Why The Daily News Building Is Cool
I went to a building yesterday — the Daily News building. Whoa, what a building it is. One of the more interesting buildings in New York, I’d say.
Immediately, it strikes you. The Art Deco design. The fonts. The brass finishes. Out front, the stone-masonry; a mural — laborers, society types, businessmen. New Yorkers!
The inscription reads: “He Made So Many Of Them.” Yes, he — or she? — did.
I can’t say I knew much about the building before entering it, but I thought it looked like something from the 30’s and it is. Designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, the building was constructed in 1929–30, back when Art Deco was a thing; or rather, back when architects appeared to put thought into things.
In Manhattan, now, there are many stores that specialize in Art Deco designs — furniture, kitchenware, little odds and ends. Typically, the products are astronomically priced; there’s a great aftermarket for stuff like this. People are into Art Deco.
But back to the building. When you walk in, you are faced with giant globe, a globe so large that were the building to be made to today, I can’t help but think the designers would fill that space with another elevator shaft.
Must. Use. Every. Inch.
If you want know what this building looks like, and cannot use your imagination — don’t worry, it’s 2016 and most people have forgotten how to imagine things — you can kind of see it below.
There are giant clocks that show the time in a variety of other countries. Gauges that measure rainfall, wind velocity, atmospheric pressure — things nobody thinks about, unless they’re staring them in the face.
Around the globe, there are inscriptions that, I think, indicate where other cities are located, longitudinally. I could be wrong about that; that’s just what I thought when I saw them.
Overall, I’d come to the building for a short visit, and when I was leaving, I wound up just standing there, marveling. Sometimes I do that, get swept up in something that probably wasn’t meant to get swept up in.
Or, maybe that was the purpose of the design all along, to make the visitor see all this and wonder. Why else would one look at a globe, if not to imagine themselves somewhere else, somewhere they can see, if only on a model.
I can’t really claim to be an expert in design or architecture. I suppose that all visual arts are like music — you see things and you just know whether they’re pleasing or not. Good music is not something you can really explain.
Similarly, buildings are things one enters and exits, often without considering whether they are beautiful or ugly. Typically, buildings are utilitarian — their purpose is to ease and facilitate whatever is going inside of them. They are not art projects, really. A building is just… there.
And I don’t know, maybe the Daily News building is a terrible place to work. I don’t work there, so I don’t really know. Maybe people hate working there, because it’s a big ol’ pain in the ass getting from one side to the other. That’s not implausible.
I do know that, were I one of the fortunate people walking in and out of it each day, I’d be more inspired by the lobby, the engravings, the brass, the clocks, the mural and the globe, than I would by any open floor plan, huddle room, new coffee machine or any of the other things currently en vogue in modern day office environments.
Just think — you are working inside an actual art project. How is that not inspiring?
