Ely Jacques Kahn
Encyclopedia
Ely Jacques Kahn was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscraper
s in New York City
in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film industry. Many of his numerous buildings under the 1916 Zoning Resolution
feature architectural setbacks
to keep the building profitably close to its permitted "envelope" and have been likened to the stepped form of the Tower of Babel
: a notable example is his 1400 Broadway (1931).
, and later was a professor at Cornell University
. Kahn was the father of noted New Yorker
magazine writer Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr.
, and great-grandfather of Ely Jacques Kahn IV, former Director of Cybersecurity Policy at the White House.
Kahn's partnership with Albert Buchman lasted from 1917 until 1930. In this period his work alternated Beaux-Arts with cubism
, modernism
, and art deco
, of which examples are 2 Park Avenue (1927), using architectural terracotta
in jazzy facets and primary colors, the Film Center Building
in Hell's Kitchen
(1928-29) and the Squibb Building (1930), which Kahn considered among his best work. In what has become an iconic photograph, Kahn masqueraded as his own Squibb Building with other architects dressed as buildings for the Beaux Arts Ball
of 1931. The building moved decisively away from the decorative modernity of the Art Deco 20s: Lewis Mumford
praised it in 1931 as “a great relief after the fireworks, the Coney Island barking, the theatrical geegaws that have been masquerading as le style moderne around Manhattan during the last few years.”
As research for The Fountainhead
, author Ayn Rand
worked in Kahn's office, where Kahn arranged for her to meet Frank Lloyd Wright
. Kahn, who had taken full control of the practice of Kahn & Buchman in 1930, as Ely Jacques Kahn Architects, produced some commercial skyscrapers that combined traditional massing with a skin pared of all details, such as the 42-storey Continental Building (1931) at Broadway and West 41st Street.
In 1940 he formed a partnership with Robert Allan Jacobs, the son of architect Harry Allan Jacobs. An exemplary work of this period is the Universal Pictures Building of 1947 which was used by Reyner Banham
to illustrate air conditioning. Another is 100 Park Avenue, and the firm later collaborated with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
and Philip Johnson
on the Seagram Building
. In 1944 Kahn and Jacobs rendered a prosaic program, the Municipal Asphalt Plant as a free-standing sculptural essay in concrete covering four parabolic
steel arches, familiar to any driver on the FDR Drive (at 90th-91st Streets). For the New York Stock Exchange
, Kahn & Jacobs created additional facilities in 1956 designed with their characteristic zig-zag of setbacks in the upper stories.
Kahn's work just after World War II
had direct relevance to Judaism
. In 1946 he began a renovation of Central Synagogue
. In 1947, he wrote on the subject of design principles for synagogues in an article entitled, "Creating a Modern Synagogue Style: No More Copying." In 1948, with sculptor Jo Davidson
, Kahn made the first public plan for a Holocaust memorial in the United States. The chosen site for this project in Riverside Park
later bore other projects for memorials by Percival Goodman
, and Erich Mendelsohn
.
Although Kahn retired some years earlier, the firm of Kahn & Jacobs lasted until 1973, the year after Kahn's death.
Kahn's extensive architectural drawings and papers, including materials from the firms Buchman & Kahn and Kahn & Jacobs, are held in the Department of Drawings & Archives at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
at Columbia University
.
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
s in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film industry. Many of his numerous buildings under the 1916 Zoning Resolution
1916 Zoning Resolution
The New York City 1916 Zoning Resolution was a measure adopted primarily to stop massive buildings such as the Equitable Building from preventing light and air from reaching the streets below...
feature architectural setbacks
Setback (architecture)
A setback, sometimes called step-back, is a step-like recession in a wall. Setbacks were initially used for structural reasons, but now are often mandated by land use codes.-History:...
to keep the building profitably close to its permitted "envelope" and have been likened to the stepped form of the Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...
: a notable example is his 1400 Broadway (1931).
Life and career
Kahn was born in New York, the only son of a prosperous Austrian and French Jewish family. His father brought design wares from Europe to sell in New York, perhaps providing his earliest introduction to design. Ely Jacques Kahn traveled to Europe where he was aware of the work of architect Josef Hoffman. He attended Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and later was a professor at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. Kahn was the father of noted New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine writer Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr.
Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr.
Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr. was an American writer under the byline E.J. Kahn, Jr. with The New Yorker for five decades....
