WALDORF - ASTORIA
NEW YORK, NY
FIFTH AVENUE AND 34TH STREET
ARCHITECTURAL WATERCOLOUR OF
THE ASTORIA EXTENSION (1897)
ARCHITECT
Henry J. Hardenbergh
FINAL PIECE
(1897-1929)
The building drawn was demolished in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building.
The building represents the Astoria wing of the complex (The Waldorf wing not represented here was on Fifth and 33rd street)
This temporality of a seemingly permanent architectural objects has always intrigued me and I have always been drawn to the history of hotel culture in New York City.
The intricacy of the detailing in the upper segments of the building was what I chose to focus on with its French Second Empire Mansard-roofed towers with iron-work cresting and Austrian Baroque onion-domes over corners turrets.
The mirroring (done digitally) gives the impression of the hotel floating which is a reference to its untethered and unplaced precense of the building, now existing solely in images and archives. Its grave built over, its gravestone being arguably one of the most promoninet and recognizable buildings in the world. A gravestone that unfortunately offers little in the way of memory. This is what ultimately propelled me in the creation of the work.
ORIGINAL PIECE BEFORE MANIPULATION
16x20"
INITAL PEN SKETCH
BEFORE WATERCOLOURING
INITIAL PEN SKETCH MIRRORED
INITIAL PEN SKETCH MIRRORED
WITH BACKGROUND ADDED FOR CONTRAST
