Ten Buildings — Ten Masterpieces of New York Art Deco
Ten Buildings — Ten Masterpieces of New York Art Deco
The decorative programs of Art Deco Manhattan — photographed in full and documented to primary sources.
The New York City Art Deco Archive is Ikonographia's most ambitious ongoing documentary project. Ten Buildings — Ten Masterpieces of New York Art Deco is its editorial spine: a guide through the decorative programs that defined an era, building by building, story by story. New entries are added as documentation is completed. This is where to start — and where to return.
Between 1924 and 1939, a generation of architects, sculptors, and metalworkers transformed the commercial lobbies of Manhattan into complete symbolic environments. From gilded bronze to cast aluminum, from polychrome mosaic to terrazzo — materials and techniques that redefined what a lobby could say.
From wrought iron to federal aluminum — from Jazz Age to Depression to Greco-Deco (1924–1939).
Edgar Brandt and Cheney Silk — Madison Belmont Building, 1924
First American Art Deco
This is not an Art Deco building. It is here because of one object — the frozen fountain at 181 Madison Avenue. The first application of Art Deco on an American building. The most recognizable. The most influential.
The fountain was designed by Edgar Brandt — the foremost ironworker in France — and commissioned by the Cheney Brothers Silk Company for the building's first three floors. The motif, stylized water cascading in symmetrical curves, originated in Brandt's monumental gate at the 1925 Paris Exposition. The building itself was not in the new style.
The decoration was the exception — and became the symbol.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
Edgar Brandt's Frozen Fountain — Madison Belmont, New York, 1924
The frozen fountain motif on the Madison Belmont entrance was designed by French iron master Edgar Brandt. The motif — stylized water cascading in symmetrical curves — originated in Brandt's monumental gate at the 1925 Paris Exposition.
Here, in wrought iron with gold and bronze accents, it became the first major application of what would later be called Art Deco on an American building. The building itself was not in the new style. The decoration was the exception — and became the symbol.
The City of Opportunity — Chanin Building, 1929
New York, 1929 — A City at its peak, casting its ambitions in bronze.
Completed in 1929 at the height of New York's Jazz Age construction boom, the Chanin Building stands as one of the most intellectually ambitious expressions of American Art Deco. Its façade is admired, its lobby celebrated — but its most fully argued artworks are found in the vestibule: eight monumental gilt-bronze radiator grilles, conceived as a symbolic cycle of human development.
René Paul Chambellan and Jacques Delamarre encoded the stages of human development in pure geometric abstraction. The program was admired for nearly a century without being fully understood.
The key was a 1929 article in Architectural Forum in which Jacques Delamarre explained the complete iconographic logic at the moment of completion. The article existed. It was buried, unrecognized, unconnected to the grilles. Ikonographia identified it, paired it with high-resolution photography that makes the relief legible, and reconstructed "The City of Opportunity" as a complete iconographic cycle — for the first time.
Effort.
The struggle against resistance.
From "The City of Opportunity — Physical Series."
Here, spirals tighten, diagonals collide, and curves appear compressed, as if bearing weight. The composition visualizes the tension between aspiration and the obstacles that define it. Effort is the architecture of perseverance.
Success.
The reward of sustained action.
From "The City of Opportunity — Physical Series."
Symmetry returns, crowned with a radiant rising form. Success is rendered not as excess but as order — the balanced resolution of struggle. Spirals unfurl, energy flows upward, and the pattern resolves into harmony.
When Babylon Met Fifth Avenue — Fred French Building, 1927
One architect's obsession with ancient Babylon. One sculptor's mastery in bronze. A New York landmark unlike any other.
Completed in 1927, the Fred F. French Building stands as one of Manhattan’s finest expressions of the early Art Deco-Babylonian hybrid style.
While the tower is admired for its stepped crown and gilded ornament, its most exceptional artworks lie in the lobby, conceived by Douglas H. Ives and realized by sculptor Vincent Glinsky and master metalworker Oscar Bach: eight bronze elevator panels, a monumental mailbox, and a complete bronze decoration program.
