In Their Own Words: Art Deco Architects Speak
12–1pm
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The great Art Deco skyscrapers—the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building—were designed by socially prominent architects, often of old New York stock. But a generation of lesser-known architects and builders—new to the profession and often new to the country—helped spread the Deco style across the more modest, but also more numerous, middle-class landscapes of the city, from the Garment District to the Grand Concourse. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Anthony W. Robins had the good fortune to meet and interview three of those architects, and he recorded the interviews.
The three architects––Israel Crausman, Louis Allen Abramson, and Marvin Fine––came from varying backgrounds. This program explores the work of these architects—three of the dozens who helped transform the face of New York City in the 1920s and ‘30s—through their own words. In addition to Robins’s commentary, participants will hear the architects describe their buildings, their experiences, and their inspirations.