The development of the elevator and steel-framed buildings enabled the construction of buildings far taller than ever before-the skyscraper. In New York City specifically, zoning regulations had major impacts on the design of its buildings. The result was that the amount of office space in New York City increased by 92% in the back half of the 1920s. : 42 Builders tore down twice as many buildings as went up, with the new buildings occupying two or more old lots. The real estate market was so frenetic that old buildings were regularly torn down for new construction after standing for only a few years. An exploding population, flush economic times, cheap credit, and lax zoning combined to encourage a building boom. : 42Īrt Deco came into style just as New York itself was being rapidly transformed. : 8–9 : 4 In America, Art Deco architecture would take on different forms in different regions of the country, influenced by local culture, laws, and tastes. : 6 Other influences included German expressionism, the Austrian Secession, art nouveau, cubism, and the ornament of African and Central and South American cultures. Their resulting reports helped spread the style to America. While the United States would not officially participate, Americans-including New York City architect Irwin Chanin : 55 -visited the exposition, : 47 and the government sent a delegation to the expo. One of architect and illustrator Hugh Ferriss' illustrations, demonstrating an approach to fulfilling New York City's setbacks requirements that would come to define the city's Art Deco buildings.Īmerican Art Deco has its origins in European arts, especially the style moderne popularized at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts from which Art Deco draws its name ( Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes). Today, many of New York's Art Deco buildings are protected by historic preservation laws, while others have been lost to development or neglect. The lull in construction during World War II and rise of the International Style led to the end of new Art Deco in the city.Īfter falling out of favor and suffering from neglect during the city's downturn in the latter half of the 20th century, New York's Art Deco has been reappraised among its most treasured and recognizable buildings are the Art Deco Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, and Art Deco skyscrapers formed the core of the city's skyline. First defined by the colorful, lavishly-decorated skyscrapers of Manhattan, the Great Depression and changing tastes pushed Art Deco to more subdued applications in the 1930s. Their proliferation fueled by the Roaring Twenties and commercial speculation, Art Deco buildings in the city range in size and sophistication from towering skyscrapers and office buildings to modest middle-class housing and municipal buildings. The architecture of the period was influenced not just by decorative arts influences from across the world, but also local zoning regulations. The style is found in government edifices, commercial projects, and residential buildings in all five boroughs. The 1973 opening of the iconic World Trade Center coincides the building of other inferior block like buildings along the periphery of lower Manhattan, notably at Water St., which destroy the hill like collection of spires.Clockwise from top left: The spire of the Chrysler Building, one of Manhattans's most recognizable skyscrapers Terra cotta "frozen fountain" motif on the Park Plaza Apartments in the Bronx entrance of Madison Gardens apartments in Brooklyn and the interior of the Marine Air Terminal in Queens.Īrt Deco architecture flourished in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s, before largely disappearing after World War II. I’ve picked this collection to demonstrate these, from the earliest known photograph of New York in the 1840s which shows the Upper West side as rural, to the Brooklyn Bridge dominated skyline of the mid nineteenth century.Ī postcard from 1904 is labeled ‘New York Skyscrapers’ but shows very few of what we would call skyscrapers today, consisting of the early steel framed buildings epitomized by the flatiron.īetween the 1920’s and 1930’s the machine age skyscraper city of masonry-clad, art deco splendor grows at breakneck speed and remains similar in texture until the emergence of curtain wall, glass and steel buildings in the 1950s, after the completion of the Seagram in 1958. New York, a city which is defined by its skyline, existed as a metropolis well before skyscrapers and has gone through several distinct architectural phases.