The Daily News
In 1919 Chicago Tribune
co-publishers Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert R. McCormick couldn't
agree over the content of the newspaper, so they decided Patterson
should start a different newspaper in New York. Inspired by the
popularity of a London tabloid, The Daily News
emphasized photography, celebrity news, and a focus on city politics.
New York commuters loved the paper because it was easy to hold and read
on a subway.
John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, the architects of the Chicago Tribune building, were tapped to build the new building for The Daily News.
Patterson initially wanted a large enough facility to hold the paper's
staff and printing facility, but Hood talked him into the lucrative
proposition of building an office tower on top. It hadn't occurred to
Patterson that he could make money from rent-paying businesses.
In
designing the tower Hood had to deal with a new city zoning law, one
that prohibited the construction of large massive buildings that
blocked light from the streets. The setback requirements of new
building construction encouraged the tiered design of all the new New
York skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s. It's this wedding cake formula
that characterizes the older New York skyline. The soaring Daily News
building, one that mild-mannered reporters could leap at a single
bound, was completed in 1930, roughly the same time as the Empire State
Building and the Chrysler Building.
The overall design of the
building was guided by the windows. The architects decided that the
average office worker needed to easily open a window, so the windows
should be small enough to handle. Moreover, the worker most likely to
open a window would be a female secretary (or Lois Lane). The
architects figured that an average woman could manage opening a window
four feet and six inches wide. In addition, after one of Hood's
associates designed the red and black pattern for the brick spandrels,
Hood decided that all the window shades needed to be red.
The Tribune Company owned The Daily News (website) until 1991. Mort Zuckerman bought the paper in 1993, and in 1995 the paper relocated to 450 W. 33rd Street.
Image: The Daily News Building. 220 E. 42nd Street. photo by WOTBA. February 2008. See related posts
with images of the famous lobby. Still to come on the Raymond Hood walk
- the McGraw-Hill building, Radio City and Rockefeller Center. Wow -
some serious walking ahead of me. I hope I'll have strength left to
open a window.
The McGraw-Hill Building
The McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street, built in 1930, is unusually blue-green. In fact, architect Raymond Hood's
use of glazed terra cotta tiles in shades of blue-green constitutes one
of the most ambitious applications of this material in the history of
architecture.
A splendid example of the streamlined moderne
style, the McGraw-Hill Building, built on a steel frame skeleton,
sports plenty of light along its striped exterior and linear decorative
stripes throughout the lobby.
Many architecture historians
consider the McGraw-Hill building to embody the transition from Art
Deco to the International Style largely due to its lack of
ornamentation. Hood was a follower of the modernist master Le
Corbusier, especially in his advocacy of a city of towers, and,
certainly this building is a far cry from the Gothic idiom of the Radiator Building.
When
I visited the building a few days ago, I was surprised at all the
hustle and bustle around the lobby. Many kinds of businesses, art
groups, labor unions, and civic organizations rent out space in the
building. Given all the activity, I thought the building, especially
the exterior near the entrance, looked a little worn and in need of
some TLC.
1221
Avenue of the Americas, built in 1969 as part of the expansion of
Rockefeller Center, is also known as the McGraw-Hill Building and
serves as headquarters for the McGraw-Hill Companies, a Fortune 500
company. 1221, one of the three "XYZ" buildings, is gargantuan,
bureaucratic, oppressive and boring. (See New York City Skyscrapers
site for image.)
Images here of McGraw-Hill Building, 330 42nd Street, by Walking Off the Big Apple. 2008.
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
Walking
the long cool dimly-lit black and gold power corridors of the GE
building in Rockefeller Center, beginning my journey at the west
entrance on the Avenue of the Americas and moving toward the east, I
feel like I've fallen into a liminal pre-death dream state, a wandering
soul pushed toward the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The
cool black hallways and the low lighting, the main source of which are
illuminated numbers, discourage sounds above a whisper.
"Shhhh....that's NBC over there...and look!, over there - if you've
been good in your mortal life, you may ascend to the Rainbow Room." The
darkness continues unabated, enveloping the visitor with the signifiers
of a higher power. This must be the work of a medieval-loving man of great largesse, I think, someone who has inherited an empire.
After
the dark journey through the long corridor, the pilgrim enters the
Grand Lobby. Enveloped now by golden images of muscular semi-nude
figures, the mythical workers of José Maria Sert's mural American Progress
tumble down staircases, soar across the ceiling, and in several cases
look as if they may trounce anyone below. I am less than nothing. I
marvel at my insignificance.
Finally, a light at the end of the
tunnel appears. Just as I suspected, the doors to heaven are those damn
revolving doors. And beyond I see...Joy beyond joys! Light! Space! So
many flags! People! And behold! 
Wouldn't you know it? Heaven has a sunken ice rink and places to eat some lunch.
At
the beginning of creation, the center's site, owned by Columbia
University and leased to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was originally
intended as a new home for the Metropolitan Opera. When the opera
pulled out, Junior's architecture team, Reinhard and Hofmeister;
Corbet, Harrison and MacMurray; Hood and Fouihoux, spent months drawing
up hypothetical configurations. When the Radio Corporation of America,
NBC, and then RKO decided to become the principle tenants, the project
started to make sense.
Raymond Hood, as head of the team, bore
the main responsibility for negotiating among the many interests to
make "the City within a City" a reality in limestone. While speaking
the language of cost and efficiency, he argued that Rockefeller Center
needed roof gardens, open spaces, and works of great art if it was
going to succeed. Almost everyone else at the time thought it was going
to fail. They were wrong.
Photos of Rockefeller Center by Walking Off the Big Apple, from February 18, 2008.
Final Thoughts
Raymond
Hood did not live to see the completion of the vast Rockefeller Center
complex. An untimely death in 1934 at the age of 53, he had suffered
from rheumatoid arthritis. His architecture practice had already slowed
down, largely due to the economic effects of the Great Depression. He
worked on a project to house the poor, but the finances for the project
didn't materialize. More shocking, he received a letter threatening to
kidnap his children. Gravely concerned, especially at the time of the
Lindbergh tragedy when others received such threats, Hood sent his
family to Bermuda and followed them a short time later. Upon hearing
the news that the perpetrator had been caught, he collapsed, and after
returning to his home in Stamford, Connecticut, he never regained full
health.
Rockefeller Center is still unequaled as a grand modern
urban plan, at least one so popular with the public. Though the
buildings share some uniformity, the variation of taller and smaller
buildings within the development, the art deco visual touches, and the
artful design elements of the plaza combine to create just the right
amount of theatricality. It's not too much. It's what we mean when we
use the word "elegant."
In thinking about comparable urban
developments of our own era, the kind that fuse private economic power
with state ambition, the extraordinary projects in Abu Dhabi and Dubai
come to mind, or maybe, the building of contemporary Berlin. But what
new projects await Gotham? Well, several developments of some scale are
in the works - the High Line/Hudson Yards redevelopment projects on the
west side of Manhattan, Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn, designed
by Frank Gehry, and the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site
downtown.
Still, whichever of these large projects come to
fruition in this uncertain economy, contemporary architects and urban
planners could learn a few lessons from Raymond Hood's skills and
visionary design. A trip to Rockefeller Center is a start, watching
people take pictures of friends and family in front of the fountain and
enjoying the scene of people falling down on skates. Sure, the Rock's
often crowded, but isn't that precisely the point?