| Top Ten NYC Architecture |
top ten Art Deco buildings |
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For a more complete list, see
Art Deco
(1925-1940) |
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| 1 |
Empire State Building
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architect
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Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, William F. Lamb as chief designer |
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location
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350 Fifth Ave., bet. W33 and W34 |
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date
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1930-1931 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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Steel frame 102 floors, 1252
feet, 381 meters high. Effective use of setbacks to emphasize tower.
The building is clad in Indiana limestone and granite, with the mullions
lined in shiny aluminium. There are in all 6,500 windows, with spandrels
sandblasted to blend their tone to that of the windows, visually creating
the vertical striping on the facade. The windows and spandrels are also
flush with the limestone facing, an aesthetic and economic decision. |
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type
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Office Building |
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Click here for an
Empire State Building gallery |
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in New York
City, New York at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its
name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the
world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931
until construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in
1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire
State Building became for the second time, the tallest building in New York
City.
The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil
Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its
street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks
Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of
Estimate.[5] It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. In 2007,
it was ranked number one on the List of America's Favorite Architecture
according to the AIA. The building is owned by Harold Helmsley's company and
managed by its management/leasing division Helmsley-Spear. |
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| 2 |
Chrysler Building
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architect
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William Van Alen |
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location
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405 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street |
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date
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1928-1930 |
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style
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Art Deco
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construction
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77 floors, 319.5m (1048 feet) high, 29961
tons of steel, 3,826,000 bricks, near 5000 windows. Cost: $ 20,000,000
The building is clad in white brick and dark gray brickwork is used as
horizontal decoration to enhance the window rows. The eccentric
crescent-shaped steps of the spire (spire scaffolding) were made of
stainless steel (or rather, similar nirosta chrome-nickel steel) as a
stylized sunburst motif, and underneath it steel gargoyles, depicting
American eagles (image), stare over the city. Sculptures modeled after
Chrysler automobile radiator caps (image) decorate the lower setbacks, along
with ornaments of car wheels.
The three storeys high, upwards tapering entrance lobby has a triangular
form, with entrances from three sides, Lexington Avenue, 42nd and 43rd
Streets. The lobby is lavishly decorated with Red Moroccan marble walls,
sienna-coloured floor and onyx, blue marble and steel in Art Deco
compositions. The ceiling murals, painted by Edward Trumbull, praise the
modern-day technical progress -- and of course the building itself and its
builders at work. The lobby was refurbished in 1978 by JCS Design Assocs.
and Joseph Pell Lombardi. |
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type
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Office Building |
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Click here
for Chrysler Building gallery |
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| 3 |
Rockefeller Center |
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Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres
between 48th and 51st Streets in New York City. Built by the Rockefeller family,
it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning between Fifth Avenue
and Seventh Avenue. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. It is
the largest privately held complex of its kind in the world, and an
international symbol of modernist architectural style blended with capitalism. |
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| 4 |
General Electric Building |
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architect
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Cross & Cross |
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location
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570 Lexington Avenue at 51st St. |
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date
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1929-1931 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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194,6m / 640.0ft, 50 floors salmon
brick, terra-cotta
The base is of rose-coloured granite, while the set-back mass above and
the tower shaft are clad in glazed tan brick.
The undoubtedly most striking feature of this 195 m tall building is its,
indeed, flamboyant top, a curious mixture of Gothic spires in limestone and
brickwork with wavy, filigree style decoration and lightning bolt motifs,
depicting the electricity of radio transmission waves sent by the Radio
Corporation of America. At night this "crown" of the building is illuminated
from within, making the top look like a giant torch.
The entrance lobby has a vaulted ceiling of aluminium plating with
sunburst motifs and walls of light pink marble. The lamp fixtures are of
aquamarine-colored glass.
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type
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Office Building |
The General Electric Building is a historic 50-floor skyscraper in Midtown New
York City, United States, at 570 Lexington Avenue (southwest corner of Lexington
and 51st Street). Originally known as the "RCA Victor Building" when designed by
Cross and Cross in 1931, and sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion
with the later GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Center.
It backs up to the low Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue
and shares the same salmon brick color. But from Lexington, the building is an
insistently tall 50-floor stylized Gothic tower with its own identity, a classic
Art Deco visual statement of suggested power through simplification. The base
contains elaborate, generous masonry, architectural figural sculpture, and at on
the corner above the main entrance, a conspicuous corner clock with the curvy GE
logo and a pair of silver disembodied forearms. The crown of the building is a
dynamic-looking burst of Gothic tracery, which is supposed to represent radio
waves, and is lit from within at night. |
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| 5 |
Barclay-Vesey Building |
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Built in 1923-1927 for the New York Telephone Company and named after
the streets that border it to the north and south.
The 152-meter building is considered to be the first Art Deco skyscraper and its
designers were also awarded the Architectural League of New York's gold medal of
honor for 1927 for fine expression of the new industrial age.
The form of the building was decided upon after studies of relation between land
cost (large ground area) and construction cost (a tall building): a 32-storey
design was chosen as the most economical. The massive form with floors of 4,830
m² without any light courts was possible because the telephone installations
didn't require natural light. The frame of the building is constructed in steel
and concrete, with the sturdy floor plates designed to support the original
mechanical switching centers.
