JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
As much as I like the history of the film industry in NYC in the early days (and then of television in the 1940s and 1950s) this post will not address that–I’m simply interested here in the cover art of NYC on this 1938 pamphlet about Eastern Service Studios. The place has a long and fine history–built by Paramount in 1920, it is still in service today as Kaufman Studios, in Long Island City…there’s plenty on the place online, detailing the history of production there from the first two Marx Brothers movies through Law & Order. But as I said, it is the cover that really interest me, as they’re almost an artwork on their own. The pamphlet is huge, 15×10″, making the photograph of the city front and back about 20″ long–it is a large piece.
What we see is a view of New York City from about the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn Heights, at bottom and just north of Green-Wood and west of Prospect Park/Grand Army Plaza; in the East River we see the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges, and as we move a little to the west, we see all of Manhattan, all the way up to east Harlem and Randall’s Island, and then some. It is a marvelous photo. Unfortunately, the covers of the pamphlet are big/thick cardboard, making them very crumbly, and so the chips and missing pieces. Still, it is an aggressively interesting work.
The images in detail:
And the stages at the studio:
