I had not been in Gotham since the mid-80’s, a trip that I remember mostly as an intimidating experience of cab rides to unfamiliar places in an alarmingly large city where everyone knew where he or she was going but us.
This weekend I returned as a different visitor, older, a little more knowledgeable about architecture, better at figuring out where subways do and do not go.
I did a lot of wandering, both with the family and alone. I’ve learned that the architectural walks are best done by myself. It’s annoying to your strolling companions when you stop every half-minute to point out a cast iron façade or a terra cotta cornice.
I slipped out of the hotel early Sunday morning and walked down Fifth Avenue, past the Library to Bryant Park, where I found a stunning building on the south side of the park, the current home of the Bryant Park Hotel.
The building and I hit it off. It had character and a presence on the street that competed handsomely with the glassy angles of the Bank of America building diagonally across the park.
The Bryant Park Hotel is a relatively recent incarnation of this 1924 building, operating since Valentine’s Day of 2001. [http://new-york.meuk/radiator building.htm] Originally the building was the American Radiator Building, a transitional wonder that bridges the ages of Beaux Arts and Art Deco.
And here is the coolest part of all . . . it was the first building to be completed in Raymond Hood’s long career.

Until he joined Howells in the Tribune competition, Hood had been living with his wife and growing family over Mori’s Restaurant in Greenwich Village. He designed the renovation plan for Mori’s in 1920 and then, to make ends meet, went to work for the American Radiator Company, designing radiator covers.
Then came the big win in Chicago. When American Radiator decided to build a new showroom and office building on 40th Street just off Fifth Avenue, the company already had its man.
Concerned with the appraisal of some critics that Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen’s Tribune plan was the superior proposal for Tribune Tower, Hood combined elements of traditional and modern design in the American Radiator Building. The steelwork in the building was finished just seven months after the designs were submitted, and the building was occupied a year before Tribune Tower opened.
Hood felt that this lessened “the visual contrast between the walls and the windows and [gave] the tower and effect of solidity and massiveness.” [http://www.aviewoncities.com/nyc/american radiatorbuilding.htm] It carries the same kind of tough street cred that the Burnham boys' Carbide and Carbon Building does in Chicago. Some critics looked at the building metaphorically, suggesting that the black brick symbolized the iron of a furnace and the gold accents the fire that it created.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City designated the Radiator building a landmark in 1974.
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