The article was first published in the collection: Decorative art and subject-spatial environment. Bulletin of MGHPA. Number 3. Part 1 Moscow, 2020 p. 9-20. Courtesy of the author. The era of the 1920s-1930s. in US architecture - this is a time of active high-rise construction and rivalry of various style ideas, the construction of many skyscrapers in the Neo-Gothic and Neo-Renaissance, in the nascent modernism and various versions of Art Deco. The “ribbed style” of high-rise buildings then formed a whole group of projects and buildings both in the USA and in the USSR. This, for example, was the style of the Palace of Soviets and the House of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, adopted for implementation in Moscow in 1934. [1] However, in the United States, this aesthetics was extended to a wide range of monuments, and their decor could be different.
After the First World War, the development of historicism in the United States did not stop; The American neoclassicism of the 1910s-1930s, carried out expensively and extremely soundly, and, first of all, the ensemble of the capital of Washington, demonstrated to the whole world the expressiveness and spectacularity of order architecture. And it was precisely the accuracy of reproduction of medieval and antique details in the architecture of the Chicago school and neoclassicism of the 1910s-1930s that brought up the attentive, authentic approach of Art Deco masters when working with archaic ornaments. However, having been educated in Europe and having proved in practice a brilliant mastery of the authentic style, in the 1920s, American architects abandoned historical stylization and rushed to Art Deco innovations. [2]
The turn of the 1920s and 1930s for American architecture was a time of open rivalry between two styles - neoclassicism and art deco. Buildings erected at the same time and side by side were often designed in American cities in completely different styles. Such is, for example, the development of Center Street in New York, where the neoclassical buildings of the Supreme Court of the State of New York (1919) and the high-rise building of the US Court of Justice named after N. T. Marshall (1933) side by side with the Lefkowitz building (1928) and the building of the Criminal Court in ribbed Art Deco (1939). A similar combination was implemented in Philadelphia, where an Art Deco post office (1935) was built next to the station building in neoclassicism (1933). An obvious comparison of the different style decisions carried out in the same years is observed in the interwar period both in the USA and in the USSR.
The similarity of style interpretations of the architecture of the 1930s in different countries was the result of reliance on a common heritage - archaic, classical and contemporary (innovations of the early Art Deco of the 1910s). However, when comparing the architectural achievements of the 1930s, stylistic parallels are noticeable not only in Italy, Germany and the USSR, but also in American cities. So, a typical example of the so-called. “Totalitarian style” could be called both the post office building in Chicago (1932) and the Federal Administration building in New York (1935) - decorated with eagles interpreted in Art Deco. The North-South axis in Berlin was designed in the late 1930s also in the mean, slightly geometrized neoclassicism; however, there are many buildings in a similar style in Washington DC (for example, the building of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, 1938) and Paris. Such are the buildings of O. Perret and the French pavilions of exhibitions in Paris in 1925, 1931 and 1937. [4] Thus, which became widespread in the architecture of the 1920s and 1930s, this geometrized order was not an innovation of totalitarian regimes.
In the 1930s, the neoclassical theme in the architecture of Washington acquired two interpretations - authentic, as in the works of K. Gilbert, R. Pope and others, [3] and geometrized. Such are, in particular, the South Railway Building (W. Wood, 1929) and the Department of Land Resources (architect W. Wood, 1936), the Federal Reserve Building (F. Cret, 1935) and the grandiose Pentagon building (J. Bergstrom, 1941). In a similar style, the works of Louis Simon were carried out - the building of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (1938) and the Truman Corps (1939), as well as the Cohen Federal Building (1939) and the M. Switzer Corps (1940) facing each other. Note that in such architecture of the United States it is obvious that it is no longer the Palladian beginning of the classics, but the rigid geometrism of Ancient Egypt and even parallels with the Italian architecture of the 1930s, the so-called. style littorio.
