I Must Object

From the New York Public Library Archives, the Wurts Brothers provide, in the early 1930s, an interesting photo with a title that strains credulity:

The revivalist-style high-rises on the right are part of the Tudor City apartment complex, just west of First Avenue, and running from 40th to 43rd Streets. The white striped tower on the left is the Daily News Building on 42nd Street between Second and Third Avenues. So we’re looking north from a terrace on a building in the upper 30s, maybe at Third or Lexington Avenue. So far so good.

I feel like the juxtaposition of Daily News and Tudor City, without all the nearby tall buildings that came later, provides a nice illustration of the two competing schools of early thought about skyscraper design: use an old style to make them seem familiar despite the newness of the tall-building form, or use a new style (or a new design that pretends it is not part of a style) to go with the new form.

But, yeah, the title: “General View – Manhattan – Aerial View.” Maybe I’m being too literal-minded, which is always a concern among engineers, but if you’ve got lawn chairs in front of you, your photo is not an aerial view. Aerial views are what used to be called “birds’ eye views”: they are the view from the air, not from a perch big enough to be a recreation terrace.