Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century

Examining the life and times of New York City's most iconic buildings, Georgia Tech architecture instructor Flowers reveals not only how the city's skyscrapers are inextricably tied to the city's economic booms and busts, planning and day-to-day functioning, but also how the skyscraper ""is a material expression"" of social conditions and personal relationships, ""of the course chartered by capital"" through urban tribes. Chapter three, ""Capital Nightmares,"" paints a gritty picture of the bleak 1930s, as well as the opportunism and corruption it bred. In matters of analysis, however, Flowers can reach: comparing the Seagram Building with the Lever House across the street, he questions Seagram's need for similarly clean lines, and finds that, short of a reflection of ""already-extant corporate identities (e.g., cleanliness and soap, as is the case with Lever House)... We are left with the conclusion that it was the opportunity to use a design that elided the past and could simultaneously serve to garner cultural capital and respectability."" Still, Flowers's broader conclusion, that companies rely on their buildings to promote cultural capital as well as financial, is solid, and makes this an interesting volume for those who like their architecture in proper social and economic perspective. 51 illus.