The style of the interwar period widely applied the innovations of the 1900-1910s - an order going back to the archaic without bases and capitals, carried out in the works of Tessenov, Behrens, Perret, as well as Hoffman's fluted pilasters. [5] In the 1930s, similar architecture, created at the junction of neoclassicism and art deco, began to actively develop both in the United States and in the USSR, it is enough to compare the Lefkowitz building in New York (architect V. Hogard, 1928) and the house of the Council of People's Commissars USSR (architect A. Ya. Langman, 1934). The style of the library to them. IN AND. Lenin in Moscow (1928) echoed the two Washington buildings of F. Cret, created in the same years, the Shakespeare Library (1929) and the Federal Reserve Building (1935). Such works clearly differed from the authentic neoclassicism, which did not carry a totalitarian impulse. [6] And it was precisely the geometrized order that became, as it seems, the marker of the 1930s era. However, totalitarianism exploited the expressive power of both the innovations of the 1910-1920s (avant-garde and art deco) and historical architectural techniques.
Let us emphasize that the geometrized order of the 1910-1930s was ascetic, i.e. devoid of the a priori inherent in the classics of the motives of antiquity and the Renaissance. He was already rather close to other sources - the harsh archaic and abstraction of modernism. And it is precisely this duality that allows us to consider the geometrized order of the 1910-1930s in the artistic framework of Art Deco, as a style carried away by neoarchaism and the geometrization of forms of historicism.
A characteristic feature of the era of the 1920s-1930s is the emergence of interstyle works that are dual in their origins, work at the junction of neoarchaic and avant-garde. Such were the geometrized order, and the skyscrapers of America, and even the style of Soviet projects of the 1930s. This was the nature of Art Deco - a compromise style, ambivalent and, nevertheless, leading in the architecture of the 1920s and 1930s.
Record in their constructive and engineering solutions, ledged and decorated with flattened reliefs, the skyscrapers of the United States have become a unique fusion of neoarchaism and modernism. So, in 1931, while working on the McGraw Hill Building project, R. Hood already combines neoarchaic concession with a modernist lack of decor. In 1932, Hood solves the abstract shape of the Rockefeller Center Plate with flattened blades a la Babylonian ziggurats. Soviet architects also thought in a similar way: in 1934, while working on a project for the Palace of Soviets, Iofan turned to the image of a ribbed, telescopic Tower of Babel. Architects on both sides of the ocean were fascinated by a common historical heritage. It was the interstyle monuments and movements that were the most popular and successful in the 1920s and 1930s; this was the case in Europe (Italy), the USSR and the USA. The compromise of tradition and innovation was able to satisfy the majority.
A feature of American architecture at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s is the rapid change in style sources and interpretations. Stylistically different were the constructions of the authors of the most notable high-rise buildings in New York and Chicago. An example is the work of a number of masters, in particular W. Allschlager, J. Carpenter, F. Crete, K. Severens, R. Hood and others. [7] In 1928, Philippe Crete creates masterpieces of Art Deco - the station in Cincinnati and the Shakespeare Library in Washington, in 1935 he erects the Art Institute in Detroit in neoclassicism, the Federal Reserve in Washington - at the intersection of styles. A similar style variability was observed in the first half of the 1930s and in the USSR. For well-known reasons, the leaders of Soviet architecture were forced to change the style of their projects two or three times.
In the USA, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, two waves of style changes were rapidly replacing each other. The first wave was associated with the rejection of the methods of historicism and the development of a new sophisticated architectural fashion. The second wave, caused by the beginning of the Great Depression, demanded that the masters look for the forms of Art Deco already in the years of economy and a kind of approximation to the aesthetics of modernism. The financial crisis that struck in October 1929 gradually increased the pressure on the architectural industry. However, the most fruitful were two years - 1929 and 1930, when about half of the Art Deco monuments were designed in New York (more than 70 of those carried out from 1923 to 1939). [17, pp. 83-88] The intensity of construction increases several times, and only by 1932 the construction of skyscrapers almost completely stops.
Art Deco America risked repeating the fate of J. Hoffman's “Vienna Workshops”, which went bankrupt in 1932 [8, p. 88] However, in the United States, the state gave a second chance for the development of art and architecture - since the mid-1930s, the “Public Works Administration” became send orders to masters of both neoclassicism and art deco. And it was during these years that the neoclassical ensemble of the US capital, Washington, was carried out.
