Sunday, July 22, 2012

5Ws of… Emery Roth and Sons



Who: Emery Roth was an American architect who designed many definitive Manhattan hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, incorporating Beaux-Arts and Art Deco details.  

What: From glamorous apartment buildings along Central Park West to iconic office towers along Park Avenue, many of New York’s best known architectural icons can be traced to the firm of Emery Roth (later Emery Roth & Sons).

Where: The firm’s work includes the Pan Am Building (1963), the World Trade Center (1966 – 1973) and the Citycorp Center (1977), as well as several Beaux Arts and Art Deco style apartments along Central Park West and Park Avenue.   


When: In the 1950s and 1960s, Emery Roth & Sons was the most influential architectural firm in New York.  The firm’s work on several office buildings featured curtain wall facades, which would become an ubiquitous feature of the city, substantially changed the appearance of Midtown and Lower Manhattan.  From the 1960s through the 1980s the firm expanded and diversified, but ceased operation in 1996 due to financial difficulties.  


Why:  Roth was, said his biographer Steven Ruttenbaum, "a master who could combine eclectic architectural elements into romantic compositions of dignity and grace."


Images via NYC-architecture.com. 

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