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PARK AVENUE AND 39TH
STREET For six months in 1936, the "House of the Modern Age"--a prefabricated, modernist, all-steel, one-family home--stood on a Park Avenue "million-dollar" lot. "Fireproof, cyclone-proof, termite- and lightning-proof," † the house was designed by Chrysler Building architect William Van Alen and assembled by National Houses, Inc., at a cost of $10,000. It was one of many experimental houses built during the depression. On the same midtown site in 1934, the New York Committee of Better Houses in America and the Columbia Broadcasting System had commissioned a Georgian-revival house. By the time it was demolished a year later, 166,000 visitors had paid ten cents to see it. The Van Alen house fared even better: it attracted 110,000 visitors in only three months, from July 9 to October 9, 1936. On October 8, literally on the eve of its destruction, Abbott photographed the "House of the Modern Age." Her interest was inspired by Elizabeth McCausland, who in August had written a review about it. The photograph shows more than Van Alen's steel house. As in other photographs of Murray Hill, Abbott described the overshadowing of an elite residential neighborhood by office buildings. South of the "House of the Modern Age" was the Princeton Club (left), formerly the home of Frederic Jennings, an opponent of Murray Hill's commercial development. Across the street (center) was the eight-story Murray Hill Hotel, and surrounding these older structures was a cluster of new towers (from left to right): 10 East 40th Street (1928), 22 East 40th Street (1931), the Murray Hill Building (1925); the Lefcourt Colonial Building (1929), and the Lincoln Building (1930). Today, the "million-dollar lot" is filled with an office tower. † Elizabeth McCausland, "Experimental Steel House On a Million Dollar Lot," Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, August 16, 1936, p. 8. Return to the Middle East Side |