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STARRETT-LEHIGH BUILDING
I STARRETT-LEHIGH BUILDING
II Starrett-Lehigh Building,
1930-33 (CGLI) Rising above the ordinary commercial structures along the waterfront is the Starrett-Lehigh Building, a much heralded modernist experiment in industrial architecture. Completed in 1931, this massive factory-warehouse offered a novel solution to freight distribution and a dramatic example of curtain wall construction. With tracks leading directly from the piers into the building, freight cars carried by boat from New Jersey could be moved in 30-foot elevators to truck pits on upper floors. The horizontal bands of windows and cantilevered concrete floors sweeping around the perimeter of a huge city block gave New Yorkers an indigenous example of the new International Style in architecture. Abbott photographed the building three times, twice for the project. In an early effort (circa 1930-1933), she gained access to a building across Eleventh Avenue and photographed the Starrett-Lehigh's northeast corner. From an elevated position, she contrasted the curved sweep of the sunlit banded windows with the heavy cornice of an old-fashioned skyscraper in the foreground. In a second shot, Abbott photographed the same corner from the street. By refusing to correct the converging perspective created by her wide-angle lens, she exaggerated the building's bulk, likening it to the prow of a ship. Nearly two years later, Abbott returned to the Starrett-Lehigh to photograph its southwest corner from a pier on the far side of the new elevated West Side Highway. The last photograph, perhaps taken from a docked oceanliner, affords a full view of this modern mammoth. Although architecturally innovative, the Starrett-Lehigh Building never fulfilled its promise. With the Holland Tunnel (1927), Lincoln Tunnel (1937), and George Washington Bridge (1931), the Hudson River waterfront yielded its commercial activity to long-distance trucking. A protected landmark, the building remains 30 percent vacant. Return to the Middle West Side |
