 Good evening everyone. Welcome. I'm Ruki Nuhal Ravikumar, Director of Education at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and it's my absolute pleasure to see so many of you here today. At the museum it is our goal to inspire, educate and empower people through design. I'd like to offer a special welcome to all of you members of the Art Deco Society. There's so many of you here today. Welcome and also a special thanks to Megan Weatherby. If you're there in the back if you would wave so we can thank you for making this possible and partnering with us. December is a terrific time to be here at the Cooper Hewitt. I would suggest that you keep track of what's going on because we have a lot on the calendar for December. For instance on December 11th we have Sarah Coffin, our recently retired head of the Department of Product Design and Decorative Arts. She returns to the museum to share her insights into the culinary history of the Sir to the Tabla which I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy upstairs in the exhibition Tablescapes, Designs for Dining. And on December 14th we will open the Road Ahead Reimagining Mobility in the Barbara and Morton Mandel Design Gallery. It is a future-focused exhibition featuring faulty projects and proposals for more sustainable and equitable urban environments and means of transport. The exhibition will be catalyst for conversations about how we might move people, goods and services in the future. During the holidays if you have family visiting and you need to keep people's hands busy and minds occupied we have several hands-on design workshops for visitors of all ages between December 24th and December 28th. Don't forget about Cooper Hewitt's shop for your holiday gifting needs and maybe even consider gifting yourself a membership to the museum if you aren't a member. But today you're here to listen to Marilyn Friedman. She's born and educated in New York, she's a design historian, a dear friend of Cooper Hewitt and a trustee. Her work focuses on the development and popularization of modern design across America during the 1920s and 1930s. Her first book was published in 2003, Selling Good Design, promoting the early modern interior. But the focus of today's talk is her new book, Making America Modern, Interior Design in the 1930s. As the title suggests, the book chronicles the development of modern interior design in the United States in the 1930s. With archival images and detailed descriptions, this book presents more than 100 interiors by 50 designers and architects including work by design luminaries Donald Deskey, Cedric Gibbons, Tommy Persinger, and several others. The designers of the 1930s had in common a determination to forge a contemporary style rejecting the revivalism that had defined America during the 19th century. They drew their inspiration from diverse sources such as Art Deco, the Bauhaus, the Viennese Secession, Shintoism, and Streamlining. And they embraced new concepts in construction, material, and style. This book features more than 200 photographs and renderings of private commissions, model homes, exhibition displays that span the economic spectrum from those created for wealthy patrons and to those designed with affordability in mind. I do hope you purchased the book in our shop today and if you didn't there will be a book signing and a reception following this event and the shop will be open for you to buy a copy. But to tell you a little bit more about Maryland I'd like to invite my colleague Stephen Van Dyke to introduce her. I'm here actually representing the Art Deco Society and also the Cooper Hewitt because I work here. But I wanted to point out on your chair you have a fabulous new issue that the Art Deco Society has brought out it's called Art Travel Issue and you should take that home with you, enjoy it, great pictures, great things of places you want to go to that have Art Deco in them. The second thing is I know you're going to be busy with the Cooper Hewitt but we also have many events for you as well and you should take this brochure. There is terrific things that are happening at the Art Deco Society and you should also consider whether and looking at this third handout whether you want to become part of the Art Deco Society it's a fabulous organization for all kinds of people scholars collectors and whatever and it does encourage us to look at New York City the greatest Art Deco treasure in the world. So do take this consider being part of our group we do fun things as well. Now to Marilyn. It is my great pleasure to introduce Marilyn Friedman a design historian who I've met a dozen years ago or so when she was a student here at the Parsons graduate program here at Cooper Hewitt and from which she graduated in 2007. As you can imagine Marilyn was a good student. Marilyn was and continues to be a serious organized researcher a regular library user scholarly and articulate as a strong passion to learn and as we will learn tonight and a great deal to share her knowledge with people. Marilyn is a native New Yorker received an undergraduate degree from Cornell a JD degree from NYU before and boldly entering the world of decorative arts. She loves modern design of the 1920s and 30s and therefore she's a great friend to the Art Deco Society. She received the prestigious 2018 Michael J. Smith Art Deco excellent award in 2018 on her study of American design. Marilyn is a great supporter and friend of Cooper Hewitt and she serves as a museum trustee and is head of the collections committee. Her selling a good design promoting early modern interior published in 2003 is a good read and something that everybody should have in their library. Tonight we will celebrate the publication of her second book on the screen here which is also a good read and a visual delight. Marilyn this evening we'll talk about the development of design and interiors in the US 1930s. Please give her a warm welcome. Thank you very much for inviting me and thank you for those lovely