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Once the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Woolworth Building is noted for its striking but incongruous synthesis of Beaux-Arts architecture, fanciful Gothic ornamentation, and audacious steel-framed engineering. Here, in the first history of this great urban landmark, Gail Fenske argues that its design serves as a compelling lens through which to view the distinctive urban(...)
The skyscraper and the city: the woolworth building and the making of modern New York
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Once the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Woolworth Building is noted for its striking but incongruous synthesis of Beaux-Arts architecture, fanciful Gothic ornamentation, and audacious steel-framed engineering. Here, in the first history of this great urban landmark, Gail Fenske argues that its design serves as a compelling lens through which to view the distinctive urban culture of Progressive-era New York. Fenske shows here that the building’s multiplicity of meanings reflected the cultural contradictions that defined New York City’s modernity. For Frank Woolworth—founder of the famous five-and-dime store chain—the building served as a towering trademark, for advocates of the City Beautiful movement it suggested a majestic hotel de ville, for technological enthusiasts it represented the boldest of experiments in vertical construction, and for tenants it provided an evocative setting for high-style consumption. Tourists, meanwhile, experienced a spectacular sightseeing destination and avant-garde artists discovered a twentieth-century future. In emphasizing this faceted significance, Fenske illuminates the process of conceiving, financing, and constructing skyscrapers as well as the mass phenomena of consumerism, marketing, news media, and urban spectatorship that surround them. As the representative example of the skyscraper as a “cathedral of commerce,” the Woolworth Building remains a commanding presence in the skyline of lower Manhattan, and the generously illustrated Skyscraper and the City is a worthy testament to its importance in American culture.
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Aalto and America
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The internationally renowned Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) created several landmarks of modern design in the United States. The first, the Finland Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939, introduced his pioneering style to the country and established his reputation among his American peers. Subsequent designs produced in the United States(...)
Aalto and America
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The internationally renowned Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) created several landmarks of modern design in the United States. The first, the Finland Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939, introduced his pioneering style to the country and established his reputation among his American peers. Subsequent designs produced in the United States marked major turning points in his evolving position as an architect. His commissioned project for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Baker House dormitory (completed 1949) features an undulating facade of red brick, a material that references the building's Boston surroundings. Aalto's fan-shaped plan for the Mount Angel Abbey Library (completed 1970) in St. Benedict, Oregon, his consummate exploration of the library type, capitalizes on the local terrain and the use of natural light. Aalto's designs had a lasting impact on American modernism, but his experiences in America also profoundly influenced his own stylistic development. Aalto and America is a detailed survey of this beneficial relationship, with contributions by fifteen experts who explore these key designs in relation to larger themes in international politics, architectural culture, housing research, and modern criticism and design.
Architecture Monographs