Bauhaus – A New Yorker State of Mind

Germany’s Anti-Decor

The annual Salon of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris reflected the growing importance of design as a profession, although it was primarily attuned to an affluent urban elite. Then along came the Germans.

June 14, 1930 cover by **Helen Hokinson.**

A radical new wind blew through Paris in 1930 when Bauhaus designers were invited to exhibit in their own special section at the Salon. According to the New Yorker’s Paris correspondent Janet Flanner, the Germans put on a display in their Section Allemande that left some French designers scratching their heads.

KEEPING IT CLEAN…Members of the Bauhaus Werkbund displayed their wares in the *Section Allemande* (German section) of the annual Salon of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris. Clockwise, from top left, examples of reception areas and workspaces by **Walter Gropius;** bottom left, inside pages of the exhibition catalogue for the *Section Allemande.* (journal.eahn.org)

STAIRWAY TO THE FUTURE…A staircase fashioned from galvanized chicken wire, by **Walter Gropius,** on display in *Section Allemande* of the 1930 *Salon of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs.* (journal.eahn.org)

UNKNOWN THEN, COMMON NOW…The *Section Allemande* also featured building models, including this multi-story apartment with communal facilities, designed by **Walter Gropius.** (*Journal of Design History*, 2004)

HOW IT STACKED UP…Rather than dazzle audiences with the latest in posh decor, the Germans confronted *Salon* audiences with their radical approaches to furniture and interior spaces. At left, chairs by **Marcel Breuer** and others; at right, *Light Prop for an Electric Stage* by László Moholy-Nagy. (journal.eahn.org/Artists rights Society)

Many critics and commentators at the time characterized the Salon as a nationalistic showdown between French luxury decor and German efficiency and standardization. Flanner suggested that while the Germans seemed to be throwing out the rule book, the French were accepting modernity at a much slower pace:

MODE DE VIE…Salon entries by French designers had a more art deco bent. Clockwise, from top left, vestibule of a boudoir by **Jean Dunand;** cover of the *Salon’s* catalogue; *Petit Salon* by **André Groult**; a living room by Jules Leleu. (Pinterest/art-utile.blogspot.com)

Of course we know how this story in turns out. In just three years the Nazis would shut down the Bauhaus, scattering its faculty and students abroad, including many to America, where they would find fertile soil to continue their work and eventually spread their design philosophy and aesthetic (for better or worse) across the U.S. and to every corner of the world.

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A Gay Old Time

New Yorkers could escape the summer heat by taking in the latest incarnation of the Garrick Gaities at Broadway’s Guild Theatre. Character and voice actor Sterling Holloway Jr., (1905-1992) best known today as the voice of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh, appeared in all three Garrick Gaiety revues (1925, 1926, 1930), which were staged as benefits for New York’s Theatre Guild. Robert Benchley offered this review:

**Sterling Holloway,** left, with **June Cochran** in *Garrick Gaieties*.

Another familiar face in the Garrick Gaieties was Imogene Coca (1908-2001), a pioneer of early television (with Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows) who is best known today for her role as Aunt Edna in National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983).

KEEP ‘EM LAUGHING…Clockwise, from top left, Scene from the 1930 *Garrick Gaieties* revue, with **Philip Loeb** in the high hat and **Thelma Tipson** standing behind him. Also from left are **Ruth Chorpenning**, **Donald Stewart** and **Ted Fetter**; cover of the program for the 1930 revue; publicity photo from 1983’s *National Lampoon’s Vacation,* with **Imogene Coca** as Aunt Edna at right; Coca, far left, in the chorus line for the 1930 *Garrick Gaieties.* (New York Public Library/IBDB/ifccenter.com/Pinterest)

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Ahh-Choo

A child of New York City’s suburbs, E.B. White developed a love of the natural world thanks to a severe bout of hay fever he had as a child — on the advice of a doctor, he was sent to Maine for the summer. White’s allergies, and his love of country living, would prompt him to buy a summer residence on the Maine Coast in 1933. He and his wife, New Yorker writer and fiction editor Katherine Angell White, would make it their permanent home four years later. In 1930, however, White was still putting up with the bad summer air of the city:

THANK GOD I’M A COUNTRY BOY…**E.B. White** on the beach with his dog **Minnie,** circa 1940s. (Wikipedia)

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It Didn’t Work Then, Either

Some things never change. The Hawley–Smoot Tariff Act, sponsored by Representative Willis C. Hawley and Senator Reed Smoot and approved June 17, 1930, raised tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods. Promoted as a way to protect American businesses and farmers, it put additional strain on international markets already reeling from the effects of the Depression. A resulting trade war severely reduced imports and exports. Writing for “The Wayward Press,” Robert Benchley (under the pen name Guy Fawkes) shared these observations:

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How Dry I Ain’t

Despite his sober demeanor, Henry Hastings Curran (1877-1966) was a champion for those seeking the repeal of Prohibition laws. A longtime city manager in several roles, in 1930 he was president of the Association Against Prohibition Amendment. According to profile writer Henry Pringle, Curran predicted the end of Prohibition in five years. Happily for the wet side, they would get their wish in just three. A brief excerpt from the profile, titled “The Wet Hope.”

**Henry H. Curran** (Underwood and Underwood)

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From Our Advertisers

The Hotel Algonquin ran a series of ads in the back pages of the New Yorker that capitalized on its reputation as a place where stars and other notables gather. And although the Algonquin Round Table was a thing of the past, the hotel made sure to showcase names forever associated with the famed table, including Robert Benchley and the hotel’s manager, Frank Case…

…hoping for some crossover interest from New Yorker readers, William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan (then a publisher of fiction, not sex tips) promoted this fictionalized autobiography of a famous tap dancer in this full page ad…

…introduced in 1924, Kleenex was originally marketed as a cold cream remover, and not as something you would blow your nose into, for goodness sake…

…however, after 1930 Kleenex was being marketed with the slogan “Don’t Carry a Cold in Your Pocket”…

DON’T BLOW IT…Kleenex boxes circa 1925. (Kleenex.com)

…and artist Carl Erickson remained busy making Camel cigarettes look so darn appealing…

…from Macy’s we have a jolly ad illustrated by Helen Hokinson…

…and for our cartoons, Peter Arno, and an awkward moment in a parking lot…

…Reginald Marsh visited Coney Island…

…fresh off his first “Little King” strip for the New Yorker, Otto Soglow returned with this wry observation…

...Garrett Price looked in on a clash of cultures at a golf course (an image that seems quite relevant today)…

…Barbara Shermund found a bit of trouble at home…

…while Art Young offered this woman a choice of her daily mayhem…

Next Time: Robeson’s Othello…

The Shape of Things to Come

It is often observed that when we look to the past we can see our the future. More than 90 years ago, Swiss architect Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) wrote an influential book on modern architecture, Vers une Architecture (1923) that helped to radically change our built environment. Translated into English in 1927 under varying titles (Toward an Architecture, or Towards a New Architecture), the book caught the appreciative eye of New Yorker architecture critic George Chappell, who wrote under the pseudonym “T-Square.”

6a4881d9250d214bed267228a8881e08 — Nov. 12, 1927 cover by Theodore G. Haupt.

Given that most new architecture in Manhattan was adorned in architectural stylings from the past, or gussied up in Jazz Age art deco, Chappell was introducing his readers to something very different, to ideas that would transform their city within two generations.

slide31-720x540 — A SOBER-MINDED THINKER…Le Corbusier at work in his apartment at 20 Rue Jacob, Paris, in the late 1920s. (Brassai Paris)

In his embrace of technology and mass production, Corbusier maintained that houses should be built in standardized forms that allowed for continuous refinement, designed as “machines for living” with the same precision as automobiles and airplanes…

In case you doubt the architect’s fervor, here is Corbusier’s manifesto on mass production included in Towards a New Architecture:

