Thanks to a number of factors, including the existence of the retailer IKEA, when it comes to home decor and furnishings, variations on mid-century modern tend to prevail. But a hundred years ago, a far more exuberant style emerged. That would be Art Deco, which spans architecture, interior design, artwork and even type fonts. And it is the subject of a new 218-page coffee table book by the Chicago architectural historian Max Chavez called “Art Deco World.”
The term Art Deco is derived from the French phrase “arts décoratifs,” and the style itself was first featured at a 1925 exhibition of modern decorative and industrial arts.
At the time, tastemakers were shedding the darker, heavier, traditionalist aesthetics of the Victorian era. “In the first two decades of the 20th century, people were trying to figure out, what is the aesthetic of this century?” said Chavez. “And Art Deco grows out of this desire to explore what modernity could look like and there’s a strong fascination with technology and industry and the machine.”
Art Deco’s initial phase was “gilded and very geometric and with a vertical emphasis, so think skyscrapers like the Carbide & Carbon Building in Chicago (built in 1929) or the Empire State Building in New York,” which opened in 1931. “In this period, the ultimate engineering marvel is the skyscraper, and Art Deco is intertwined with that. The height that these buildings were reaching was so incredible to people, and Art Deco was an amplifier of that engineering achievement.”
Chicago is home to a number of Art Deco landmarks, including the Civic Opera House (1929), the Chicago Board of Trade building and the One North LaSalle building (both from 1930).
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“There’s this resounding theme of Art Deco being a design of excess that grew out of the heyday of the 1920s. Gangbuster economics and Art Deco is the style that represents that mindset,” said Chavez. “It’s gleaming and bright. Hollywood was a big part of that. It’s a very joyous time, especially coming out of World War I; there’s a sense of optimism. There’s a lot of shiny metals and lacquer, really rich stone, a lot of technological materials like steel and glass.”
But in Chavez’s view, Chicago’s strongest Art Deco examples can be found in neighborhoods outside of downtown. “I think you find it in churches and really great little storefronts,” he said. The First Church of Deliverance in the Bronzeville neighborhood is among the buildings featured in “Art Deco World.”
“We don’t really associate churches with Art Deco,” said Chavez. “But that church is so distinct and singular, so I really wanted to highlight it. It was originally built as a hat factory in 1923 and then it was adapted into a church 10 years later. It was expanded in 1939, when it received its present art deco appearance, with the towers added in 1946. It’s covered in this very clean, slick, terra cotta. This thing shines, and that appearance was typically reserved for a factory building because it was easily cleanable. It conveyed modernity, and here it’s applied to a church, which is a very strange place for it to appear. But it does give that sense of: Look at our gleaming church. This is a modern congregation, we are just as up-to-date as any high-tech factory during this period. It’s tapping into that same sense of technological promise.”
The towers also contain a defining Art Deco feature: large glass block windows. “My favorite,” Chavez laughed. “I feel like I’ve developed an online persona as the glass block guy. It was used in industrial settings because it allowed diffused light to come into a factory floor without people being able to see inside. So then you see that sort of spread outwards into the design of Art Deco buildings. It was considered one of the core materials that was modern and futuristic.”
Chicago’s “big Art Deco moment,” Chavez said, was the 1933 World’s Fair, called A Century of Progress. “I don’t think people realize how extensive it was, it was huge! And it was the embodiment of the Art Deco ethos in that it was looking at technology and modern life.” The structures were temporary in nature and eventually torn down, including the water gate entrance to a structure called the Electric Building located at the South Lagoon, which is featured in Chavez’s book.
Consisting of two pylons with a stone appearance, it was designed by Lee Lawrie. “He’s arguably the Art Deco sculptor from that period, and this was essentially an ancient-looking gate that led up to a very modern building. In Art Deco, there’s a lot of blending of inspirations, so it’s a little Egyptian, a little Assyrian-Babylonian. It’s not any one style, but a broadly ancient style. So it was a contrast of, look at where we started and look at where we are now.”
Another Art Deco example that no longer exists: A ceiling mural by John Warner Norton titled “Gathering the News, Printing the News, Transporting the News” that was once in the lobby of the Chicago Daily News building, otherwise known as 2 North Riverside Plaza. It features a broadsheet newspaper bisecting all kinds of graphic design associated with Art Deco imagery. “It’s trying to evoke this sense of movement and dynamism. There’s planes, there’s trains, there’s smokestacks and wheels.”