The lobby contains one of the most complete bronze programs in American Art Deco — eight gilded elevator panels, a monumental mailbox that compresses the entire symbolic argument of the building into a single object, and an entrance relief of allegorical figures dense with ancient Near Eastern imagery. Conceived by Ives, sculpted by Glinsky, cast by Bach.
A complete symbolic program:
Commerce, Industry, Finance, and Building.
The eight gilded panels of the Fred French Building lobby — a sculptural cycle honoring the forces that powered New York's 1920s rise.
The arrangement is graphically balanced, not thematically ordered: the eye moves across figures and ornament before resolving into program. Ives's logic reveals itself slowly — four themes, eight figures, one coherent argument about what a city is and what sustains it.
The most complete Mesopotamian-themed decorative cycle in American Art Deco.
Elevator Doors
These elevator doors visualize the four pillars of Fred F. French’s real-estate empire—Industry, Commerce, Finance, and Building. These were the forces shaping New York in the 1920s: the labor that built the skyline, the commerce animating Fifth Avenue, the financial system behind every development, and the architectural vision that defined modern urban life.
Fred French Elevator Panels — Art Deco allegories of trade and finance
The Merchant, Commerce — Symbolizing maritime trade and international exchange.
The Wealth Bearer, Finance — Symbolizing prosperity generated through investment and trade.
The Eagle and the Sunburst — Crowning Element.
The American eagle with outstretched wings, set against radiating sunburst rays. At this distance the precision of Bach's metalwork becomes visible — the feathering, the geometry of the rays, the weight of the form against the flat ground. National symbol and ancient ornament in a single casting.
The Mailbox
At the center of the lobby stands a gilded bronze mailbox — and it says everything twice. A monumental American eagle crowns the composition, wings spread against radiating sunburst rays. Below it, paired Babylonian griffins flank the slot — not as ornament, but as allegory: they are the eagles, translated into the visual language of ancient Mesopotamia. One of them grips a medallion bearing the Fred French Company monogram in its beak.
National symbol and ancient mythology. The same statement, in two languages simultaneously. In a single object, the entire symbolic program of the lobby — compressed.
Glinsky made Babylon and America speak the same visual language.
Paired Mesopotamian griffins flank a stylized plant motif on the lower panel of the mailbox. The griffin on the right bears a medallion with the Fred French company logo — corporate identity seamlessly integrated into ancient iconography.
The creatures' muscular forms and precise geometric borders echo Assyrian palace reliefs, connecting 1920s New York commerce to the authority of ancient empires.
The Same Creature — Fred French Griffin and Assyrian Relief, 4,000 Years Apart
The griffin on the Fred French mailbox and its source on the Assyrian relief at the Pergamon Museum — the same feather treatment, the same headdress, the same profile. Glinsky did not adapt the form.
He quoted it directly, in gilt bronze, on Fifth Avenue, gripping a medallion with the Fred French Company monogram in its beak. Four thousand years and six thousand kilometres apart. The comparison is exact.
The Mesopotamian Connection
Ives's obsession with ancient Babylon was not aesthetic preference. It was research. The Ishtar Gate — excavated from Babylon and reconstructed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum in the early 1900s — provided the direct visual sources for the lions, dragons, and decorative borders throughout the building. Ives and Glinsky were not inventing an exotic style. They were quoting one of the oldest monumental gateways in human history, in gilt bronze, on Fifth Avenue.
The Vaulted Ceiling — Ishtar Gate Creatures in Gold and Color
The barrel-vaulted ceiling of the Fred French Building lobby — Babylonian lions, dragons, and winged griffins painted in gold, blue, and vivid color. The same creatures Ives found in the Ishtar Gate, placed above the bronze program that quotes them below. Every surface in the lobby speaks the same language.
A Machine Age Altar — Empire State Building, 1931
A building at the center of the world
In 1931, the Empire State Building was the tallest structure ever built — 102 floors, 443 meters, constructed in 410 days at the depth of the Great Depression.
