Joseph urban

Snow White by Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban (1905)

Our current little bungalow backs up to a beautifully landscaped yard, verdant and green, even in the midst of Fall. As I sit working here every day, it’s easy to forget that the leaves are …

“You could have what you wanted of [Urban’s] gifts – fantasy, realism, abstract decoration, architectural solidity. He could do superbly many things that his contemporaries could not do at all. “ – Deems Taylor in Architecture, May 1934. In Urban's hands, assimilation became creativity of the highest order. He brought medieval styling to a bridge for the Hapsburg Emperor and japonistic elements to stage sets for the Ziegfeld Follies. Growing up in fin-de-siecle Vienna, he was immersed in the…

Turn-of-the-century Vienna was a magical, infectious brew. Viennese children’s book illustrations at the time were no exception.

One building I think should have been preserved, but wasn't, was New York City's Ziegfeld Theater (1927-1966). Its Wikipedia entry is here. It mentions that the architects were the great Joseph Urban (1872-1933), who I wrote about here, and Thomas W. Lamb (1871-1972), who specialized in cinemas and theaters. The style of the building is hard for me to pin down. It was designed around the time the famous Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes of 1925 was…

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The Books of the Chronicles of the Three Sisters