American Radiator Building (at right), December 5, 1938 Designed by Raymond Hood, the American Radiator Building is a striking scene at the mid block of 40th Street. Rendered in black and gold, the 23-story building is largely a free-standing tower. While the bronze and marble entry and ornamentation is neo-Gothic in style, the sleek lines of the building nod towards an Art Deco style, which would not truly come into vogue for a few more years. Hood also included in the design purposeful uplighting for the top of the building, making it the first New York skyscraper with dramatic exterior lighting. (Its nighttime look is immortalized in Georgia O'Keeffe's 1927 “Radiator Building at Night - New York.”) Hood, who for some time in the early 1920s designed radiator covers for the American Radiator Company, would complete this headquarters for the company in 1924. The building remained headquarters for that American Radiator for 65 years (even after a name change to American Standard Company in 1967). Purchased by a Japanese firm in 1988, they intended to convert the building to a hotel. A decade and new owner later, the black and gold skyscraper was converted into The Bryant Park Hotel.

American Radiator Building ARCHITECT: Raymond Hood DATE: 1923-24 STYLE: Art Deco The American Radiator Building, a striking twenty-three story black and gold tower, is one of the finest and most significant skyscrapers in Manhattan. Designed by Raymond M. Hood and built in 1923-24, the American Radiator Building initiated a new trend in skyscraper design in New York City with its bold cubic massing of forms often associated with the Art Deco style and its freedom from the Beaux-Arts classical details that had previously encumbered New York City skyscrapers.

American Radiator Building ca. 1978 One of the greatest problems that confronted our architects was how best to express skyscraper construction. Here there was no precedent, so that many interesting experiments were made, among which this was one one of the most notable. Raymond Hood, using a theme of black and gold, achieved the "new look" for the 1920s; and, although the setbacks above seem to us needlessly agitated, the general effect was original and fairly expressive of the underlying structure. The small, sculptured corbels just above street level are interesting as ornament although by no means original.

A 1920s steeple of class-act Art Deco, the golden tips of the tower are supposed to mimic the hue of a radiator aflame, and symbolic figures at the base of the building represent states of heat such as “lust” and “labor” and “drunkenness.” The lower facade is also decorated with fire-breathing salamanders - a symbol of the court of King Francis I, under whose auspices in 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed to the “New World” - allegedly the first European to blaze the waters of Lower New York Bay, and cast western eyes on the shores of Brooklyn and Staten Island. In 1926, Lynn Bomar of the New York Giants stood on the roof of the building and hail mary’d a football into Bryant Park, where Giants halfback Hickey Haines, wearing a waistcoat and tie, caught what the papers called the longest forward pass on record.