The lobby was designed to match that ambition. A ceiling mural of celestial rays by Leif Neandross converges on a single point: the aluminum bas-relief by Oscar Bach, positioned exactly where the rays meet. Bach depicted the building as the center of the world — surrounded by a map of the tristate area, radiating celestial rays. In 1931, aluminum was the material of the Machine Age: modern, industrial, the metal of human ambition. The relief was not decoration. It was the argument made permanent.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
The Empire State Relief — A Machine Age Altar, NYC, 1931 — Oscar Bach
The Empire State Lobby, 1931. The floor, the walls, the ceiling — all calculated to deliver the visitor to one point. This is not a lobby. It is a constructed argument about what human ambition can produce — and the aluminum relief by Oscar Bach is its conclusion.
Positioned exactly where the rays of the ceiling mural converge, it was not placed there. It was designed to be there. The architecture does not decorate the relief. It worships it.
Neighbors of Nations — AT&T Long Distance Building, 1932
Telephone Wires and Radio Unite to Make Neighbors of Nations
Ralph Walker built the operational hub of AT&T's long-distance telephone network at 32 Avenue of the Americas and gave it the material richness of a cathedral.
The warm terracotta surfaces and accents of Native American ornament are the result of Walker and Meière working in symbiosis — the space shaped to receive the figures, the figures designed to complete the space.
Five continental allegories on the ceiling, connected by gold telephone wires to a central messenger figure. The wires follow Walker's geometry exactly. Neither program works without the other. One vision, two authors.
Meière's second program: a full world map in terracotta tile covering the entire entrance lobby wall — with the inscription that defines the building's purpose along its base. Telephone Wires and Radio Unite to Make Neighbors of Nations.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
Telephone Wires and Radio Unite to Make Neighbors of Nations — Hildreth Meière
Inscription along the bottom: "Telephone Wires and Radio Unite to Make Neighbors of Nations." A statement of corporate purpose — AT&T's reason for existing — rendered in permanent material at architectural scale.
Asia — Continents Linked by Telephone and Wireless Silhouette Mosaic — Hildreth Meière, 1932
The allegorical figure of "Asia, draped and seated, a tiger crouching at her side, an elephant and a pagoda rising behind her. One of five continental panels on the ceiling of the AT&T lobby, each connected to the central messenger figure by a web of gold telephone wires. The ceiling is a diagram of the network and a statement about what that network meant.
The border echoes Native American quillwork — geometric, precise, a different visual language running alongside the allegorical figures above it.
Detail of the "Asia" Mosaic
Hildreth Meière's technique — tesserae embedded in coral cement while still wet — makes the ground itself luminous. The messenger at the center holds lightning bolts: electricity as a classical attribute, telecommunications given the iconography of myth.
The ceiling is a diagram of the network and a statement about what that network meant.
The Park Avenue of the Bronx — 1150 Grand Concourse, 1937
The Fish Building, the borough’s most celebrated Art Deco apartment house
The Grand Concourse was conceived as the Park Avenue of the Bronx, its buildings designed with exceptional architectural ambition. 1150 Grand Concourse — known as the Fish Building for its polychrome mosaic facade of tropical fish and aquatic forms — is among the finest.
The terrazzo floors were executed by terazzeri from Pordenone and Spilimbergo in the Friuli region — the aristocracy of the immigrant labor force. Their names were never recorded. Their work has outlasted nearly everything around it.
The mosaic facade and the terrazzo interior — two halves of a single undersea world, conceived by the same hand. Two separate crafts, two separate traditions, one address on the Grand Concourse that preserved both.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
Art Deco Terrazzo Lobby and the UFO Chandelier
Nothing prepares you for the lobby of 1150 Grand Concourse. The terrazzo floor stops you — radiating forms, concentric rings, chevrons in red, gold, and sage, wall to wall. Above it, a chandelier that takes a moment to resolve: bronze rings, frosted glass, the geometry of a spacecraft.
A fish from the Aquatic Mosaic
A detail from the polychrome mosaic facade that gave the building its name. Hand-laid tesserae, no two identical in tone. The chromatic range is exceptional — warm ochres against cold blues, deep burgundy against yellow-green.
