprimanding him, ". . . the fact remains that a tall building, considered - as a mass, goes up, not sideways" (July 1931).

Daily News Building, 1930 220 East 42 Street

American Radiator - Raymond M. Hood, architect (The extension at the left is

Standard Building, 1924 a later addition) Photograph: N. Y. Daily News

40 West 40 Street

Raymond M. Hood, architect

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Mc6raw-Hill Building, 1931 330 West 42 Street it 9! l i l Hood, Fouilhoux and Godley, _ architects rr l't X 1 Nr l

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