introductions. Yes you're at the right lecture don't worry. Throughout the 19th century American interior design was largely derivative of older European styles. Greek revival, Rococo revival, Renaissance revival. Revival furniture predominated in parlors dining rooms and bedrooms throughout the country. This evening we'll explore how what you see on the screen evolved into what we term American modern design. While there was some modern design in America in the teens and early 20s the real catalyst for the evolution was the exposition of modern decorative and industrial arts that took place in Paris in 1925. The exposition was intended to encourage the development of new styles in France. Only those objects that showed new inspiration and real originality were shown. The US did not exhibit at the exposition but a commission appointed by then secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover spent several weeks in Paris inspecting the offerings and visiting designers atelliers. The concepts embodied in the exposition were disseminated in the United States in several ways. The commission issued a report on the exposition. Some American designers visited the exposition and brought back new ideas. Publications in the United States covered the exposition extensively and books and design portfolios featured the objects and interiors on display. Perhaps most important an exhibition of more than 400 objects from the exposition toured museums in eight American cities. The traveling exposition provided Americans with a counterpoint to historicism. The furniture featured was primarily representative of the French modernism that updated and simplified designs of earlier periods in France. This iteration of modern design which we now term Art Deco featured expensive materials and embellishments such as highly polished and exotic wood veneers and inlays of mother of pearl and ivory. The Paris exposition also featured work by other more of unguarded French designers but the traveling exposition did not. It should also be noted that Germany did not participate in the 25 exposition so Bauhaus design was not part of the exposition itself or of the traveling exposition. From 1927 to 1929 department stores all over the US promoted European and American modern design. The department store exhibitions provided designers with platforms in which they could experiment with new ideas and gauge the level of acceptance by the public. On the left is a bedroom design for Lorden Taylor very much in the Art Deco mode. In the center is a breakfast room designed by the Austrian emigre Paul Frankel for Abraham and Strauss in Brooklyn derivative of Colloman Moser's designs for the Wienerwerkstatte. On the right is a penthouse studio designed from Macy's by Swiss emigre William Laskas and Ilonka Karaz who came to the US from Hungary. The room which had a provocative color scheme of red, green, orange, purple, and yellow was an amalgam of several versions of European modernism. Karaz also participated in exhibitions by the American designers gallery which was established in 1928 to stimulate design in America and to encourage cooperation among American artists and artisans without competition from European designers. The gallery presented two exhibitions of modern interiors one in 1928 one in 1929 at its space on West 57th Street in Manhattan. At the second exhibition Karaz presented a dining room that seemed quite typical with a center table, a sideboard, a serving table, and eight chairs. To deal with constraints of modern apartment living however Karaz designed the dining room to morph quickly into a living room. The table was a gate leg table which could be folded up and put away. The influential critic Adolf Glassgold considered the room to be uncluttered by detail and reduced to the prime necessities of living without sacrificing the air of comfort lacking which quality no room can be more than a curiosity. To add some sparkle to the room Karaz Karaz included a copper tone mirror, a copper fruit bowl with copper and brass fruit, and a glass ceiling fixture enclosed in a copper frame. She also displayed a number of pieces of her silver designs manufactured by Payne Baker Company including a tea and coffee service, a pair of candle sticks, and a compote. The compote with interest derived from the interplay of geometric forms has become an icon of early modern design. Another icon of modern design made its appearance in a room by Donald Desky at the first American designers gallery exhibition in 1928. Desky was born in Minnesota and studied in the U.S. and Paris where he visited the Paris Exposition in 1925. Desky saw industrial materials as the wave of the future in interior design. In his man's room, which contained the functions of a library bar and lounge, Desky utilized aluminum, linoleum, cork, and vitriolite, a structural glass. Desky was designing for mass production. His recently formed company, Desky Volumer Associates, manufactured the two tables using vitriolite and simple strips of metal. These new furniture forms together with contrasting textures provided the interest in the Desky room. The matte finish of the cork covered walls and the pigskin upholstery contrasted with the gleaming aluminum ceiling and vitriolite tabletops. Pigskin also covered the side chairs which had aluminum frames. Aluminum strips edged the double top of the toolbar desk. The lamp standing on the desk in the corner in chrome plated metal and glass is the epitome of the zigzag modern popular in the 1920s. Museums also presented modern design. In 1929, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had partnered with Macy's in 1927 and 28 to mount exhibitions of modern design at the store, staged its own exhibition. The Met had held exhibitions of industrial design since 1917, but the early exhibitions featured copies of museum works rather than new designs. The 1929 exhibition featured contemporary room settings by American architects and designers. It brought credibility