Description:
street level view up the side of a skyscraper, smaller buildings at bottom, two story structure at lower left with sign saying PENN NURSERY, one story center building with GUM on side and sign with PENN SERVICE in front, buildings at lower right with PARK HERE..., A. SSCHULT... CIGAR and LUNCH
Label Text:
This print is part of an edition, 28/50, of which only 35 were printed. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Howard Norton Cook studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League from 1919-1921, and returned for a final year in 1922 to study etching under Joseph Pennell. He traveled widely throughout his career, eventually settling in Taos, New Mexico, in 1935.
Cook was proficient in all graphic media, and printed his own work except for the lithographs, which he had printed professionally. He particularly excelled at monumental wood engravings of dramatically silhouetted buildings, such as The New Yorker, which contrasts the dizzying height of the skyscraper hotel of the title with the smaller, humbler business buildings below.
Built in 1929, The New Yorker Hotel was the largest hotel in the world at this time, boasting 2,500 rooms on 43 stories. The hotel was a center of New York society, hosting balls and concerts, and attracting a fashionable clientele until its decline in the early 1960s.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2004.2 |
