General Electric Building (originally RCA Victor Building)
DESIGNED AS the headquarters for the RCA Victor Company—but taken over only a year later by General Electric and known ever since as the GE Building—this slender, orange-brick tower is one of the most extravagantly Expressionist buildings in New York. Got
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e s i g n e d a s the headquarters for the RCA Victor Company—but taken over only a year later by General Electric and known ever since as the GE Building—this slender, orangebrick tower is one of the most extravagantly Expressionist buildings in New York. Gothic and German Expressionist motifs are brilliantly overlaid in this 40-story, 570-foot-tall tower. The result is nothing less than a secular cathedral devoted to the gods of radio. The spire is an extraordinary image of the romantic aspirations of American businessmen as the country entered the Depression. The RCA Victor Building in particular seems to have been built with a higher purpose in mind—to celebrate the new medium of radio. The diamondshape motifs in the façade have a dual meaning, signifying the piezoelectric crystal by which old radios operated, and the stylus that produced sound from records. The marvelous terra-cotta spandrels in rose, ochre, and verdigris can be interpreted as a radio dial, or a needle in the grooves of a record. At the rounded corner of the 12-story platform, a scrolled musical instrument symbolizes RCA’s recording business. The building’s theme may have been inspired by early crystal radios, also known as cathedral radios because of the Gothic styling of their wooden cabinets. Strange, mummified-looking figures occupy different levels of the façade. These are the Tiki gods of radio. One fills a niche at street level, like the figure of a saint. Crackling energy fields radiate from behind four grim-faced, double-story-tall figures in the crown, with haloed heads grouped at their feet. Are these disciples? The enlightened radio audience? It is hard to believe now that American business ever reached this dizzy pinnacle of Expressionism. The intersecting, gilded radio waves in the crown are fused with the openwork tracery of a Gothic cathedral, revealing the Gothic roots of Expressionism in a breathtaking syncretic image. Gilded bolts of energy aimed heavenward replace the finials of a Gothic spire.
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A scrolling musical instrument represents RCA’s recording interests.
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1931
In the same way that the multitudinous heavenward-pointing layers of a Gothic cathedral suggested the City of Heaven, the cornices of the GE Building are themselves miniature images of the skyline. The setback form is reified everywhere—at the base of columns, in the window casings and in the miniature symbolic buttresses above the corner clock. If skeptics think this is an overinterpretation, read what the architect John W. Cross himself wrote about the barrel-vaulted, aluminumcolored lobby ceiling: Romantic though radio may be, it is at the same time intangible and elusive—a thing which can be captured visually only through symbolism. . . . The severity of the vertical lines which intersect the curves of the ceiling with daring abruptness is intended to convey the directness and penetration of radio itself. The building materials are sumptuous: a base of rose granite, entries and windows framed in
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