to the emerging modernist movement but also demonstrated the wide variety of approaches to modernism as exemplified in the three rooms shown. The bedroom channels French Art Deco. The metallic office brings to mind Corbusier's machine for living. The library with ornate cove decoration and simple wood paneling presents a middle ground. In many of these exhibitions manufactured materials like cast stone, bakelite and aluminum replaced expensive difficult to maintain natural materials like marble and silver. During the Great Depression, these kinds of substitutions would become very popular. For several years following the onset of the Depression in 1929, another professional association established in 1928, the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen known as AUDAC, carried the burden of promoting modern design. AUDAC, which had more than 135 members, sought to elevate standards in contemporary design and foster a definitive style. In 1931, AUDAC published a compendium of the work of its members and mounted an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that featured the designs of some 70 AUDAC members, including interiors. Two examples will give you a sense of the variety of the offerings. Donald Desky designed a guest bedroom with soft colors, curvilinear furniture, spary at comfortable seating and new materials in accent pieces. The asymmetrical dressing table incorporated a wood cabinet, a tall mirror, and two glass shelves that rested on a wood base painted coral and gold. The mirror and the glass shelves each had one curved edge that echoed the curved edge of the bed footboard. Much of the furniture reflects Desky's interest in Art Deco, probably developed when he visited the Paris Exposition, but the tubular steel-based occasional table in the foreground typifies the designs of the Bauhaus, which he also visited. An alternative to Desky's Art Deco-inspired bedroom was a living room by Paul Frankel, which contained a box-like bookcase and other furniture that reflected Frankel's continuing debt to Central European Modernism. A bedroom designed by Frankel for the exhibition better demonstrated his experimentation with other approaches to modern design. The curvilinear maple furniture had deep red trim and ebonized wood accents. The Frankel dressing table is an example of the debt American designers owed to France. You can see the similarities between the Frankel dressing table and those by the French designer Francis Jordan, taken from a portfolio of modern interior designs published in France. Publications like this one provided inspiration and ideas to those who had not been able to travel to Paris. In 1932, Audac members participated in a major public exhibition of modern design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Titled Design for the Machine, the exhibition was intended to point the way to the use of machinery for the objects of everyday life. Gilbert Rody presented a man's study in Philadelphia. Rody had been born, raised, and educated in New York City. In 1927 he spent time in Europe, primarily in Paris and at the Bauhaus. Rody's furniture presaged two important trends. Modular furniture, like the cabinets along the wall, also shown on the left, would meet the needs and desires of those who dislike the inflexibility of built-in furniture but appreciated the space, the space saving attributes of furniture designed to fit together. Bentwood furniture, like the Easy Chair, would be adopted by later designers such as Charles and Ray Eames because it could be produced economically yet appear graceful. Rody presented an interior in which no single foreign influence predominated, but the French influence was still strong in the early years of the decade, particularly in high-end residential projects. One example is the Santa Monica home of Cedric Gibbons, the art director of MGM Studios, and his wife, the actress Delores Del Rio, for which Gibbons designed the interiors. The sleek interior featured the angular patterns of zigzag modern. One entered the house through a small living room which had pale gray walls and a black lacquered floor. Most of the furniture was built in. A staircase with a metal railing led to the main living room on the second floor. The critic Brendan Gill described the staircase as having been designed by Gibbons so that Del Rio could be which guests by the slow and sinuous grace with which she descends it. I wish I could write that way. At the top of the staircase was the main living room with pale gray walls, black floor, red lacquer book shelves, beige carpets, green upholstery, and white curtains. Two massive bookcase-backed sofas dominated the room. The stepped ceilings of the room are reminiscent of those in a smoking room designed by Jean-Denan at the 1925 Paris Exposition which Gibbons had visited. The elements of the house, the casement windows, the simple architectural furniture, the stepped ceiling and moldings, and the plain fabrics were exemplars of Gibbons philosophy of modern design which mandated straight, simple lines. He implored his readers to throw out anything with a naturalistic design. If you have a lamp that has flowers twisted on the bronze base, hands holding a clock or vase, or something like that, don't give it away, destroy it. Don Aldeski also invoked Art Deco for his wealthy private clients. As in the apartment design, as in this apartment designed circa 1932 for the impresario Roxy Rothafell atop the newly constructed Radio City Music Hall. The walls of the reception room are paneled in cherry, intersected by polished metal strips. The golden ceiling adds to the dramatic effect of the soaring, gleaming walls. The interior architecture and the furniture, which combined highly polished wood surfaces with metal supports and embellishments reflected the continuing influence of the exhibits Deski had seen at the 1925 Paris Exposition. In this apartment for Abby Rockefeller Milton and her husband David circa 1933, Deski recycled some of the design