Drawing from Saarinen's Chicago Tribune competition entry, the brick-clad
building is topped with a short, sturdy tower, with the vertical piers ending on
"battlements" on top and with sculptural ornaments on the setbacks. The
entrances are decorated with bronze bas-reliefs with a main theme of bells, the
symbol of the Bell Telephone Company (image). A neo-Romanesque vaulted arcade
with ceiling murals runs the whole length of the Vesey Street side. |
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| 6 |
New Yorker Hotel
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architect
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Sugarman & Berger |
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location
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481 Eighth Ave., bet. W34 and W35. |
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date
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1930 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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three-storey limestone base, a set-back
tower of brown brick |
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type
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Hotel |
The 43-story New Yorker Hotel was built in 1929 and opened its doors on January
2, 1930. Much like its contemporaries, the Empire State Building (opened in
1931) and the Chrysler Building (opened in 1930), the New Yorker is designed in
the Art Deco style that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. The building's
pyramidal, set-back tower structure largely resembles that of the Empire State
Building, which lies just a couple blocks due east on 34th Street. For many
years, the New Yorker Hotel was New York's largest hotel.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the hotel hosted a number of popular Big Bands
while notable figures such as Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford and even Fidel Castro
stayed here. The inventor Nikola Tesla spent the last ten years of his life in
near-seclusion in Suite 3327 (where he also died), largely devoting his time to
feeding pigeons while occasionally meeting dignitaries. However, by the late
1960s, with both the passing of the Big Band era as well as the construction of
more modern hotels, the hotel slowly lost profitability and closed its doors in
April 1972.
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| 7 |
Chanin Building
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architect
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Sloan & Robertson (René Chambellan and Jacques L. Delamarre for the
lobby and the ornementation) |
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location
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122 East 42nd Street (southwest corner of Lexington Avenue) |
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date
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1927-1929 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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Steel frame. 56 floors, 207m
(680 feet) high. Cost: $14,000,000
The steel frame is clad in buff brick and terra cotta and it is set back
in conformance with the 1916 Zoning Law. The facade illustrates the
introduction of colored glass, stone and metal on the exterior of tall
buildings. Materials such as bronze, Belgian marble and terra-cotta are used
here in an inventive and exuberant way. |
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type
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Office Building |
The Chanin Building is a skyscraper located at 122 East 42nd Street in New York
City. Built by Irwin S. Chanin in 1929, it is 56 stories high, reaching 197.8
metres excluding the spire (207.3 metres/680 feet including spire). It was
designed by Sloan & Robertson in the Art Deco style, [1] and incorporates
architectural sculpture by Rene Paul Chambellan. When originally completed, the
50th floor had a silver-and-black high-brow movie theater. This floor and the
51st are now offices joined by a stairwell instead. Initially a dominant
landmark in the midtown skyline, the building had an open air observatory on the
54th floor. [2] Having been surpassed in height by a number of buildings, most
notably, the Chrysler Building located across the street, the observatory has
been long closed. |
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| 8 |
One
Wall
Street |
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In contrast to the American Surety Building, where height is minimized
by the subdivision of its facade, the design of the Irving Trust building has an
insistent verticality which emphasizes its tall form. This set back skyscraper
is modeled as if it was chiselled out of a single piece of stone and it is a
good example of the Art Deco style popular in the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s.
The building's pointed windows echo the Gothic details of Trinity Church across
the street, and its Art Deco interior is one of the finest in New York City.
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| 9 |
Majestic
Apartments |
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architect
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Jacques Delamarre
Like the Century Apartments, the Majestic was developed by Irwin S. Chanin
(who was also behind the Chanin Building in Midtown).
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location
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115 Central Park West
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date
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1930-1931 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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The base is of limestone, with the upper facade clad in light brown brick.
The designer from Chanin's namesake building, René Chambellan, designed the
patterned brickwork of the facade. The main mass below the setbacks and
towers has columnless corners which form glazed solariums within the corner
apartments.
The wall on the slightly protruding tower facades extends as piers to the
top to form riblike protrusions. On the west side, the wings of the tower
have similar, albeit curved, tops of true Art Deco nature.
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type
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Apartment Building |
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| 10 |
American Standard (Radiator) Building
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architect
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Raymond Hood & André Fouilhoux |
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location
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40 West 40th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues, south of Bryant Park)
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date
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1923-1924 |
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style
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Art Deco, neo-gothic |
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construction
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Steel frame, 23 stories,
102.7 m (337 feet) high
The black brickwork on the facade was chosen to lessen the visual contrast
between the walls and the windows and thus give the tower an effect of
solidity and massiveness. The Gothic-style pinnacles and the terra-cotta
friezes on the edges of the setbacks are coated with gold.
The base is clad in bronze plating and black granite. There are carved
allegories, symbolizing the transformation of matter into energy, quite
appropriate for a heater company. The entrance lobby is decorated with black
marble and mirrors.
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type
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Office Building |
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