The great Art Deco tower of 1 Wall Street culminates architect Ralph Walker’s 1920s skyscraper designs. More expensive and elaborate than his firm’s many previous telephone and telegraph buildings, 1 Wall Street epitomized Walker’s concept of “humanism,” a modern approach to the integration of hand-craft and machine work, expressed inside and out in the building’s rippling curtain walls and dramatically draped interior spaces.
Kathryn Holliday
Kate Holliday is an architectural historian and Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research focuses on American architecture and theory, particularly interactions with Europe. Her book Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (W. W. Norton, 2008) won the 2008 Book of the Year Award from the southeast chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.