concepts from the Rothafell apartment, combining metal with exotic woods. Note one of Deski signatures. The tabletop is lit from below, creating a soft glow for the centerpiece. The critic Mary Fountain Roberts, citing the walls and ceilings of burnished silver leaf and the draperies of white satin, declared the dining room to be a room of crystalline beauty. Another opulent apartment in Manhattan was designed by Joseph Urban and Urban Scott for the writer Catherine Brush. Urban, born in Vienna, trained as an architect. Scott, also an architect, was born in Utah, but had traveled widely in Europe and Africa. The apartment featured a double height living room that exalted symmetry and geometry. Rectangular niches and 10-foot diameter mirrors faced each other across the room, giving the whole room a formal Palladian effect. The living room borrows from both the Wienerwerkstatte and Art Deco. It was also notable for its color scheme. In contrast to the white walls and white marble fireplace, one wall was painted dark blue and the windows were draped in red velvet. Built into the niches, flanking the red velvet sofa on the right were bookshelves with interiors in red lacquer. The black carpet was enlivened with red squares. Gleaming metal outlined the niches, the fireplace and the mirrors. Like Donald Desky, Urban combined metal elements with highly polished or lacquered wood to create a sumptuous interior. In a more modest project, Joseph Aronson, a furniture designer and manufacturer, designed an apartment for himself and his wife Henrietta in Manhattan, circa 1932. Aronson was born in Buffalo, New York and was both an architect and a design historian. The small apartment was a laboratory for Aronson's design ideas. The long narrow living room served multiple purposes. At the entrance was a small dining area. In the center of the room, a seating area was dominated by a wide fireplace surround which concealed cabinets for storage. At the far end of the room, a sofa was encased in cabinetry that held a radio and a phonograph. By placing a sofa perpendicular to the fireplace and extending the radio cabinet into the room, Aronson not only created separate functional areas but also modified the occupant's perception of the room to lessen the tunnel-like dimensions. Aronson appears to have been influenced by both central European functionalism and a French focus on comfort and elegance. World's fairs presented an opportunity for modernist designers to promote their work. In 1933, the Century of Progress Exposition opened in Chicago with an exhibit that included 11 model homes. All featured technological advances in building materials, appliances and systems such as air conditioning and some presented modern interiors. Gilbert Rody designed interiors for an international two-story structure named Design for Living, a reference to the Noel Coward play of the same name which had opened on Broadway in January 1933. The house featured a large multi-purpose room, a concept that was becoming increasingly popular. In the living area, metallic elements were introduced in lamps, tables and the fireplace which was encased in an asymmetrical streamlined aluminum surround. Rody included a fireplace because he believed that emotional values were as important as mechanical ones in the design of a dwelling. A fireplace was not essential in a home with central heating, but Rody believed that Americans would retain a sentimental attachment to an open fire. Rody's views regarding emotional needs may help to explain his affinity for wood familiar to the public as the primary building as the primary material in the home with metal in an accessory roll. In the master bedroom, Rody created an elegant retreat in tones of gray and deep blue. The curvilinear bedroom furniture was wood with horizontal bands and poles of burnished chrome. The only other metal in the room appeared in clocks and light fixtures all designed by Rody. One can see the influence of French art deco in the case pieces, but the horizontal chrome bands, like the horizontal bands that embellished the fireplace around downstairs are artifacts of streamlining, an American concept. Another model home in the exposition was sponsored by the state of Florida. James Cune, owner of a New York City gallery, designed the interiors with Percival Goodman, an architect born in the New York area and trained in New York and Paris. Goodman viewed the designer as a combination of scientist and artist. He only used materials with real as opposed to sentimental merit, but like Rody, he took into account the emotional needs of his clients. The Florida Tropical Home reflected this dual philosophy. The living room included a fireplace, but as in Rody's living room, the surround was aluminum. The plan for the Tropical Home was not as open as the plan for Rody's design for a living house, but although the separate dining room was visible from the living room. The interiors of the Florida Tropical House did not survive the exposition's first season. In 1934, Marjorie Shorsch, an Illinois decorator, revamped the furnishings in a style she turned termed modernized Victorian. The 1934 version of the Florida Tropical House was the antithesis of modern design, but Shorsch was correct in her perception that modern design was not that popular. Modern furniture sales accounted for a very small percentage of the market in 1933. Most Americans were still buying reproduction furniture and furnishings. Nevertheless, the 1933 version of the Florida House, with its mixture of metal and wood in vibrant colors and openness, was a better harbinger of the future of the design than its successor. By 1933, critics were attempting to develop a vocabulary that would distinguish among the various strains of modern design. In December 1933, the decorative furniture magazine predicted the success of what it termed classic modern, defined as still modern, but tamed down to blend inconspicuously into the most traditional of backgrounds. In 1934, Bloomingdale's