If you love modern architecture, then Feb. 10, 1932 should be an important date on your calendar, for on that date the Museum of Modern Art opened Modern Architecture: International Exhibition.
Feb. 27, 1932 cover by Leonard Dove.
Curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the exhibition introduced 33,000 visitors (during the exhibition’s six-week run) to the “International Style,” an emerging architectural style that would utterly transform New York and thousands of cities around the world after the Second World War. In a catalogue prepared for the exhibition, Johnson and Hitchcock defined what this style was all about:
Architecture critic Lewis Mumford welcomed the exhibition, wryly noting that the “best buildings in New York” at the time were the models and photographs “arranged with such clarity and intelligence” by Philip Johnson on MoMA’s walls. An excerpt:
FORM FOLLOWED FUNCTION…MoMA’s Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, opened on Feb. 10, 1932 in the museum’s first home, New York’s Heckscher building on Fifth Avenue. There was nothing fancy about these gallery spaces, but the exhibits wowed the New Yorkers’sLewis Mumford, including a model of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye at top right. (MoMA)HANDSOME OBJECTS…was how Lewis Mumford described works in the exhibition he singled out for praise, including, from top, Mies van der Rohe’s 1930 Villa Tugendhat, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1929 Jones residence in Tulsa, and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. At left, the cover of the exhibition catalogue. (MoMA/Wikipedia/dezeen.com)
Mumford concluded his review with this bold observation:
ALL ORGANIC…View of Hook of Holland housing complex in Rotterdam, designed by J.J.P. Oud, 1926-1927. (umass.edu)
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Out of the Trenches
Floyd Gibbons (1887 – 1939) was a colorful, fast-talking war correspondent known for his derring-do as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune during World War I (losing an eye in an attempt to rescue an American marine) and later as a radio commentator and narrator of newsreels. His celebrity would even earn him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. For all his death-defying exploits, Gibbons would die at home, of a heart attack, at the tender age of 52.
In his “Notes and Comment” column, E.B. White suggested that Gibbon’s fame had a little help from some friends…
IN HIS ELEMENT…Floyd Gibbons photographed in 1925 while in Morocco covering the Riff War. Seated to the left is journalist and author Rosemary Drachman, who covered the war with Gibbons. (University of Arizona Libraries)
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Love and War
The fourth of seven films Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich made together, Shanghai Express was a critical success (nominated for three Oscars, winning one for cinematography) for Sternberg as well as for Dietrich and Anna May Wong. This pre-code drama was about a notorious woman (Dietrich, who else) who rides a train through the perils of a Chinese civil war with a British captain (Clive Brook) whom she loves. Critic John Mosher takes it from there:
LOOMING EVER LARGER…Marlene Dietrich’s image dominated this poster for Shanghai Express, which starred Dietrich and Anna May Wong (top right) as well as Clive Brook and Warner Oland. Oland, pictured at bottom right with Dietrich, was a (non-Asian) Swedish-American actor most remembered for playing Chinese and Chinese-American characters, including his role as Charlie Chan in 16 films between 1931 and 1937. (IMDB)
Dietrich and Wong were well acquainted when they came together to make Shanghai Express. It was rumored the two had a romantic relationship when Wong visited Europe in 1928, a rumor that tarnished Wong’s public image (but seemed to have little effect on Dietrich’s).
OLD FRIENDS…Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and German filmmaker/actress Leni Riefenstahl at a Berlin ball, 1928. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt. At the time Dietrich, Wong and Riefenstahl were close friends. (granary gallery.com)
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From Our Advertisers
Looking at some advertisements from the Feb. 27 issue…here’s a clip from the back pages of some inexpensive sig ads promoting everything from Broadway to burlesque — Billy Minsky’s was by far the best known burlesque show in Manhattan. Note how the Minsky’s ad included the racy little drawing (hmmm, not for the kiddies) and the postscript at the bottom following “NEW SHOW EVERY MONDAY” — P.S. For New Yorkers and their Rural cousins…
…MoMA wasn’t the only place you could find modern design, as this carpet ad suggested…
…the folks at Alcoa Aluminum were sticking with a more traditional look, even though they were marketing a very modern aluminum chair…you don’t see these much anymore…I mostly remember them reposing in basement rumpus rooms…
…the makers of Nash automobiles were keeping with the times with new “Slip-Streamed” models “with lines and curves suggested by aeronautical design”…
…my father’s first car was a used Nash — something similar to this 1951 Nash Statesman…
…Nash would acquire rival Hudson in 1954 to create American Motors Corporation, run by a man named George Romney (Mitt’s dad), who would make AMC a successful company before turning to politics (AMC would go on to make some truly weird, if not lovable vehicles, most notably the Gremlin)…and we segue into our cartoons with this ad for Sanka decaf coffee, illustrated by the New Yorker’sWilliam Steig…
…Kemp Starrett gave us a little paddy wagon humor…
…Helen Hokinson illustrated a tender moment between father and son…
…and we close with James Thurber, and some wintertime fun…
The New Yorker, via the pen of E.B. White, looked to the metropolis of the future in the Oct. 19, 1929 issue — to a city of glass towers that were ready to move from drafting table to reality. That is, until the stock market crash, just days away, which would put a heavy damper on those visions.