The artist was never identified. The mosaic and the terrazzo floor inside share a building and a visual vocabulary. Nothing else connects them.
The Geometry of Energy and Light — 70 Pine Street, 1931
The complete decorative program of an energy empire — in nickel-silver and light.
70 Pine Street was commissioned by the Cities Service Oil Company, one of the largest energy corporations of the early 1930s. The building's decorative program — inside and out — was conceived as a monument to that ambition.
René Paul Chambellan designed The Evolution of Fuel — the nickel-silver elevator doors, among the finest Art Deco reliefs in New York — and the complete exterior program. Thomas J. George designed the ceiling. Together they built a space where the visitor felt the building's purpose before reaching the elevators — and where the mountain silhouette of the tower continues overhead, in plaster and gold.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
The Evolution of Fuel Elevator Doors, René Chambellan, 1931
Nickel silver — a copper-nickel-zinc alloy with no actual silver content — holds fine low-relief detail with exceptional clarity. Unlike sterling silver, it does not blacken with age. The surrounding decoration incorporates Native American-inspired zigzags and sunbursts alongside the Cities Service logo.
The lobby ceiling fixture an decorations — Cliff Parkhurst.
he lobby ceiling and fixtures — Thomas J. George. The ceiling is white plaster, faceted into radiating peaks and stepped polychrome corbels with gold, bronze, and copper-leaf relief bands — bringing the mountain silhouette of the tower inside. A thematic reference to the Cities Service Company's business in light, heat, and power. The space is illuminated by hand-cut translucent cast-glass fixtures with bronze metalwork, supplied by Cliff Parkhurst.
The Architecture of Finance — 20 Exchange Place, 1931
Industry, Transportation, Progress as seen by architects Cross & Cross and British sculptor David Evans
20 Exchange Place was completed in 1931 for the Cities Bank Farmers Trust Company — at the time, the world's tallest stone-faced skyscraper. Architects Cross & Cross gave it a decorative program of exceptional breadth: marble floors with nickel silver inlays, vaulted entrance ceilings, painted arches, stone reliefs on the facade, and an iconographic program running across dozens of elevator and entrance doors executed under the direction of British sculptor David Evans.
The program reads as a single argument about finance, industry, and progress — old means and new means, cast in nickel silver, carved in stone, inlaid in marble. Few buildings in New York carry a decorative vision of this completeness from street to elevator cab.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
The March of Progress Elevator Doors — David Evans, 1931
Two stylized female figures in high relief — industrial precision and elegant symbolism in the same surface — representing advances in transportation financed by the Bank's investments: from sailing ships and aerial balloons to ocean liners and modern aircraft.
Nickel silver was chosen by architects Cross & Cross over bronze — a deliberate rejection of colored metal in favor of a unified white finish. The decorative program was executed under the direction of British sculptor David Evans — its visual language aligned with the Art Deco skyline of Lower Manhattan.
Wisdom, Light and Sound — Rockefeller Center, 1933
Wisdom and Knowledge Shall Be The Stability Of Thy Times.
Lee Lawrie's triptych — Wisdom flanked by Light and Sound — spans the main entrance of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Thirty-seven feet of Indiana limestone, hand-carved, polychrome by Leon V. Solon. Wisdom represents reason and law — the foundation. Light represents television, Sound represents radio. The primary tenant of 30 Rockefeller Plaza was NBC. Built at the depth of the Great Depression, without compromise, at a scale designed to declare before it welcomed.
Solon's palette — cobalt, red, and gold leaf — follows the Greek principle: color most intense where the eye must travel furthest. From the street, the crown of Wisdom reads as pure geometry. At close range, it reveals itself as craft. Below the figure, 240 cast-glass blocks by Corning Glass Works form a trifold screen — ancient authority, modern material. The Machine Age argument made visible.