The master plan for Washington, which involved the construction of government offices around the White House and the Capitol Building, was conceived before the First World War. However, it was mainly realized only in the 1930s, when more than 20 objects were built on both sides of the wide green boulevard, Mall (and only four of them can be attributed to Art Deco). [8] Various buildings of the so-called. The Federal Triangle, which formed a single ensemble here, were all based on the facade theme of the Mellon Corps (A. Brown, 1932) - this was monumental Palladianism, dating back to the British neoclassicism of the 1900s. And it was precisely this architecture, designed by rustic and Tuscan order, that turned out to be close to the Soviet neoclassicism of the 1940-1950s. [9]
The rivalry between different trends - neoclassicism and the "ribbed style" (Art Deco) - in the early 1930s was observed both in the USSR and in the USA. It would seem that during these years the architecture of the two countries demonstrated facade techniques similar in style: such were the works of Friedman and Iofan, Hood and Holabert, Zholtovsky and the builders of Washington. [10] However, this was only a short-term coincidence, the intersection of opposite tendencies. In the 1930s, historicism in the United States will gradually give way to the Art Deco style initiative. In the USSR, decorativeness gained weight more and more and reached its climax in the triumphant post-war architecture.
The rapid change in style sources observed in the 1930s both in the USSR and in the USA was, of course, caused by various reasons. In Moscow, style development was determined by the state order, in New York, the variety of Art Deco forms reflected the struggle for originality between private customers and the free rivalry of highly talented masters. The change in style in the United States was the result of a brilliant command of several architectural languages, the multidirectional style preferences of the client and their rapid reorientation to the Art Deco aesthetics. With her arrival, the artistic experience of historicism turned out to be secondary, the masters were carried away by experiment, a powerful wave of a new style, the sources of which were the discoveries of the early Art Deco of the 1910s and the innovative potential of the archaic. Such was the plastic and compositional retrospectiveness of the 1920s-1930s.
The complexity of the analysis of American architecture at the turn of the 1920s-1930s. consists in the parallel development of several trends, in their dominance over the personal manner of the master, as well as in stylistic changeability, which made it possible to work decoratively or ascetically, in neoclassicism (historicism) or in Art Deco. So, the urban development junction on Michigan Avenue, in the period 1922-1929, became an amazing architectural success of Chicago. collected a crown of eight skyscrapers, representing different versions of historicism and Art Deco. [11] However, how to structure the diversity of this culture? It seems that the American architecture of the 1920s-1930s can be roughly divided into five groups: the neoclassical, neo-gothic, neoarchaic, avant-garde or fantasy component could dominate the work, or form an equally interesting interstyle fusion.
And for the first time this style diversity, characteristic of American architecture at the turn of the 1920s-1930s, was demonstrated at the Chicago Tribune competition in 1922. It was the competition that broke the monopoly of historicism and even before the 1925 Paris exhibition showed possible solutions for the skyscraper, both retrospective and and interpreted in Art Deco. At the competition, neoclassicism and avant-garde, graceful neo-Gothic and monumental neo-romanticism, as well as ribbed and diverse variants, clearly declaring the Art Deco style, were side by side. In 1923, an authentic neo-Gothic version of the Chicago Tribune by Raymond Hood was carried out. [12] However, the aesthetic victory, as is now evident, was won by Eliel Saarinen's competition project (1922). Moreover, while working earlier on the project of the station in Helsinki (1910), the Finnish master has already taken a decisive step from retrospection to innovation, from historicism to a new style.
The competition design of the Chicago Tribune building by E. Saarinen (1922) became the most important event in the evolution of American Art Deco, it was he who first connected neo-Gothic ribbing with neo-Aztec ledges. And after the competition, Hood began to work differently, in 1924 in New York he created an Art Deco masterpiece - the American Radiator Building. It was the first embodiment of architectural form transformation available to New York architects. It was a rejection of the authentic reproduction of motives (in this case, Gothic), and at the same time a new understanding of tradition. The aesthetics of geometrized historicism (Art Deco) was presented.
In the ribbed-ledge, neoarchaic aesthetics of E. Saarinen, H. Corbett and H. Ferris, more than 40 towers were built in America at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. However, none of them were entrusted to Saarinen. Other architects came closest to this style. In 1931, the City Bank Farmers Trust Building (J. and E. Cross) and the Irving Trust Building, designed with flutes and fancy, finely traced reliefs (R. Walker), were erected in Downtown New York. The Morgan Chaise Building in Houston (J. Carpenter, 1929) became a masterpiece of neo-Gothic Art Deco. The transformation of Gothic stone gargoyles into the famous steel birds on the facade of the Chrysler Building (1930) became a symbol of the stylistic transformation, "ardecoization" of the architectural form of the 1920s and 1930s.
