MCMXXIX.
It was a very good year.
To celebrate a year of superlatives, the Boston Society of Architects put out a yearbook.
In it, you could find photos of that year?s local triumphs, such as what reigns to this day as the world?s handsomest garage:
Motor Mart.
Under construction, the Empire State Building was all the rage. It spawned stumpy little knock-offs, such as the world?s smallest skyscraper:
Granite Trust, Quincy.
Or the world?s most ambitious-looking department store:
Sears Roebuck, now Landmark Center. This went from department store to department store, though since the departments are now owned by diverse chains, it?s called a shopping center.
Some of these masterpieces were still under construction, so the BSA showed them in renderings. The renderer soft-pedaled this building?s most interesting feature ?the acute angle of its nearest corner:
But the real action then, as now, was in New York, so the Boston Society?s yearbook printed a hefty selection of that year?s blockbusters from Gotham. Like Boston?s stumps seen in a funhouse mirror, New York?s towers impressed with their slenderness. Truly they soared:
Irving Trust.
Panhellenic (now Beekman) Tower.
Barclay-Vesey Building, damaged 9/11/2001, but since restored.
1929?s skyscrapers were pretty slender in Chicago too:
It was the apogee of the Deco style. Never have modern buildings been so sumptuously ornamented. Three New York entrances from 1929:
Chanin Building.
Deco ornament extended to interiors. It was the last great age of craftsmanship
Waiting in the wings were the killjoys. After the Depression came and went, new (and even some old) buildings were stripped bare by the puritanical strictures of Bauhaus Modernism ?cagily re-branded as ?The International Style?. The true visionaries were 1929?s dreamers, who ?inspired by Hugh Ferriss?concocted vast confections for their future city:
This one must have been seen by Cesar Pelli. He recycled the basic design for Hong Kong, Jersey City and Charlotte:
Boston?s own visionary, Harold Kellogg, produced an apparition of unfathomable vastness with his deceptively small Batterymarch Building, Boston?s greatest from this era:
To see how much Kellogg?s renderer missed the point, compare the photo above with this post's first image.
.
It was a very good year.
To celebrate a year of superlatives, the Boston Society of Architects put out a yearbook.
In it, you could find photos of that year?s local triumphs, such as what reigns to this day as the world?s handsomest garage:
Motor Mart.
Under construction, the Empire State Building was all the rage. It spawned stumpy little knock-offs, such as the world?s smallest skyscraper:
Granite Trust, Quincy.
Or the world?s most ambitious-looking department store:
Sears Roebuck, now Landmark Center. This went from department store to department store, though since the departments are now owned by diverse chains, it?s called a shopping center.
Some of these masterpieces were still under construction, so the BSA showed them in renderings. The renderer soft-pedaled this building?s most interesting feature ?the acute angle of its nearest corner:
But the real action then, as now, was in New York, so the Boston Society?s yearbook printed a hefty selection of that year?s blockbusters from Gotham. Like Boston?s stumps seen in a funhouse mirror, New York?s towers impressed with their slenderness. Truly they soared:
Irving Trust.
Panhellenic (now Beekman) Tower.
Barclay-Vesey Building, damaged 9/11/2001, but since restored.
1929?s skyscrapers were pretty slender in Chicago too:
It was the apogee of the Deco style. Never have modern buildings been so sumptuously ornamented. Three New York entrances from 1929:
Chanin Building.
Deco ornament extended to interiors. It was the last great age of craftsmanship
Waiting in the wings were the killjoys. After the Depression came and went, new (and even some old) buildings were stripped bare by the puritanical strictures of Bauhaus Modernism ?cagily re-branded as ?The International Style?. The true visionaries were 1929?s dreamers, who ?inspired by Hugh Ferriss?concocted vast confections for their future city:
This one must have been seen by Cesar Pelli. He recycled the basic design for Hong Kong, Jersey City and Charlotte:
Boston?s own visionary, Harold Kellogg, produced an apparition of unfathomable vastness with his deceptively small Batterymarch Building, Boston?s greatest from this era:
To see how much Kellogg?s renderer missed the point, compare the photo above with this post's first image.
.
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