Architecture

ARCHITECTURE

Art Deco

The 1930s opened with some of the most dramatic applications of art deco to modern skyscrapers. The art deco style originated in Europe and became widely popular in the United States in the 1920s. Characterized by its geometric patterns, surface ornamentation, and rich materials, art deco styling could be found in entrance portals and elevator lobbies, where the display of fancy metalwork, colored marbles, and contrasting wood veneers could be fully seen and appreciated. Architects William Van Alen, along with John and Donald Parkinson, among others, took art deco to new heights—literally. Van Alen's crown for the Chrysler Building in New York (1928-1930) terminated in a needlelike spire that rose from diminishing semicircles, with each circle set with a zigzag of triangular windows. Recognizing that it was the top of the skyscraper that gave it a distinctive identity, Van Alen broke new ground.

Functionalism and Constructivism

The influence of art deco on American architecture declined by the early 1930s and was replaced by a new conception of beauty and design inspired by the machine and technology. Constructivism in architecture originated in Moscow just after World War I with the work of two brothers, Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner. Drawing from Cubism in painting and sculpture, constructivism emphasized spatial relationships and viewed geometric forms as essential structures. They stripped their designs of ornamentation and simplified their buildings to emphasize their structure and form. All traditional accessories of a building, such as ornament and style, were discarded to make the structure and form stand out. The aesthetic effect of a building, then, depended on the formal relations of mass and space resulting from the most efficient construction. Constructivism was part of the broader movement of functionalism, which claimed that any object that was efficiently made for its purpose was both aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian. In functionalism beauty followed form and efficiency. The efficient machine was cited as the standard of excellence.

The Bauhaus

Another group of architects took different inspiration from technology and the machine. Walter Gropius, the German founder of the Bauhaus design school, developed a new philosophy that radically influenced modern architecture. He believed that architects should be artists as well as engineers. The distinction between artist and craftsman, he believed, no longer applied to the modern age. Gropius contended that architects should be trained as artists and should work in a wide variety of materials to gain an appreciation of their qualities. He also believed architects should study theories of form and design. By joining arts and handicrafts with applied engineering, architects could reinvent architectural form for the modern technological age.

Buildings for a Mass Society

Fascinated with the utopian implications of the machine, Gropius sought to promote social unity through functionalist designs. He dreamed of inventing a socialist architecture in which simple utilitarian structures could be cheaply mass-produced. He and his students experimented in producing inexpensive buildings of quality, simple in design and utilitarian in form, for people of all classes. With the threat of war growing, Gropius left Germany and immigrated to Chicago in 1937. He eventually settled in Boston, where he headed the Harvard University School of Architecture. From Harvard his Bauhaus philosophy and training directly shaped American architecture.

Frank Lloyd Wright

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was also fascinated by the idea of building affordable houses for the masses. Yet he approached the problem from an entirely different point of view than did Gropius and other Bauhaus architects. Wright's guiding principle, about of the ground, into the light," was organic and drew predominantly from nature for its inspiration. According to Wright, architects must design buildings and homes to fit both their natural environments and the needs of their occupants. Buildings, he believed, must be as individual as their owners.

Broadacre City

With the Depression undercutting much of his business, Wright turned his attention in the 1930s to urban decentralization, a problem he felt plagued American cities. Disillusioned with urban sprawl, he drew up plans for Broadacre City, a model suburb of planned construction and uniform design. The buildings of Broadacre were to be geometric, deceptively simple, and low to the ground, with Wright's signature overhanging roofs. They would mold to the shape of the land on which they sat or to their environments, whether marked by a river, lake, or hillside. The plans of Broad-acre reflected Wright's vision of a democratic society in harmony with nature. Gas stations would be community centers; parks and sports fields would abut government offices and businesses. Houses would come in all sizes, but, reflecting Wright's populism, every family would own its own.

"Usonia."

Wrights house designs constitute some of his most significant architectural work. Beginning in 1936 he applied the term Usonia to a series of small houses that many viewed as realizing the impossible: distinctive architecture at a modest price, Usonia encapsulated the values of Broadacre. Its best-known example was the Herbert Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin (1937). Anticipating prefabrication, Wright simplified the construction by standardizing the whole plan on a modular two-by-four-foot grid. The living and dining rooms opened to the kitchen, giving the interior of the house a new spaciousness and a sense of community. The bedrooms, on the other hand, were closed and smaller, opening off a narrow hallway. The total cost of the house, including Wright's fee, was less than six thousand dollars. The Jacobs House became a prototype for a series of houses Wright built in the 1930s. The significance of the Jacobs House was not only that in it Wright realized all his technical innovations but also that these innovations were quietly integrated into a plan and lifestyle that matched the changed social habits of the late 1930s. The values of informality, simplicity, and community were amply manifest in the Jacobs House.

Fallingwater

Fallingwater (1936), another of Wright's houses, is one of the most famous houses of the twentieth century. His concept of organic architecture guided the design. Poised over a rocky stream in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, the house incorporated both modern and "natural" aspects of contemporary life. The rocks that form the waterfall also structure the house. Wide cement porches lean over the falls, tracing the movement of the water in horizontal planes as modern as any building in the 1930s. Vertical slabs rise and cross the horizontal porches and tower among the trees around the falls. The incorporation of glass as a wall structure sent light deep into the interior. Many critics still view Fallingwater as one of the freshest monuments of modern architecture.

THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

On May Day 1931 New York City celebrated the opening of what was called the eighth wonder of the world, the 1,248-foot-high Empire State Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, the tallest building in the world. Former governor Alfred E. Smith, president of the Empire State Building Corporation, presided. Guests of honor included Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mayor Jimmy Walker, and architect R. H. Shreve of Shreve Lamb and Harmon, who had designed the structure. Shreve reminded the audience that the Empire State Building weighed 600 million pounds, but due to its placement on 220 columns it had the impact on the earth beneath it of only a forty-five-foot-high pile of rock. Col. Paul Starrett, president of Starrett Brothers and Eken, who had built the Empire State Building, praised the citizens of New York, who had been willing "to convert dollars to structures and keep the procession of structures moving." President Herbert Hoover in Washington threw the switch that symbolically lit the building, and then more than two thousand invited guests traveled to the 102nd-floor observatory.

Opening as it did in the depths of the Great Depression, the Empire State Building was a testimony to "the vast energy that threw [it] upward and that is certain to reassert itself," as The New York Times observed. The reassertion was anxiously awaited by the Empire State Building Corporation, who had rented only just over a quarter of the two million feet of office space available at the time of the opening; full occupancy was not attained until the late 1940s. The $40,948,900 building (including land where the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel had formerly stood) was constructed often million bricks, 2.5 million feet of electric wire, fifty miles of radiator pipe, and 3,500 miles of telephone and telegraph cable. It had sixty-seven elevators traveling in seven miles of elevator shaft and consumed some 35 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. Throughout the years the building was modified as needs required, and in 1995, a television tower having added 222 feet to its height, it remained the fifth tallest building in the world.

Source:

Theodore James Jr., The Empire State Building (New York: Harper 6c Row, 1975).

The Johnson Wax Building

Another masterpiece in modern architecture was Wright's designs for the Johnson Wax Company Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin (1936-1939), an eclectic blend of organic form with modern materials. The curved bands of brick walls and glass-tube windows gave the building the look of a modern steel train. Inside, the open central hall was punctuated with fifty-four white concrete supports, reinforced with metal mesh, that elegantly tapered downward to a slim nine-inch-diameter base. The large concrete disks on top of the supports formed the roof, with the spaces between the disks filled with tubular opaque glass. He called it "as inspiring a place to work as any cathedral was in which to worship." To maintain its conceptual integrity Wright designed everything, down to the chairs and desks that carpeted the grand hallway. By 1938 Wright's international reputation had attracted many students who wanted to learn under him. He responded by establishing an architectural fellowship where students could apprentice with him. Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, became the home of several of his disciples and his winter home.

A New Home for the Met

Rockefeller Center in Manhattan was planned as the first skyscraper city, and it stands as a major architectural achievement. The concept was born in the late 1920s when the directors of the Metropolitan Opera decided they needed to a new home. MET supporters, investment banker Otto Kahn chief among them, developed the concept of a arts center that included a complex of retail shops on the site of their new theater. They identified the area bounded by Forty-Eighth and Fifty-First Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues as the location for the center and enlisted the financial support of John D. Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men in the nation. Rockefeller began buying property in the area, including a large tract from Columbia University, and planning construction. Then came the stock market crash. The Metropolitan Opera Company decided the costs were too great for them and they with-drew, leaving Rockefeller with promising plans for an arts complex, a lot of property in what was then a rundown part of the city, and the need the capitalize on his investment.

Rockefeller's Center

Rockefeller's decision to proceed with the project delighted city officials, who welcomed the jobs and the business activity in the darkest days of the Depression. He decided to build a small city, consisting of living space, office space, restaurants, commercial shops, and theaters. Due to a zoning regulation that tied the height of new buildings to the amount of free ground space on the property, architects were able to design skyscrapers as part of the center, arranged around a large mall. The original Rockefeller Center, built between 1932 and 1940, included thirteen buildings. The seventy-story RCA Building, the British Empire Building, the International Building, the Associated Press Building, and Radio City Music Hall are among the most impressive of the original structures. In the view of many, the public areas of Rockefeller Center are the most enlightened aspect of the design. Public gardens in the large plaza and display areas for art, including murals and sculptures, demonstrate the concept of Rockefeller Center as a people's complex that departs from strict utilitarianism.

Government Funding

In an unprecedented attempt to revive the economy President Franklin D. Roosevelt worked for the passage of several acts that poured money from the treasury into various public works. For architects, the bill that had the most direct effect was the formation in 1932 of the Public Works Administration (PWA), led by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. The PWA authorized $3.3 billion for the construction of roads, public buildings, and other projects. By the end of the decade the PWA had spent more than $4.2 billion building roads, schools, post offices, bridges, court-houses, and other public buildings around the country.

WPA

Government-sponsored architecture revived a neoclassical vernacular in the United States. Deemed the most suitable for institutional buildings and monuments, the classical designs of government-funded construction visually enhanced the Enlightenment values of democracy. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) supported the creation of several buildings, bridges, and monuments across the country, including the Philadelphia Court House (1934), the United States Naval Hospital (1935), the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (1934), the New York Triborough Bridge system (1936), the Cincinnati Railway Terminal (1933), the North Dakota state capitol (1934), and in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Supreme Court Building (1935), the Jefferson Memorial (1937), and the National Gallery of Art (1937). Many of the buildings were decorated by federally commissioned works of art through a separate fund set aside for this purpose.

Sources:

Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (Washington, D.C , & London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991);

Marcus Whiffen and Frederick Koeper, American Architecture 1607-1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981).