TOUR: The great Art Deco Towers of East 42nd Street (from Itinerary No. 5)

Sponsored by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. The Cooper-Hewitt is mounting a huge show of American art from the Art Deco period: “The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s” (April 7th-August 20th)

This is a tour for Museum members, but membership is open to all, click here. Reservations will be required – watch this space for details.

Forty-Second Street is Midtown Manhattan’s major boulevard of Art Deco skyscrapers, with some of the city’s most famous monuments. On this walk we will take a close look at Raymond Hood’s red-and-white-striped Daily News Building, the Chanin Building with its Rene Chambellan-designed abstract ornament, and the peerless Chrysler Building, perhaps the city’s most famous Art Deco skyscraper. We will also take a peek – for contrast – at nearby Tudor City, built just before Art Deco swept away the notion of borrowing from Europe’s past to design America’s future.