One of the most complete examples of Greco-Deco in New York — classical mythology rendered in the geometric language of Art Deco, ancient symbols carried in modern form.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
Wisdom — Lee Lawrie
The central figure of a 37-foot triptych — Wisdom, a Voice from the Clouds, with Light and Sound — spanning the main entrance. Lee Lawrie drew on William Blake's Urizen — reason and law made flesh — and gave him the vocabulary of the Machine Age. The Rockefeller complex was commissioned and built through the deepest years of the Great Depression.
At this distance, the figure reveals what the street view cannot: the precision of the polychrome crown, the geometry of each gold and black triangle, the force of a figure pushing back the clouds of ignorance. What remains is the face — looking down, in concentration.
Light — The Age of Television
The figure representing television — male, arms raised like antennas, transmitting electrical signals and images through the air. The crown of sharp black-and-gold triangles does not ornament the figure. It amplifies him. Indiana limestone, color by Leon V. Solon.
Television in 1933 was not yet a public reality. Lawrie depicted an industry still finding its form and placed it on the facade of Rockefeller Center as a cosmic force equal to Wisdom itself.
Sound, The Age of Radio
The figure representing radio — female, reclining, emerging from clouds. The concentric circles radiating from her are not decoration. They are the signal, rendered in stone. Indiana limestone, color by Leon V. Solon.
Radio in 1933 was the dominant mass medium — and the primary tenant of 30 Rockefeller Plaza was NBC. Lawrie did not illustrate a technology. He gave it a body and placed it alongside Wisdom as a force of equal weight.
Federal Authority — 90 Church Street, 1937
Carl Paul Jennewein — A Federal Commission at the Highest Level of the Craft
Cross & Cross designed the building — aluminum columns, vertical grilles, entrance screens that declare authority before the door is reached. Carl Paul Jennewein's decorative program gave them meaning: eagle capitals, star banding, the ornamental intelligence that transforms modern materials into federal power.
Inside, the National Seal ceiling light in three lobbies completes the argument — a reversible eagle that could face either the olive branch or the arrows. War or peace, built into the architecture.
A federal commission executed at the highest level of the craft, in a building that most visitors to Lower Manhattan have never entered. Photography by Davide Bigano.
Full documentation coming to the NYC Art Deco Archive. Story forthcoming.
Federal Entrance — 90 Church Street
Four aluminum columns, star-banded and eagle-capped, frame the entrance of 90 Church Street. Behind the vertical grille, the gold hexagonal ceiling announces the interior before the door is reached. Strength and lightness — the neoclassical shell carrying a decorative program that belongs to a different world entirely.
Carl Paul Jennewein's aluminum program at 90 Church Street was a departure from his classical work in marble, bronze, and polychrome terracotta. The aviation-era metalwork — columns, grilles, eagle capitals — gives a federal building its modernist authority.
National Seal Ceiling Light — Carl Paul Jennewein
The National Seal ceiling light at 90 Church Street — beveled crystal panels set in a bronze octagonal frame, backlit. Three lobbies, each with an identical fixture. The ceiling's geometric program mirrors the terrazzo and marble sunburst on the floor below — light above, stone beneath, the same pattern on both surfaces.
In 1937, at the height of the New Deal, federal architecture carried political symbolism into its functional elements. The central panel was designed to be reversed — the eagle facing either the olive branch or the arrows. War or peace, built into the architecture.
Peace & War — Carl Paul Jennewein
The United States National Seal rendered in beveled crystal panels set in a bronze octagonal frame — eagle, shield, stars, and olive branch, backlit.
The central panel was designed to be reversed — the eagle facing either the olive branch or the arrows. War or peace, built into the architecture.
FMR Magazine — Gotham Deco
Twenty-three photographs from this Archive were published in FMR Magazine Winter Solstice 2024.
"Gotham Deco — Modern Metropolis. This Was Tomorrow" — published in FMR Magazine with an essay by Anthony W. Robins and photographs by Roberto Bigano — documents New York Art Deco as a complete interior program: the Chanin Building radiator grilles, the Fred French Building elevator panels, the light and sound installations of Rockefeller Center, and the decorative vocabulary that ran through an entire generation of Manhattan architecture. A cover and twenty-four pages.