0195a9893bd41cf67cb5cd7b0bacc4f9 — MACHINES FOR LIVING…This two-family structure on the outskirts of Stuttgart, Germany, was designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret in 1927. It was one of the first built manifestations of Corbusier’s *Five Points of a New Architecture*, a manifesto written in 1926. The house set an important precedent for the emerging International Style associated with Germany’s Bauhaus movement. (noordinaryhomes.com)

In Towards a New Architecture, Corbusier wrote that while architecture was stifled by custom and lost in the past (“to send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life…”), engineers were embracing new technologies and building simple, effective and “honest” structures. Rather than rely on past forms or contemporary trends such as art deco, Corbusier said architecture should fundamentally change how humans interact with buildings.

monoskop-org — ALL DRESSED UP WITH NOWHERE TO GO…A photograph from Towards a New Architecture. Corbusier said contemporary architecture was stifled by custom and lost in the past. (monoskop.org)

fig_7_page_29_copy_0 — FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION…Examples of “honest” and functional industrial buildings featured in Towards a New Architecture. (monoskop.org)

Corbusier concluded his book with a moral imperative and an ominous choice for the future: “Architecture or Revolution.” He asserted that the “great disagreement between the modern state of mind…and the stifling accumulation of age-long detritus” would force modern man to live in an “old and hostile environment” and deny him an “organized family life,” ultimately leading to the destruction of the family.

In less than 10 years the Nazis would chase the “degenerate” Bauhaus out of Europe and into the embrace of American academe. In short order Corporate America would adopt Corbusier’s International Style, if imperfectly, but most Americans would prove resistant to making their homes into “machines for living.”

Corbusier would doubtless be shocked (and disappointed) to know that 100 years hence people would still choose to live in mock Tudors and “Tuscan Villas,” especially in the midst of so much advanced technology.

villa-savoye-near-paris-france_le-corbusier_unesco_flickr-august-fischer_dezeen_936_0-1 — HOME SWEET HOME…Villa Savoye near Paris, France. Designed by Le Corbusier in 1928, completed in 1931. Named a World Heritage Site in 2016. (projectoras.com)

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AS HE WAS SAYING…

The new Sherry-Netherland apartment hotel near Central Park was exactly the sort of architecture Corbusier detested. The New Yorker editors in “The Talk of the Town,” however, seemed impressed with its elegant appointments…

SUMPTUOUS…The foyer of the Sherry-Netherland, restored to its former glory in 2014. (Wikipedia)

screen-shot-2017-01-24-at-9-28-00-am — ROOM WITH A VIEW…The Sherry-Netherland penthouse, priced at $35,000 a year in 1927, is now worth more than $100 million.

“Talk” noted that beneath the Sherry-Netherland’s spire the penthouse apartment could be had for $35,000 a year, roughly equivalent to $477,000 today. The building went co-op in the 1950s, and that would have been a good time to buy the penthouse. Today it is valued at more than $100 million.

Poo on Pooh

Dorothy Parker lamented the state of children’s literature in the “Books” section, and expressed her displeasure with A.A. Milne, a former humor writer for Punch who “went quaint” with his Winnie the Pooh stories.

by Howard Coster, half-plate film negative, 1926 — OLD SOFTIE…A. A. Milne with his son Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear, at Cotchford Farm, their home in Sussex, in 1926. Photo by Howard Coster. (npg.org.uk)

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New Game in Town

Niven Busch Jr. wrote about the growing popularity of professional hockey. Tex Rickard’s two-year-old franchise, the New York Rangers, were a major draw at the new Madison Square Garden (they would win the Stanley Cup in their second year), and even Texans were into the sport–Busch noted that a game between Dallas and Fort Worth teams drew 20,000 spectators.