Oct. 19, 1929 cover by Rea Irvin.
White reported in “The Talk of the Town” that several “all-glass” buildings were in the works, including “four apartment houses of glass” designed by Frank Lloyd Wright:
The 1926 Pinaud cosmetics factory designed by Ely Jacques Kahn and Albert-Buchman was poised to get a three-story addition (by Kahn) constructed entirely of glass block, but the market crash likely killed the project. The Depression probably didn’t help Wright’s project either, which would have constituted his first buildings in New York City, and the first with all-glass exteriors.
BEST-LAID PLANS…The 1926 Pinaud factory (left), now home to The School of Visual Arts, did not get its Ely Jacques Kahn-designed glass block addition in 1929; center and at right, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1929 design for three skyscrapers surrounding St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. A single tower of similar design was eventually built in 1956—not in NYC—but out on the prairies in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Click images to enlarge. (collectingvintagecompacts.blogspot.com; 6sqft.com)
Thanks to the Depression, and World War II, Gotham would have to wait 23 years for its houses of glass…
LATE ARRIVALS…Left, the 1952 Lever House, by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of SOM; right, the 1959 Seagram Building, by Mies van der Rohe. (Shorpy/ArchDaily)
and let’s not forget one of the most important post-war modernist statements to rise near the East River…
INTERNATIONAL STYLE…The 505-foot-tall United Nations Secretariat Building, constructed between 1947 and 1952. The building was designed by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. (United Nations)
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Rising From the Ashes
While most architects were looking to the future, some still gazed into the past, and in the case of Whitney Warren, rather bitterly. It was Warren who designed a new library in Louvain, Belgium, to replace one that was burned to ground by invading German troops during World War I. Around three hundred thousand books and a thousand manuscripts were destroyed in the fire, not to mention thousands of civilians who died during the invasion and occupation. The New Yorker seemed ready to forgive, but given the scale of the atrocity just 15 years earlier, one could understand Warren’s obstinance:
And to add insult to injury, the second library designed by Warren was also destroyed by the Germans in the World War II. What stands today is a restoration of that building.
A TALE OF TWO LIBRARIES…Clockwise, from top left, a comparison of the Louvain university library in 1913, and after its destruction by the Germans in 1914 (the postcard photo at top right became almost instantly famous around the world). At bottom, left, the replacement designed by Warren, which was also destroyed by the Germans in World War II. Inset, Whitney Warren, circa 1915. (Associated Press/Wikipedia)
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Belles Lettres? Non!
