The Medium and the Message

75 Broad Street, diagonally across the street form our office, has recently completed a multi-year facade restoration, and the sidewalk bridge along Broad Street has been removed. The building was completed in 1928 as the headquarters for the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, now ITT. The southwest corner of the building, at Broad and South William Streets, is chamfered and has an ornate door that takes the full width of that very narrow facade. I don’t know if that entrance was the main entrance for the office space, or for an ITT retail space, or something else, but it has an amazing mosaic that was hidden by plywood for the entire time that the facade work was in progress. Here’s a close-up of the mosaic:

You’ve got the company name at the bottom, a bunch of lightning bolts for ELECTRIC COMMUNICATIONS!, some pretty clouds, and an angel either presiding over the world or dribbling two planets at once, Harlem-Globetrotter-style.

There’s an interesting contrast here. The technical quality of the mosaic fabrication is fantastic. The artistic value is…not. I can think of various scenarios as to that might happen, but an artist being given orders by a corporate officer is top of the list.