192728_lg — ICE MEN…Stanley Cup winners, the 1927-28 New York Rangers. (rangers.ice.nhl.com)

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And finally, from the world of advertising, here is one in a series of classically themed ads for the McCreery department store…

…and this advertisement for the Marmon 8, an “ideal woman’s car”…

Next time: Mutt & Jeff…

The Movies Take Wing

The First Academy Award for Best Picture went to Wings, a romantic action-war picture directed by William Wellman and featuring Paramount’s biggest star at the time, the “It Girl” Clara Bow and the young Gary Cooper in a role that would launch his Hollywood career.

31163f0a903d36d43f89b8495fe4e9a4 — August 20, 1927 cover by Helen E. Hokinson.

The film was shot on location at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, on a budget of $2 million (about $27 million today). About 300 pilots were involved in filming realistic (and dangerous) air-combat sequences using both mounted and hand-held cameras.

_57942979_wings_pose_hi — LOFTY AMBITIONS…Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Clara Bow in *Wings,* 1927. (BBC)

william-wellman — NO CGI HERE…Director William Wellman, during production of *Wings,* 1927. (New York Times)

photo33chic_0632 — WHERE DID HE BUY HIS INSURANCE?…Stunt pilot Dick Grace specialized in crashing planes for films, and was one of the few stunt pilots who died of old age. (ladailymirror)

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We leave the skies for the trenches in another World War I film–Barbed Wire–that was entertaining New Yorkers in 1927…

barbed-wire-1927-image-10 — LOOKS MORE INTERESTING OUT THERE…Pola Negri watches the Germans in *Barbed Wire*, 1927 (Wikipedia)

The Duncan Sisters were back, this time on the silver screen in an adaptation of their Broadway hit play, Topsy and Eva. Yes, one of the sisters performed in blackface, which was acceptable to white audiences of the time (including New Yorker critics). You can read more about this duo in my recent blog entry, Fifteen Minutes is Quite Enough.

screen-shot-2016-11-21-at-4-24-40-pm — Advertisement for the film, *Topsy and Eva*, 1927. (nilsasther.blogspot.com)

Meanwhile, Paris correspondent Janet Flanner was noting some modern influences in the city thanks to the influence of the German Bauhaus…

002_mallet_stevens_rue_mallet_stevens_paris_theredlist — Rue Mallet Stevens was designed by Paris-based architect, designer and production designer Robert Mallet-Stevens, who founded the Union of Modern Artists (UAM) in 1929. (theredlist.com).

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From the “they couldn’t see it coming” department, this item in “Talk of the Town” caught my eye. We have since learned that carbon emissions are indeed taking a toll on human life…

…and a couple of cartoons from this issue, this one courtesy of Barbara Shermund…

…and this from an unidentified cartoonist (Dussey?) that gives us a glimpse of the world to come thanks to merger of technology and tedious, proud parents…

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And to end on a “Wings” theme, the following week’s issue…

029648b8835cd8a9600d9dc4caf29b32 — August 27, 1927 cover by Theodore G. Haupt.

…offered this advertisment from L. Bamberger & Co. that gave us a tongue-in-cheek glance at the future of aviation…

Next Time: The Wages of Beauty…

Shock of the New

The Roaring Twenties saw astonishing changes to American life, including a dramatic break from the technologies and habits of the past. Icemen gave way to electric refrigerators, broadcast radio brought entertainment and news into living rooms, and Lindbergh made flying something everyone wanted to try.

may-21 — May 21, 1927 cover by Ilona Karasz.

Despite the mechanized horrors of World War I, most people were enchanted by the idea of man and machine coming together to make a better world. In the U.S. the machine-age exuberance was expressed largely in capitalist terms, while many European and Soviet intellectuals saw the machine as integral to the progress of socialism. The Machine-Age Exposition in New York City (May 16-28 at 119 West 57th Street) celebrated all facets through a unique event that brought together architecture, engineering, industrial arts and modern art from a number of nations.

machine-age_exposition_catalogue — Cover of the Exposition Catalogue. (monoskop.org)

screen-shot-2016-09-27-at-10-05-00-am — Scanned illustration of an airplane from the Exposition catalogue.