The construction of the Chrysler Building, which opened on May 27, 1930, was the culmination of a race of high-rise buildings, luxury and originality of forms of the Art Deco era. [13] In the pointed end of the Chrysler Building, a variety of motives were combined: historical, medieval and contemporary, New York images (tiara of the Statue of Liberty) and French - the Gate of Glory at the 1925 exhibition in Paris (A. Vantre, E. Brandt) … However, the most important, form-building factor, it seems, has become the height of the building, or rather a new ambitious task - to create the tallest structure built by man and, thereby, surpass Europe, the 300-meter Eiffel Tower. This is what prompted the author, architect William Van Alen, and the design solution - a cascade of diminishing arched trusses that formed the famous triangular windows on the facade. Especially this similarity of the frame with the creation of Gustave Eiffel was noticeable at the stage before the installation of the steel cladding of the completion of the tower. Dictated by constructive and functional logic (high-altitude record mania), this decision is perceived at the same time as a decorative motive. After all, it was Art Deco that actively used various zigzag and pointed forms, and the Chrysler Building is the most famous example of this hobby.
The Art Deco style became synonymous with luxury, variety and contradiction, it did not at all resemble the classic, old styles. Its development did not last for centuries, only five to seven years became key, and already in October 1929 the crash on the stock exchanges marked the beginning of the Great Depression. However, at the end of its development, the Art Deco style gave the world its highest achievement - the Chrysler Building, this Parthenon of the twentieth century.
Thus, the evolution of American Art Deco in the 1920s and 1930s. appears as a rapid change in the vector - from extreme complexity to asceticization of the architectural form. In just five to seven years, architectural fashion has overcome the path from being carried away by an exquisite decorative style, oriented at the end of the 1920s to the current and historical heritage, to the search for forms of simplification already in the conditions of the economic downturn of the early 1930s. During these years, only the neoclassical ensemble of Washington continues to be actively built. However, after the Second World War, both directions of the 1910-1930s were already giving way to the artistic leadership of the international style, modernism.
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[1] At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the classical order was replaced by fluted pilasters, elongated, narrow ribs and pointed, neo-Gothic forms. These techniques are intended to generalize the term "ribbed style", considered as a common architectural technique of a group of projects and buildings in the USSR and the USA. Ribbing, along with ledges and flattened reliefs, became one of the main architectural techniques of high-rise buildings of the Art Deco era. For more details on the "ribbed style" see the author's article [1, pp. 56-65]
[2] Thus, not only the creators of Washington neoclassicism studied at the Parisian Ecole de Beauz Ar, but also the renowned masters of Art Deco, in particular V. Van Allen, author of the Chrysler Building, J. Cross, author of the General Electric Building, and R. Hood, author of the Rockefeller Center.
[3] Masterpieces of authentic reproduction of antique classics are the Lincoln Memorial (G. Bacon, 1915), the building of the US Supreme Court (K. Gilbert, 1935) and the buildings of the Russell Pope architectural firm - the National Archives Building (1935) and the Jefferson Memorial (1939) …
[4] These are the pavilions of exhibitions in Paris, solved by an elongated anta order without bases and capitals - the stairs of S. Letrosne (1925), the Palace of the Colonies (A. Laprad, 1931), as well as the Trocadero Palace built for the 1937 exhibition, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Public Works (O. Perret, 1937). The first object to use a geometrized order in Paris was also the work of O. Perret - the famous theater on the Champs Elysees (1913).
[5] Created at the junction of neoclassicism and art deco, the order of the 1930s developed the innovations of the 1910s - the anta order of the dance hall in Hellerau (architect G. Tessenov, 1910), the building of the German Embassy in St. Petersburg (architect P. Behrens, 1911), as well as Hoffman's buildings (Primavesi villas in Vienna, 1913, pavilions in Rome, 1911 and Cologne, 1914). The geometrized order of the 1910-1930s, elongated and already devoid of bases and capitals, went back not so much to the Greco-Roman tradition, but rather to the archaic, asceticism of the ancient Egyptian temple of Hatshepsut, flattened fluted shoulder blades of the temples of Persipol, Babylon, Egypt, as well as exclusive in its the aesthetics of the Roman tomb of the Baker Evrysak (1st century BC).