According to Preservation Chicago, here’s the backstory: In 1993, a leaky roof caused a panel of the mural to come loose and “the entire canvas was stripped off the ceiling” for repair and restoration. But that didn’t happen. One theory is that the cost was deemed too high.
“Nobody knows where it’s at, where it’s stored or even if it’s still extant,” said Chavez. (As of 20 years ago, according to Preservation Chicago, “The artwork sits in a Near Northwest Side art storage warehouse.”)
After its initial heyday in the earlier half of the 20th century, Art Deco re-emerged “in a huge way in the 1970s,” Chavez said. That’s when Art Deco actually got its name.
“Up until then, people just called it ‘modernistic,’ but it never had a characterization. There’s an art historian named Bevis Hillier and he’s credited with taking that phrase, ‘arts décoratifs,’ and turning it into Art Deco. And through a few books and a big exhibition in 1971 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, he distills what Art Deco is. Up until then, people were viewing it as the domain of a kitsch collector. It didn’t have a strong artistic or intellectual reputation. It was seen as dated, not serious and frivolous.”
Hillier’s efforts, however, “helped to place Art Deco in a specific cultural moment that showed that it was a serious style that had cultural value. And at the same time, there was a desire in the 1970s to find a new way to convey enjoyment and fun.” Chavez points to pop cultural influences, including the 1974 film adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” starring Robert Redford, which helped reignite interest.
That continued into the ’80s, when opulence was back in style, and Chicago’s NBC Tower, completed in 1989, is an example of this revival. This renewed interest in Art Deco plays out in a TV series such as “Miami Vice,” where everything from the title font to the South Beach architecture to the interiors themselves are a re-imagining of Art Deco.
“‘Miami Vice’ is a really great example of this period in the ’80s when Art Deco aesthetics really ramped up. What happened in the ’70s is that people were trying to figure out what Art Deco’s legacy was, and a lot of people landed on: It’s a style of opulence and indulgence. So in the ’80s, which is a period of excess, revisiting Art Deco becomes a visual shorthand for that indulgence. If you look at the cineplexes that were opening at this time, they were using this exaggerated Art Deco style that taps into this idea of entertainment and having a good time.”
But by the end of the ’90s, the movement had fizzled, ultimately leading to the IKEA-ization of home goods and furnishings.
According to Chavez, “I think one reason we haven’t seen a resurgence of Art Deco interiors in the home is because, for many people, it’s a little too brash. A little too glitz and glam. Too over-the-top. Whereas something like IKEA’s Scandinavian modern look feels accessible and easier to wrap your head around. And it’s also cheaper to manufacture.”
There is a revival of Art Deco furniture out there, he said, “but it’s a very simplified version of what we would consider Art Deco. The materials are cheaper. This is Wayfair doing Art Deco. So we’ve simplified the style down and risk flattening the legacy with some of the stuff you see online today being identified as Art Deco.”
We’re not living through especially exuberant or prosperous times. It makes sense that design would match the moment. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were surrounded by design aesthetics that embodied a bit more joy?
“One of the things I write about in the book is that there is this perception that Art Deco was only for the rich and famous and that luxe life. And that wasn’t true; there was a lot of Art Deco style that filtered down in the ’30s and ’40s into furniture and product design, where it became accessible to middle-class families.
“One thing I hope the book asks of folks is to think of Art Deco as a multi-faceted thing. It’s not just Carbon & Carbide, where you went downtown and you got to see an Art Deco building. You were able to go into your neighborhood storefront and there was Art Deco design.” There were even gas stations that had Art Deco design. “It was everywhere and we’ve lost so many examples.”
It’s a style, Chavez said, that embodies a spirit of “futurism and optimism that is maybe at odds with the sentiment of the moment. A hundred years on, it turns out Art Deco is a really complex, multi-faceted style. It wasn’t just one thing. It was trying to answer everything about modern life.
“So I implore people, if they were to take a look at the book and get a better understanding of the different identities of Art Deco, to then try to find it around the city, because there are a lot of modest, maybe humble examples of it.”
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