The exhibition, initiated by Jane Heap of the literary magazine The Little Review, included exhibits from the U.S., Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union. Artists in the exhibition represented a Who’s Who of modernists and futurists — Alexander Archipenko, Marcel Duchamp, Hugh Ferriss, Man Ray and others who celebrated the aural and visual cacophony of the age as well as the gleaming precision of machines and machine-like buildings.

screen-shot-2016-09-28-at-4-38-04-pm — Model of a futuristic parking garage on display at the Exposition. (Scanned image from the Exposition catalogue)

New Yorker writer E.B. White shared in the enthusiasm with this bit for “The Talk of the Town…”

screen-shot-2016-09-27-at-10-04-31-am — The Futurist Hugh Ferriss contributed this design of a glass skyscraper to the Machine Age Exposition. A thing of dreams in the 1920s, such buildings are now commonplace in cities around the world. (Scanned from the Exposition catalogue)

The sleek and glass-walled buildings featured at the Exhibition were fantastic images in 1927, when most large-scale buildings were still being rendered in brick and stone in various neoclassical, federal or gothic styles.

screen-shot-2016-09-28-at-4-36-30-pm — Image from Exposition featured student studio apartments at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. (Scan from the Exposition catalogue)

Little did visitors to the Exposition realize that the radical Bauhaus style on display would become ubiquitous in the U.S. in the second half of their century, thanks not to some new machine age of peace and harmony but rather because of the annihilation of the Second World War and the mass migration from Europe of architects, artists, scientists and other professionals fleeing Nazi oppression.

screen-shot-2016-09-28-at-4-38-35-pm — This image of giant steam boilers from Russia was displayed at the Exposition. (Scan from the Exposition catalogue)

It was also a time when it was believed technology was on the verge of conquering nature, and that the invention of air-conditioning and “Vita-Glass” would create indoor environments with all of the health benefits but none of the discomforts of the outdoors:

hosp-stan-11-01-31 — Children at rest in a “Vita-Glass” pavilion, built in 1927 at Stannington Sanatorium, Northumberland. Used primarily in the treatment of those with pulmonary TB, the glass was designed to allow ultraviolet rays to penetrate easily while protecting patients from the elements. (northumberlandarchives.com)

The invention of sulfa drugs and antibiotics were still a few years away, so health providers were excited about the possibilities of these artificial environments.

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In the “A Reporter at Large” column, Russell Owen wrote about the intrepid flyers who were vying to become the first to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. He began the piece with a tribute to French ace pilot Charles Nungesser and his one-eyed wartime buddy François Coli, who disappeared during their May 8 attempt to fly from Paris to New York.

carte_postale-nungesser_et_coli-1927 — A 1927 postcard commemorating Nungesser, Coli and their airplane, *The White Bird (L’Oiseau Blanc).*

Owen also wrote about those who would soon be taking the same daring leap into “the illimitable terror of space”…

Although Lindbergh had yet to accomplish his feat, he had already been singled out as a loner and a bit of an odd duck:

Lindbergh preparing for his transatlantic flight. (Long Island Press)

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Editors of “Talk of the Town” also checked in on famed dancer Isadora Duncan, her eldest daughter Anna, and Isadora’s “amazing dancing family…”

anna-duncan-dans-la-berceuse-choregraphie-d-isadora-duncan-musique-frederic-chopin-photo-arnold-genthe-1920-courtesy-of-tanzarchiv-koln-allemagne — Anna Duncan dances *La Berceuse,* choreographed by Isadora Duncan with music by Frédéric Chopin, in 1920. Photo by Arnold Genthe. (Tanzarchiv, Cologne, Germany)

isadora-s-dancers-by-frances-benjamin-johnston-1864-1952-photographer-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons — *Isadora’s Dancers*, by photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. (Wikimedia Commons)

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And finally, an excerpt of a poem contributed by Marion Clinch Calkins–who often wrote humorous rhymes for the New Yorker under the pen name Majollica Wattles. Here she riffs on Horace’s “poetry of pleasure…”

Next Time: The Flying Fool…