Manhattan: 40th Street (West) - 5th Avenue
The American Radiator Building nearly completed, 38-44 West 40th Street, south side, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, showing also 56-46 and 36-18 West 40th Street. The Republican Club is at the right and the New York Club at the left. Between the two is the
Engineers' Club.
March 6, 1924.
Peyser &. Patzig.
TEG~ 3657
'7
A 1920s steeple of class-act Art Deco, the golden tips of the tower are supposed to mimic the hue of a radiator aflame, and symbolic figures at the base of the building represent states of heat such as “lust” and “labor” and “drunkenness.” The lower facade is also decorated with fire-breathing salamanders - a symbol of the court of King Francis I, under whose auspices in 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed to the “New World” - allegedly the first European to blaze the waters of Lower New York Bay, and cast western eyes on the shores of Brooklyn and Staten Island. In 1926, Lynn Bomar of the New York Giants stood on the roof of the building and hail mary’d a football into Bryant Park, where Giants halfback Hickey Haines, wearing a waistcoat and tie, caught what the papers called the longest forward pass on record.
