Musings on Deco Revival Apartment

Art Deco constitutes perhaps the last time America was hitting on all eight cylinders, strange as it may sound to say about a period in history which includes the depression years. Yet it is true in the sense that America was still characterized by an unshakeable faith in the future, in science, in culture, in technology. Art deco, or American Moderne in its US manifestation, represented a kind of total unification of the arts - a unification last on display in the time of the high medieval era when music, fashion, sculpture and architecture all fused into one. One could say that where in the medieval era all of the arts synergized to produce a grand spiritual experience, so in Art Deco all of the arts synergized to produce a splendorous techno-scientific experience. In transportation one sees this in the streamlined features of cars, trains, and to a degree in ships, and of course in the airplane itself. The music of the age, a lively frolicsome jazz, perfectly captures the relaxed, festive, bemused confidence of the era as does the wondrous poster art exhorting the world to avail itself of exotic travels. In a sense the deco age represents the highwater mark of artistic expression for democracy. The Classical Age gave us Mozart and Beethoven, Caravaggio and Wren. Deco gave us poster artists like Broders and Vincent, jazz arrangers like Bowlly and Calloway. Broder's Vichy Comite des Fetes nicely sums up the spirit of the age.

In architecture one again finds democracy in its finest hour. Everywhere buildings celebrate the industrious inventive American spirit transcendent of ethnicity and class. It is an age of bourgeoise ideals to be sure, but artistically cultivated ideals tempered by a Christian spirit.

Now there is a recently built residential tower situated along New York's Billionaire's row, 220 Central Park South. It was designed by the prolific firm of Robert AM Stern, whose marvelous five volume series on the history of New York architecture looks to constitute all by itself more work than most accomplish in a lifetime. AM Stern chose to realize 220 in a neoclassical style and did so with terrific aplomb and to great success. Yet I cannot help but feel - and it is a feeling not an analytical conclusion - that Art Deco is the true soul of Manhattan. It is inextricably linked with the architecture of the WPA, the sense of a democratic architecture where all levels of society feel themselves to be working in harmony toward a common goal. It is in that spirit I would like to offer my crude impressions of a possible 3-2 apartment tower drawn in my own barbarous approximation of the deco sensibility: Built-ins everywhere; projection TV screen as the focal point; George Barbier prints here and there; Frank Lloyd Wrights sprawling sofa banq ; African chotskies weaved into the mix ; deco like high ceilings for the living space; squashed ship like sleeping accommodations situated below deck.