department store in Manhattan offered the public an opportunity to see this maturing version of modern design in room settings by Russell Wright. Born in Ohio, Wright had a background in theater design and metalwork. He embraced modern materials and machine production. Wright's furniture, with upholstered seating and modular cabinets enlivened with contrasting wood surfaces, epitomized the classic modern mode. Metal was largely confined to accessory pieces. In the setting pictured on the left, an armless love seat and two armless chairs are set in front of a fireplace. Cabinets incorporate both display space and storage. One of the wall cabinets serves as a bar. The large panel flips up and slides back to form a table for the display of Wright's aluminum barware. In another setting shown on the right, the armless love seat is flanked by two one-armed chairs to form a traditional sofa. The occasional chairs on the coffee table give this setting a more sophisticated look with references to Art Deco. In 1934, the Metropolitan Museum of Art again weighed in on the state of modern design. Its 13th Industrial Arts Exhibition was intended to exhibit modern design that could be produced in quantity and thus be affordable to the middle class. One room that met the goal of affordability and epitomized the evolution of American modern design from 1929 to 1934 was a living room by John Wellborn Root in collaboration with Montgomery Ward. Bless you. The contents of the room were to be offered in a Montgomery Ward catalog for a total price under $600. Given that this would be about $11,000 today, I'm not sure how affordable the furniture actually was. But one critic predicted that the inclusion of the room in the catalog would stimulate the production of modern design by introducing it in rural areas that otherwise had little or no exposure to it. This room in soft, neutral terms combined elements that were emerging as hallmarks of mainstream American modern design. The furniture was severe without ornament or inlays, but it had great flexibility. The cabinets could be configured in various ways. The sofa turned into a full-sized bed. The tables nesting in front of the sofa could be deployed around the room when necessary. A console table flanked by two side chairs could be open to serve as a card table or a dining table. The table next to the love seat housed a radio. This living room demonstrated that Root had moved away from the French art deco style that had dominated his design for the Metropolitan Museum in 1929, shown earlier. At the Met Show, Donald Desky presented a dining room in which he continued to borrow from art deco, but in a simpler, cleaner manner, reflecting his evolution as a designer. Desky's move towards simplicity and practicality can also be seen in his redesign of an old stable for Eleanor and George C. Rand in Greenwich Village in 1934. Eleanor was the daughter of Marjorie Merrow-Weather Post, so price was no object. In the cozy seating area, the fireplace was faced in black Bakelite edged in white lacquer. The curved walls were covered in cork, and the flooring was black linoleum with a linear inlay. Black Bakelite casing for the long sofa served double duty. With a touch of a finger, a bar emerged. I want to mention at this point that all the Desky images in the book, including the sketch you see on the screen now, come from the rich Desky archive at Cooper Hewitt, which I'm happy to say we're in the process of digitizing and cataloging. As part of the Rockefeller Center project, the Rockefeller family financed the construction of two apartment buildings intended for middle income individuals and families to stem the exodus from Manhattan by corporations and individuals seeking more up-to-date and less expensive homes. Nothing changes. To promote the housing, Nelson Rockefeller hired two architects to construct a full scale model of a four room unit in the Rockefeller apartments at 30 Rockefeller Center. The model opened to the public in June 1936 at a charge of 10 cents a visit and was visited by more than 25,000 people. Each apartment facing the street had a rounded bay that served as a dining area. The focal point of the living room was a large wood burning fireplace with a marble surround and a large tinted mirror above. The fireplace was flanked by low cabinets topped with frosted glass lit from underneath. The fashionably dressed woman is tuning a radio that is set into one of the cabinets. The classic modern style seen in the model apartment in Rockefeller Center found its way into private commissions as well. One designer who favored classic modern was Eleanor Lemaire, who had distinguished herself as a modernist designer in Los Angeles before migrating to New York City in the early 1930s. Most of her work was commercial. She was for many years the chief designer from Neiman Marcus stores. Lemaire's focus on color as a design feature was evident as soon as one stepped out of the elevator into this Manhattan apartment entryway designed in 1934. The walls were painted white with a red overglaze. The ceiling was gray green and the carpet pattern comprised undulating ribbons of color in three shades of gray blue. Throughout the apartment, Lemaire employed color in line to define spaces and create interest. In the living room, she created three separate areas. The white rug laid over a gray green carpet encompassed the living area. At one end of the room, a platform defined a music room and at the other end, a car table and four chairs created a niche for a game of bridge or mahjong. On the walls, traditional moldings were banished in favor of color blocks in gray green and light chartreuse. The backgrounds and furnishings in the apartment were modern in that they had simple lines and were devoid of ornament, although metal was conspicuously limited. Another home in the classic modern mode was designed by Eugene Schoen, a New York born architect who had studied with Otto Wagner in Vienna. The Washington, DC home for Morris