I’m a big fan of Art Deco. To my mind it’s the perfect style for buildings – bold simple shapes, rather than fussy, over-involved detail, yet with enough form and decoration to please the eye (I’m not a fan of brutalist architecture). To my mind the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building are perfect.
Even in smaller scales and in household items, I admire the simple blockiness of Art Deco over the flowing sinuous forms of, say, Art Nouveau. When I was growing up, I went to the movie theater downtown, the lobby of which was built in Art Deco style. Long after it closed as a movie theater, the entrance and the lobby (which you could see through the front doors) remained, and every now and then I’d stare at it. Eventually, someone bought the lobby, disassembled it, and took it away, leaving a stark functional space. And now they’re in the process of rebuilding the rest of the structure.
If you still want to see an Art Deco movie theater, one of the biggest ever built is still in use (although not to show movies) – Radio City Music Hall in New York City
I like a lot of different architectures–even some Brutalist–but Art Deco is my favorite. The Boston area doesn’t have much AD; the Landmark Center is one of the best and it’s not much. The Coolidge Corner Theater (just outside of Boston in Brookline) has a great AD interior.
One of my favorite AD interiors is in NY’s Rockefeller Center. Some of the lobbies are so over over the top with brass and gold.
I also initally dislike a lot of non-architectural Art Deco because it looks like it can’t decide whether it wants to be Art Nouveau or Modernist, but after the initial shock I am able to evaluate it more on its merits.
As far as architecture goes, besides Victorian Gothic, I like Art Deco more than all previous styles. But as much as AD can be minimal especially in its Streamline Moderne incarnation, I prefer the more minimal styles of Modernism such as Brutalism.
I’d love to wear a nice art deco wristwatch along with my fedora.
Sadly, I am too attached to my Apple watch–so much so that my nice Swiss watches rarely see the light of day.
In my opinion, the Chrysler Building out-Decod the Empire State Building.
The finishing touches like the eagle gargoyles seal the deal.
Some of us who worked on the (relatively) recent book Art Deco Chicago struggled with the triangulation between Deco objects and Deco architecture. Particularly when looking at the highly ornamented objects that were displayed at the 1925 exposition from which we take the term Art Deco, you can make a good argument that the architecture (called at the time Moderne; didn’t become known as Deco until the 1960s) was an altogether different artistic movement. I argued that there was a commonality based on celebrating the Machine Age (as a landmark 1986 Brooklyn Museum dubbed it)—and that was the sine qua non of the movement.
Anyway, my friend Bob Bruegmann took his shot at synthesizing and summarizing just what Deco is in the book’s introductory essay.
the building i live in is streamline moderne like the greyhound station. streamline moderne was the tail end of art deco. lots of the same elements just not as “fussy” or “busy”. many of the s.m. buildings were built during the great depression, the streamlining makes sense as many wallets were “streamlined” as well.
i like art noveau and craftsman. i’m more of a round and curved, over lines and angles.