E.B. White, in his “Notes and Comment,” noted a new trend in the world of letters: celebrity authors. White lamented that the job of writing books and newspaper articles was being usurped by politicians, actors and athletes:
ASPIRING SCRIBBLERS…Former New York Gov. Al Smith, slugger Babe Ruth (dictating to his “ghost” writer) and former President Calvin Coolidge all got in on the act of book publishing. (Amazon/ourgame.mlblogs.com)
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Where Babies Come From
For his “A Reporter at Large” column, Morris Markey, paid a visit to the Lying-In Society of New York, amaternity hospital now known asRutherford Place. I include a few excerpts below to give some idea how times have changed in the past 89 years…
THE EASY PART…Fathers admire their newborns in this circa 1920s photo. At right, the building that housed the Lying-In Society of New York. Inset, one of the cherubs carved into the building’s facade. (Wikipedia)
…imagine, if you will, the scent of ether (then commonly used as an anesthetic) and other drugs as you entered the hospital (no air-conditioning or HVAC to whisk those odors away!)…
NIGHTY NIGHT…Anesthesiologist administers ether and nitrous oxide to a patient before surgery in a Washington hospital, 1922. (Everett Collection)
…not to mention the sweat of anxious fathers banished from delivery or recovery rooms…
WELCOME TO THE WORLD…Nurse learning to care for infants, Philadelphia General Hospital, c. 1930; nurses caring for infants at Long Hospital, Indiana University, in the 1920s. Note row of cribs fastened to the wall, which seemed to be a standard design back then. (upenn.edu/comet.soic.iupui.edu)
…or hospital stays for mothers that averaged 10 days…
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Should Have Stayed Home
Dorothy Parker was dealing with a “baby’ of her in own, in this case a grown man with the conversational skills of brick wall. She related her experience in a casual titled, “But the One on the Right…” An excerpt:
Dorothy Parker, happily at home, in 1924. (New York Public Library)
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More Applause for Helen
The New Yorker continued to shine an approving light on the work of nightclub singer Helen Morgan, this time in her first talking picture, Applause:
FALLING STAR…Helen Morgan (foreground, right) portrayed a fading burlesque star named Kitty Darling in 1929’s Applause, Morgan’s first all-talking picture. (MOMA)
On a sad note, Morgan’s real life had parallels to the film, including the abandonment of a child and a death due to alcohol and drugs — in the film Kitty overdoses on sleeping pills before a show; in real life Morgan would collapse onstage during a Chicago performance of George White’s Scandals of 1942. She would die of cirrhosis of the liver at age 41.
IMITATING LIFE…Helen Morgan as Kitty Darling in Applause. Her best days behind her, Darling becomes an alcoholic who lives in the past. Sadly, Morgan’s real life had parallels to the movie. (art fuse.org)
There was no such applause from the New Yorker for another talkie, the screen adaptation of the popular Ziegfeld Broadway stage show Rio Rita:
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…Lobby Card for Rio Rita, featuring John Boles and Bebe Daniels. (IMDB)
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From Our Advertisers
The Stewart fashion shop on Fifth Avenue featured a series of attractive, modern ads, these two appearing in the Oct. 19 and 26 issues…
According to the terrific website Driving for Deco, “Stewart and Company broke away from the traditional department store layout. Instead of aisle after aisle of display cases the new store comprised many shops. These “shops” were not individually owned as in a present day mall. They were rooms or alcoves devoted to specific merchandise. The design of the shops and floors fell to several different interior design firms…”
Clockwise, from top, artist rending of the Stewart women’s shoe department; Stewart and Company building at 721 5th Avenue; Stewart Millinery Shop. (Vogue/Museum of the City of New York, all via drivingfordeco.com)
The Depression brought an end to Stewart and Company, which went out of business in the spring of 1930. Later that year Bonwit Teller opened in the former Stewart Building. They would close their doors to business 49 years later.
Sadly the building was demolished in 1980 to make way for a monument to a massive ego: Trump Tower.
Demolition of the former Stewart & Company building in 1980. The Rene Paul Chambellan bas-relief sculptures on the building’s facade were supposedly destined to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Developer Donald Trump thought the removal of the sculptures was cost-prohibitive, so they were smashed by jackhammers. (drivingfordeco.com)
…back to the ads, we have another image of a building that is now but a ghost (I am writing this on Halloween)…
The Mayflower Hotel, left, a 1926 building designed by Emery Roth, was demolished in 2005 to make way for Robert A.M. Stern’s luxury condominiums, 15 Central Park West. (nymag.com)
…speaking of luxury, these posh types seem to be almost lulled to sleep by RCA’s “Radiola Super-Heterodyne”…
…and I throw in this ad from Milgrim for its use of the word “patrician” to appeal to the aristocratic yearnings of some New Yorker readers…
…perhaps those patricians would have preferred a move to “aristocratic” Scarsdale, as the middle ad below suggests, or perhaps they would have chosen something more “unusual” in East Orange…
…for reference, here is a Google street view image of 75 Prospect in East Orange, New Jersey…
…and if you were of the upper classes, you probably would have wanted the latest in toothbrushes and “French” mouthwashes…
…on to our illustrators and cartoonists, I. Klein looked in on the elections…
…Peter Arno illustrated the plight of a hapless silent film actor…
…and Helen Hokinson eavesdropped on a canine faux pas…
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.”
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.
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:
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.
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)
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.
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)
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.
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.
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”…
A New Yorker State of Mind 