AD Classics: Radio City Music Hall / Edward Durell Stone & Donald Deskey

Luke Fiederer — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 22:00:00 +0000

This article was originally published on July 29, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Upon opening its doors for the first time on a rainy winter’s night in 1932, the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan was proclaimed so extraordinarily beautiful as to need no performers at all. The first built component of the massive Rockefeller Center, the Music Hall has been the world’s largest indoor theater for over eighty years. With its elegant Art Deco interiors and complex stage machinery, the theater defied tradition to set a new standard for modern entertainment venues that remains to this day.

AD Classics: 2 Columbus Circle / Edward Durell Stone & Associates

Denim Pascucci — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Located on a small and irregular shaped island at Columbus Circle, one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan, lies 2 Columbus Circle, formerly known as the Gallery of Modern Art. Famously described as a “die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops” by Ada Louise Huxtable, the New York Times architecture critic at the time, the 10-story poured concrete structure has been a source of consistent controversy and public response since the 1960s. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, an early proponent of American modern architecture, 2 Columbus Circle represents a turning point in his career. Uncharacteristic of Stone’s prior work, his use of ornament on an otherwise modern structure can be seen as an important precedent of the development of the soon-to-emerge Postmodern movement.

Office: Edward Durell Stone & Associates | ArchDaily

AD Classics: Radio City Music Hall / Edward Durell Stone & Donald Deskey

AD Classics: 2 Columbus Circle / Edward Durell Stone & Associates