JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 885

[I’ve
written a few times in this blog  about what I think is
found/unintentional antiquarian Dadaist art, as in Floating Eyes and Ears, 1650,  (and also (here, here and here) and would like to continue that thread with this found bit of 1930’s Costumery.]

The Beaux  Arts Ball, Halloween 1931, featured a dozen or so of some of the principal architects in NYC dressed as their most esteemed structures.  The end result in this uncomfortable assembly is delightfully absurd–the outfits could have easily been found on stage in Berlin in 1923 than as this salute to privilege. (For example see my post from last week on Oskar Schlemmer.)

For the record, we see:

A. Stewart Walker, dressed (and almost completely engulfed) as his Fuller Building at 57th Street (and not the Fuller building which is today known as as the Flat Iron Building);

Leonard Schultze as the Waldorf Astoria;

Ely Jacques as the Squibb Building (so delightfully nestled in  there with the Plaza and Savoy Plaza);

William Van Alen as the Chrysler Building (which, three years now after its groundbreaking, was still the tallest building in the world, though it would be eclipsed within months by the completed Empire State Building. The New York Times Building is the exact height of the Chrysler Building, though this bleak structure in no other way can compare to Alen’s masterpiece.)

Ralph Walker as One Wall Street;

D.E. Wood as the Metropolitan Life Building;

J.H. Friedlander as the Museum of the City of New York.

Source:  Blom’s New York Photographs, 1850-1950, page 48.