Skyscraper, Chanin Building (Primary Title)
Deco Details (Series Title)

Art Deco architecture and design and Precisionist painting and printmaking blossomed concurrently in the late 1920s and early 1930s; angular patterns, restrained color palettes, and pronounced linearity appear in both movements. A landmark of American Art Deco architecture, the Chanin Building was completed in 1929, rising fifty-six stories on the corner of East 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City. In this photograph, Andrew Bordwin highlights the building’s famous ventilation or convector grilles installed near the site’s three entrances. These vertically elongated grilles are bronze, but they appear silver in Bordwin’s black-and-white image. The ascending coils and rays themselves resemble skyscrapers, and Bordwin’s photograph demonstrates the lasting influence of Precisionist themes and aesthetics.