and Gwen Kaferitz had oversized rooms for entertaining because Gwen was a popular hostess. One entered the house through a red door trimmed in silver to harmonize with the silvery wallpaper in the foyer. A grand curving staircase set a tone of elegance and modernity. The foyer opened to the large living room, which was dominated by a mural with classical images set against a bright blue background. Placed asymmetrically into the mural was a fireplace with a mantle of stainless steel and a side panel of mirror tiles. The wall next to the fireplace was covered in silvery rose patent leather. The furniture was typical of Schoen's output, simple forms with gentle curves that bespoke no particular era and were compatible with both modern and traditional backgrounds. A twist on classic modern can be seen in an apartment the industrial designer Raymond Lowey designed for himself in Manhattan. Born in Paris, Lowey was educated as an engineer and came to the US after World War One. He was an excuse me, he was an apostle of streamlining and he created a space that looked forward with illusions to a classical past. The entrance foyer of the apartment featured a gray wood credenza with chromium trim, above which hung an image of the Broadway limited train that Lowey had designed for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In the living room, the dominant element was an asymmetrical structure surrounding the fireplace that evoked the streamlined shape of the train. Dramatically set against a darker background, the surround also served as one end of the sofa. The room contained many gleaming surfaces, all of which contributed to the clean modern look. Yet the comfortable easy chairs and the presence of the fireplace created an atmosphere in which the classical vases on the credenza did not seem out of place. To Lowey, good modern design could be achieved only by a designer with technical skills in addition to a feel for aesthetics. Not surprisingly, given his own background, Lowey postulated that a modernist designer had to be an engineer in lighting, architecture, and sanitation. Not every designer in the mid-thirties was adhering to classic modern. George Fred Keck and Frederick Keasler were two who favored a functionalist approach to modern living. Mr. and Mrs. Bertram Kahn commissioned Keck, a Chicago architect, to design a home in Lake Forest, Illinois that would be comfortable, informal, and easy to maintain. For the Kahn's, Keck situated a soaring living and dining room at the center of a curving four-bedroom house that afforded privacy in front with glass block windows and expansive views in the rear. Irma Kahn, who had a slight disability, asked that there be no carpets or lamp cords over which she might trip, so the floors were bare and the room was lit by recessed pinhole fixtures in the ceiling, which aviated the need for lamp cords. In this commission, Keck drew on the engineering skills that Raymond Lowey had deemed essential and created an environment that was interesting, yet safe for Mrs. Kahn. The Austrian emigre Frederick Keasler designed furniture and interior architecture for the Manhattan apartment of Charles and Mergarita Murgentheim and their two children. Murgentheim was a successful designer known for her boldly colored and patterned table linens which can be seen upstairs on the first floor. Keasler, a member of the European avant-garde, had immigrated to New York in 1926. Keasler and Murgentheim had both been members of Audac. From several small rooms on the main living floor of a duplex, Keasler created one large L shaped space with separate living and dining areas. He bisected the long leg of the L with a simple Bauhaus style desk in metal and glass. At the far end was a conversation and study area. At the near end was an entertainment area adjacent to which was a dining space. Draperies hung between the dining room and the remainder of the space and permitted the two areas to be combined or separated as desired. Keasler designed multifunctional furniture for the Murgentheims. A sofa shown in the slide on the left rested on wheels for easy movement and became a bed when the sofa back was laid flat. A party lounge shown in the slide in the middle was also a multifunctional piece. The center section could lie flat providing another bed or it could be raised as a backrest for guests who might be enjoying a piano recital or sipping cocktails before dinner. There were centers of functionalist modernism in the U.S. in the mid 1930s. It was championed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in 1937 Walter Gropie has brought Bauhaus Theory to Harvard University and Laszlo Maholi Naj established a new Bauhaus in Chicago. Nevertheless, while some Americans might have purchased items of purely functionalist modern design like the chairs in the slide on the right, most who chose modern design rejected the industrial appearance of functionalist furniture in favor of pieces that had the warmth of wood and the comfort of upholstery. To my mind, Kim Weber, who came to the U.S. from Germany just before World War I, best synthesized the various strains of mid 1930s modern design in the interiors he designed for Angelina and Walter Bixby in Kansas City. The soaring entrance foyer was an apt introduction to Weber's design vocabulary. The circular space was a counterpoint to the rectilinear facade of the building. Weber felt that beauty should be expressed through simple, logical, graceful, and proportional forms and designs. He had a preference for curving lines. The inlaid linoleum flooring reiterated the circular shape of the foyer as did the elegant spiraling staircase. The foyer led the eye not only upstairs, but into the large living room. The curved paneled wall in the foyer continued around the living room itself. The paneling in large squares arranged with contrasting graining created a backdrop for walnut furniture in which Weber created interest with rectilinear and curvilinear forms, contrasting grains, and satin