#morris lapidus

[onefootin1941]

The barroom inside the iconic Chrysler Building in New York City, designed by architect Morris Lapidus in 1939.

[guy60660]

Morris Lapidus | Chrysler Building | Gottscho-Schleisner

[vintagemanhattanskyline]

Aerial view of Midtown Manhattan looking south in September of 1962 showing great construction activity on Avenue of the Americas (foreground, at right).

Buildings under construction are the Sperry Rand Building (Emery Roth & Sons-Harrison & Abramovitz, 1963) at center, the New York Hilton Hotel (William B. Tabler-Harrison & Abramovitz, 1963) and the Americana Hotel (Morris Lapidus,Kornblath, Harle & Liebman, 1962) at right. 

On freground at left are the Tishman Building (Carson & Lundin, 1957), and at right, behind the Hilton appears the Equitable Life Building (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1961) and the Time & Life Building (Harrison & Abramovitz, 1959). The Rockefeller Center with the 70-story RCA Building is on the center.

On the background, at left, appears the Union Carbide Building (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1960) and the 59-story Pan Am Building (Emery Roth & Sons-Walter Gropius-Pietro Belluschi, 1963) under construction. Behind it is the Chrysler Building (Wiliam Van Allen, 1930).

Photo: Lee Lockwood/Black Star.

Image colorized by IA in real colors.

Source: Furnas, C.C; McCarthy, Joe. “El Ingeniero. Colección Científica de Time-Life.” (México. Time-Life International de México, S.A. de C.V. 1981).

[histonics]

[mistons]

Miami Beach

Snowden Estate, 1923, looking north from 44th St & Collins Ave. Harvey S. Firestone's Harbel Villa Estate, 1930s. Fontainebleau Hotel construction, 1954. Firestone estate was used as a construction office.  

Miami History / SMU Libraries / Miami Archives / Gottscho-Schleisner collection, LOC

Fontainebleau architect Morris Lapidus: In his day, critics reviled the excesses of Lapidus’ designs, calling his architecture “the nation’s grossest national product,” “pornography of architecture,” and “boarding house baroque” ... There was a “Staircase to Nowhere” so women dressed in couture and jewels could take an elevator to the top to deposit their coats and glamorously descend the stairs to the lobby. - Fontainebleau Hotel, A Colorful History

Steve Wynn:

In 1954 a guy named Ben Novack and his brother Joe Novack, who had  experience in the Catskills at a hotel called Laurel, and in Miami Beach at the Sans Souci Hotel - sort of like Las Vegas with bunch of hotels lined up one next to the other on Collins Avenue - got an option on the Firestone estate at 41st St. on Collins Ave., a big 15-acre oceanfront piece that was owned by the famous family that made tires.

Ben Novack and Joe Novack conceived with an architect named Morris Lapidus of a hotel called Fontainebleau. This place was going to be a new idea. The hotel itself was going to be a series of experiential moments that included formal French gardens, sort of a Jewish version of Versailles; a gorgeous, soaring, high ceiling lobby; a lot of curvilinear spaces and curved stairways; murals on the wall of 18th century France; a fabulous showroom; a shopping arcade below; beyond the garden an expansive Cabana and pool club; a beautiful spa; and a curved building with blue glass. The Fontainebleau was going to set a new standard of destination resorts on planet Earth. It was so breakaway, so profoundly new it didn't even add a name on it. No sign, just the building.

It opened in 1954 and it changed everything people came from France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil. Between Christmas and Easter you had to know somebody to get a room. Everybody from Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis worked there. It was the coolest place to be in America during high season. The Fontainebleau dwarfed in scale and imagination anything that had ever been done anywhere in Europe or America, and it was received that way.  

Jay Sarno was a character from Atlanta. He saw the Fontainebleau. He saw that this place was in the literary sense romantic, better than the outside world. It was a universe utopia within itself. Sarno never got over it

I was going to school at the University of Pennsylvania. My folks had Cabana 364 on an annual basis. I’d come there at Christmastime, and I never got over it. To me it seemed like the greatest thing in the world is to create a place that would transport people that way.

[danismm]

Eden Roc Hotel, 1955. Arch. Morris Lapidus.

[onefootin1941]

The Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami. 1950’s, designed by Morris Lapidus.

[guy60660]

The Fontainebleau Hotel | Morris Lapidus | © Juliet Ferguson/Alamy | Financial Times