, and great-grandfather of Ely Jacques Kahn IV, former Director of Cybersecurity Policy at the White House.
Kahn's partnership with Albert Buchman lasted from 1917 until 1930. In this period his work alternated Beaux-Arts with cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, modernism
Modern architecture
Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...
, and art deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
, of which examples are 2 Park Avenue (1927), using architectural terracotta
Architectural terracotta
Terracotta, in its unglazed form, became fashionable as an architectural ceramic construction material in England in the 1860s, and in the United States in the 1870s. It was generally used to supplement brick and tiles of similar colour in late Victorian buildings.It had been used before this in...
in jazzy facets and primary colors, the Film Center Building
Film Center Building
The Film Center Building is an office building featuring businesses involved in film, theatre, music and audio production and exploitation. It is located at 630 Ninth Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets in the Hell's Kitchen, or "Clinton", neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
in Hell's Kitchen
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City between 34th Street and 59th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River....
(1928-29) and the Squibb Building (1930), which Kahn considered among his best work. In what has become an iconic photograph, Kahn masqueraded as his own Squibb Building with other architects dressed as buildings for the Beaux Arts Ball
Beaux Arts Ball
The Beaux Arts Ball is the annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the spring, in the École building on the rue Bonaparte overlooking the Seine. Elaborately allegorical floats circled the room at midnight and were judged...
of 1931. The building moved decisively away from the decorative modernity of the Art Deco 20s: Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
praised it in 1931 as “a great relief after the fireworks, the Coney Island barking, the theatrical geegaws that have been masquerading as le style moderne around Manhattan during the last few years.”
As research for The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
, author Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
worked in Kahn's office, where Kahn arranged for her to meet Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
. Kahn, who had taken full control of the practice of Kahn & Buchman in 1930, as Ely Jacques Kahn Architects, produced some commercial skyscrapers that combined traditional massing with a skin pared of all details, such as the 42-storey Continental Building (1931) at Broadway and West 41st Street.
Reyner Banham
Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...
to illustrate air conditioning. Another is 100 Park Avenue, and the firm later collaborated with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
and Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
on the Seagram Building
Seagram Building
The Seagram Building is a skyscraper, located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with Philip Johnson. Severud Associates were the structural engineering consultants. The building...
. In 1944 Kahn and Jacobs rendered a prosaic program, the Municipal Asphalt Plant as a free-standing sculptural essay in concrete covering four parabolic
Parabola
In mathematics, the parabola is a conic section, the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface...
steel arches, familiar to any driver on the FDR Drive (at 90th-91st Streets). For the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
, Kahn & Jacobs created additional facilities in 1956 designed with their characteristic zig-zag of setbacks in the upper stories.
Kahn's work just after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
had direct relevance to Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. In 1946 he began a renovation of Central Synagogue
Central Synagogue
The Central Synagogue is located at 652 Lexington Avenue on the corner of 55th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Built in 1872 in the Moorish Revival style as a copy of Budapest's Dohány Street Synagogue, it pays homage to the Jewish existence in Moorish Spain...
. In 1947, he wrote on the subject of design principles for synagogues in an article entitled, "Creating a Modern Synagogue Style: No More Copying." In 1948, with sculptor Jo Davidson
Jo Davidson
Jo Davidson was an American sculptor of Russian-Jewish descent. Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them...
, Kahn made the first public plan for a Holocaust memorial in the United States. The chosen site for this project in Riverside Park
Riverside Park (Manhattan)
Riverside Park is a scenic waterfront public park on the Upper West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, operated and maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The park consists of a narrow four-mile strip of land between the Hudson River and the gently...
later bore other projects for memorials by Percival Goodman
Percival Goodman
Percival Goodman was an American urban theorist and architect who designed more than 50 synagogues between 1948 and 1983. He has been called the "leading theorist" of modern synagogue design, and "the most prolific architect in Jewish history."-Biography:Percival Goodman was born in New York City...
, and Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...
.
Although Kahn retired some years earlier, the firm of Kahn & Jacobs lasted until 1973, the year after Kahn's death.
Kahn's extensive architectural drawings and papers, including materials from the firms Buchman & Kahn and Kahn & Jacobs, are held in the Department of Drawings & Archives at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library is one of twenty-five libraries in the Columbia University Library System and is located in Avery Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in the City of New York. It is the largest architecture library in the world...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.