silver trim. For the most part, this was a fairly somber room, but the cabinet interiors were painted chartreuse. Weber's skill in spatial manipulation was best displayed in the basement rumpus room. Weber left the huge space open, but he created separate seating areas that afforded some level of privacy. As you can see, the rumpus room was also a showcase for Weber's color sense. In the various rooms of the Bixby House, too numerous to talk about here, one can see the formal structure of Weber's German training, the sleekness of the art deco he viewed in Paris in 1925, the streamlining the captivated mid-30s Americans, and the modern materials that facilitated new approaches to design. The Bixby House is an exemplar of the emerging American modern aesthetic. In the final years of the decade, foreign influences continue to impact American design. The maiden voyage of the Normandy in 1935 and an international exposition in Paris in 1937 gave rise to a resurgence of art deco. The architect Paul McAllister seems to have been influenced by these events in his design of a living room in a Long Island home from Mr. and Mrs. George Vanderbilt circa 1937. In the entrance hall, painted dusty blue, a splendid wave-like satin chrome railing complemented a console in the manner of the French master Edgar Braun. The yellow and off-white dining room had a distinctly art deco flair. Curved edges softened the appearance of the simple table. Both the tabletop and the sideboard were veneered with pale burled wood. For the chairs, McAllister may have drawn inspiration from those designed by Emil Jacques Ruhlmann for the Normandy main lounge, which were upholstered with abstracted floral designs. In the Vanderbilt dining room, however, the tapestry designs featured African game as Vanderbilt was an avid hunter. Some designers look to Asia for inspiration. In 1937, House Beautiful presented its fifth annual Brides House at the Savo Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, featuring three separate apartments, one of which was designed expressly for young moderns. House Beautiful touted the living room of the modern apartment as a true meeting of east and west, an effective mellowing of the modern style, with the introduction of oriental colors and accessories in a room which is essentially modern. The interiors were designed by Ottoli Heuer, a staff decorator for the magazine. Dunbar Furniture Company, then under the direction of Edward Formley, provided the furniture for the living room. Dunbar featured the semicircular sectional sofa and coffee table in an advertisement, citing the originality of form and clean expression of function. In 1938, which was the 300th anniversary of Swedish immigration to Delaware, a fact you probably didn't know. Lorne and Taylor featured Swedish modern interiors designed by William Paulman, head of these stores, interior decorating and home furnishing department, who had recently visited Sweden. Paulman, born in Illinois and raised in Texas, studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris. He furnished a two-room model apartment with American-made furniture based on designs he had seen in Sweden. The case pieces were simple designs in blonde wood. The upholstered pieces, with an echo of Beedermeyer, incorporated blue and yellow, the colors of the Swedish flag. The terminology may have been selected to put a new spin on what might have been termed classic modern a few years earlier. Other than its pale color, the furniture does not appear to have had any Swedish characteristics. In a never-ending effort to distinguish themselves from their competitors, manufacturers tried to come up with new lines and labels. In 1938, Dunbar introduced enduring modern as a moderately priced line displaying freshness and simple beauty. While some designers looked across the oceans for inspiration, others like Hollywood designer Billy Haynes looked to America for inspiration. For the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939, Haynes designed a room that evoked the western desert. A skull painting by Georgia O'Keeffe hung over the fireplace with a slate hearth and silver turquoise surround. A sconce mimicked a buffalo head, or maybe was a buffalo head. The furniture incorporated natural materials like leather and rawhide. Succulent plants dramatically backlit added to the desert motif. The British born designer T.J. Robes John Gibbings termed his decorating philosophy sans apoque without period. Circa 1937, Walter Anenberg commissioned Robes John Gibbings to design an apartment in Philadelphia in which the designer demonstrated his idiosyncratic approach. No hint of streamlining or curvilinear softness invaded the serene living room. The central feature of the room was an Egyptian bar relief set on a panel of gray, sandblasted oak which formed an unusual fireplace mantle and soared to the double height ceiling. Consistent with the designer's philosophy, the walnut furniture was the essence of simplicity. In the bedroom, the bedside lamps, the wood grain, and the geometric patterning on the bed cover provided the only decorative effects. The Anenberg apartment is an example of what one critic termed Robes John Gibbings' belief in refined austerity as embodied in simple lines rendered in beautiful materials. Some designers like Ohio born Virginia Connor continue to favor classic modern. Connor studied art and design in Cleveland, New York, and Paris. In Sea Island, Georgia, she designed interiors for an imposing modernist home facing the Atlantic Ocean. In the large living room, Connor used rounded contours and simple draperies to soften the architectural shell. She placed two armless sofas, curved armless sofas, so that guests could face the fireplace and each other while enjoying the view through the tinted mirror above the fireplace. A small fluted columnar table near the window lent a classical note to the room as did the fluted fireplace surround of Coquina Rock, a natural material composed primarily of shell