[6] This was the difference between the neoclassicism of I. V. Zholtovsky in Moscow or the Washington buildings of R. Pope, numerous objects of the McKim, Mead and White company - from the German pavilion at the Paris exhibition in 1937 (A. Speer), the style of which has become a symbol of totalitarian architecture.
[7] In 1929 the architect V. Allschlager is building the luxurious Inter Continental hotel in Chicago, and in its decorative design both neoarchaic motives and the development of current plastic techniques are obvious - the Saarinen towers implemented in Finland and the Berlage Amsterdam stock exchange. However, in those same years, Allschlager worked in a completely ascetic manner; in 1930, he created the Carew Tower in Cincinnati.
[8] Only the Shakespeare Library building (F. Crete, 1929) and the neighboring John Adams Building (D. Lin, 1939), decorated with neoarchaic reliefs by Lee Lowry, are among the most pronounced examples of the Art Deco style in Washington. At the intersection of styles, the Federal Reserve building (F. Crete, 1935) and the ascetic works of L. Simon, primarily the building of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (1938), were created.
[9] Thus, the neoclassical facades of the grandiose Hoover building (L. Ayres, 1932) and the Clinton semicircular building (V. Delano, C. Aldrich, 1934) turned out to be stylistically close to the Soviet post-war architecture - the residential development of Leningrad in the area of Bolshoy P. S., Bolshoi Pushkarskaya st. and the building of the Naval Academy, as well as the works of A. V. Vlasov on Khreshchatyk in Kiev, etc.
[10] “Achieve and surpass” - this is how the motto of Soviet customers and architects of the 1930-1950s can be formulated. And the main rival and prototype for the domestic neoclassicism and works of I. V. Zholtovsky was, it seems, the buildings of the company "McKim, Mid & White", the development of the 1910s on Park Avenue in New York and the Washington ensemble. A similar approach was demonstrated by the architecture of Moscow high-rise buildings. The high-rise building of Moscow State University (240 m) was the answer to the neoclassical skyscraper Terminal Tower in Cleveland (235 m, 1926), the Foreign Ministry building surpassed the height of the neo-Gothic towers - the Morgan Chaise Building in Houston and the Fisher Building in Detroit.
[11] This ensemble in Chicago was formed - the Wrigley building (1922) in the style of the Loire castles, the London Guaranty and Exident Building (1922) and the Pew Oil Building (1927) in the neoclassical, the Chicago Tribune building (R. Hood, 1923) and Mater Toer (1926) in Neo-Gothic, as well as 330 Michigan Avenue (1928), Carbon Building (1929) and the Inter Continental Hotel (1929) in Art Deco.
[12] This conservatism was associated with America's non-participation in the exhibition in Paris in 1925 - the organizers from the United States considered the requirements of modernity and national design identity to be impossible for themselves. "Imitations and counterfeits for old styles are strictly prohibited" - this was the demand sent in 1921 to future exhibitors. [13, p. 178; 10, p. 27, 59]
[13] Construction of the Chrysler Building (1929-1930) took place in New York at an interesting period in the history of skyscrapers. And initially, the height of the Chrysler Building was supposed to be only 246 m, this made it possible to surpass the long-term record holder - Woolworth Building (1913, 241 m). However, at the beginning of 1929, the designers of the Manhattan Bank joined the "race for the sky", who first declared the height of 256 m, and then (having learned about the new design height of the Chrysler Building of 280 m) they also increased the mark of their spire to 283 m. However, the creators Chrysler Buildings were not going to concede altitude superiority. The 38 m high stainless steel spire was secretly assembled inside the building and in October 1929, only after the completion of the Manhattan Bank, removed and raised to the top, the installation took only 1.5 hours (!). As a result, the total height of the Chrysler Building was a record 318 m. However, in May 1931, the high-rise leadership was taken over by the famous Empire State Building (380 m).