Robins is the pre-eminent authority on New York Art Deco. President of the Art Deco Society and author of "New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture" — widely cited as the definitive guide to the subject.
FMR was founded in Milan in 1982 by Franco Maria Ricci. For four decades, among curators, collectors, and art historians on both sides of the Atlantic, FMR set the standard for visual scholarship and for the most demanding editorial photography.
Jacqueline Kennedy called it the most beautiful magazine in the world.
Copyright, links and credits
Photography, Copyright & Credits
All photographs © Ikonographia / Roberto Bigano — All Rights Reserved.
These images are part of the Ikonographia Visual Archives: New York City Art Deco Collection.
⸻
Terms of Use (Summary)
The images presented in this archive are copyrighted and available for licensed use only through Ikonographia Visual Archives.
You may not download, reproduce, publish, or distribute these images without a valid license. For commercial or editorial licensing, please refer to the product pages or contact Ikonographia directly. A full explanation of licensing terms is available in the Shop / Licensing Information section under "Ikonographia — Standard License" and "Ikonographia — Merchandising & Product Use Licenses"
⸻
Artwork & Building Attribution
Completed in 1927, the Fred F. French Building stands as one of Manhattan's defining Art Deco towers. While its stepped crown and gilded façade are widely admired, its most exceptional achievement lies within: a decorative program conceived by architect H. Douglas Ives and executed in bronze by sculptor Vincent Glinsky — a collaboration that transformed a commercial lobby into a passage through ancient Babylon.
Ives documented his own obsession in writing: the Tower of Seven Planets at Babylon, the Ishtar Gate, Chaldean enameled brick. The iconographic program was not intuition — it was research translated into architecture.
⸻
Copyright Status Clarification
Building & Artwork:
The architectural design of this buildingis in the public domain under U.S. copyright law. Buildings constructed before the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act (1990) are not protected as architectural works, and their exteriors and interiors may be freely photographed.
Photographs:
All photographs on this page, however, are copyrighted works of Ikonographia / Roberto Bigano and require a license for any reuse.
⸻
Ikonographia Mission Statement
Ikonographia is committed to the accurate documentation, preservation, and ethical dissemination of twentieth-century visual culture.
⸻
Archival Notes
These photographs were produced as part of Ikonographia’s ongoing documentation of significant examples of twentieth-century visual culture. Image preparation includes controlled lighting, accurate color management, and perspective correction to preserve architectural integrity and material detail.
⸻
Further Reading - Selected Sources
• FMR Magazine No. 12, Winter Solstice 2024 — "Gotham Deco" — Special issue devoted to the Art Deco transformation of 1920s New York, with contributions by Anthony W. Robins and photography by Roberto Bigano. Cover and 24 pages featuring comprehensive documentation of the Chanin Building radiator grilles, the Fred French Building elevator panels and polychrome ceilings, the Light and Sound sculpture at Rockefeller Center, and a curated selection of the city's finest Art Deco interiors.
• Anthony W. Robins, New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.
• David Stravitz, The Chrysler Building: Creating a New York Icon Day by Day.
• Cervin Robinson & Rosemarie Haag Bletter, Skyscraper Style: Art Deco New York.
• Christopher Gray (archives), The New York Times, “Streetscapes” columns.
• New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission reports (Fred F. French Building).
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Digital Collections (historic metalwork and architectural ornament references).
⸻
Acknowledgments
Ikonographia gratefully acknowledges the institutions, archivists, scholars, and architectural historians whose research and preservation efforts help illuminate the cultural significance of New York’s Art Deco heritage.
⸻
Browse the New York City Art Deco Archive
-
The Symbolic Program Elevator Doors — Fred French Building, New York
$110 -
The Scholar Elevator Panel — Fred French Building, New York, 1927
$110 -
Art Deco Allegory of Effort — Gilded Grille, Chanin Building, New York, 1929
$110 -
Asia — Continents Linked by Telephone and Wireless Silhouette Mosaic — Hildreth Meière, 1932
$110