fragments. At the other end of the modernist and geographic spectrum was a home Gregory Ayn designed in Los Angeles for Ursell Daniel, a reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner. Ayn grew up in Los Angeles where he interface with both Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler. In the Daniel living room a long row of bookshelves formed the backbone of a functionalist multi-purpose unit that created a narrow foyer to act as a transition from the front front door into the living room. High windows at the front of the house permitted light but provided privacy. Glass doors and walls at the rear of the house created the typical California indoor outdoor experience. That experience invaded the east coast in May of 1939 at the New York World's Fair. The House of Glass sponsored by two glass companies was one of 15 houses in the town of tomorrow at the fair that were open to the public at 10 cents a visit. With interiors by the New York firm Modern Age the House of Glass was intended to demonstrate and support modern trends and lifestyle and to tout the role of glass in that effort. The front of the house was sheltered from prying eyes by glass block windows while the back featured expanses of clear plate glass. The house was designed with an open plan but the dining area, living area and conservatory that could be closed off from each other by fiberglass curtains. Most of the furniture on the first floor which Modern Age promoted in its advertisements was classic modern. The predominant material was wood and the upholstered pieces were curvilinear in form. Two upstairs bedrooms opened on to a terrace that afforded sun protection with roof panels of tinted glass. Sliding glass panels separated the outer sleeping area of each bedroom from the inner dressing area. With the panels closed the sleeping area served as a cool sleeping porch while the dressing area remained warm. The chair, dressing table and dresser were primarily made of glass. Other exhibits at the fair also featured glass furniture. The glass furniture was not produced commercially. The weight and fragility of the glass may have made the concept of glass chairs untenable. Production of the style of chair was feasible however in plexiglass. On the right is a chair that Vladimir Kagan designed in 1967 which is similar to one designed in 1939. In May 1940 the New York World's Fair opened a new exhibit titled America at Home that included 16 room settings by architects, designers and interior decorators. This exhibit was intended to represent the variety of interests and living habits in the U.S. The wide-ranging interiors provided a punctuation mark for the evolution of American modern design in the 1930s. I think the five images on the screen will give you an idea of the ways in which American modern interior design had matured during the decade. On the upper left is a studio apartment titled Seven Days created by Virginia Connor. This room represented the mainstream of American modern interiors with unornamented furniture direct and indirect lighting, comfortable seating and a fireplace flush with the wall. Vibrant colors included purple, lime green and persimmon. Connor took into consideration some practical problems of one room living. The sofa converted to a bed and the coffee table became dining table height with the insertion of brass rods into the legs. In the center is a room titled Coffee and Cigars in 16B. Designed by Michael Hare and John B. Manzer, two of the many designers I encountered who are little known today, the room melds art echo with an emerging interest in biomorphic design pioneered by Alvar Alto. On the upper right is a parents retreat designed by William Muschenheim for adults desirous of privacy in a household with children. Muschenheim, born in New York City, studied architecture at MIT and at the Weimar Bauhaus. He favored a functionalist approach to modern design. Employing modern materials and avoiding any decorative flourishes, he created an easy care yet sophisticated environment. On the lower right is music corner designed by John Vassos, sorry, designed by John Vassos who was born in Romania and immigrated to the United States in 1919. A successful industrial designer, Vassos had established a design department at RCA in 1933 and had designed cabinets for RCA's early television sets. The music corner served several purposes as shown it was a media room with a television set, a radio, a phonograph, and a movie projector. Vassos designed the cabinetry however so that the occupants could close the photograph phonograph cover, slide the radio back and push the television down leaving no evidence of these modern accoutrements. The music corner encompassed many trends of 1930s modern design and demonstrated that they could peacefully coexist. Sleek and sophisticated modular cabinets conserved space and afforded flexibility. The horizontal orientation of the cabinets affected a streamlined look. Metal lamps and accessories denoted the relevance of modern materials and the machine as as did the Plexiglas cocktail table. Upholstered seating furniture gave Americans the comfort they desired. A corner planter bore nature into a room ostensibly devoted to modern technology. The room settings at America at home taken collectively reflected most if not all of the foreign and domestic influences of American on American modern designers during the 1930s. Designers in America still looked to other countries for inspiration. Hints of French, German, Swedish, Austrian and Asian aesthetics could all be found in the designs. Yet compared with interiors designed at the beginning of the decade, those designed at the end of the decade demonstrate that the foreign influences so strong in the earlier work were over the course of the decade modified and melded with an American machine ethic, streamlining, manufactured materials and most important an American pension for comfort, simplicity and practicality to create American modern design. Thank you.