Photograph by Ed Pollard, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II digital slr-2008.

Daily News Building, 220 East 42nd Street, Manhattan

Artist Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)

CultureAmerican

DateNovember 21, 1935

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
Overall, Mat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)

InscribedFront and Verso; Icp 1982. 1219

Credit LineGift of Joyce F. and Robert B. Menschel

Object number2007.12.1

Not on view

DescriptionThis gelatin silver print is of an aerial view of a city with tall buildings, smoke stacks and a river.

Label TextBerenice Abbott American (1898-1991) Daily News Building, 220 East 42nd Street, Manhattan, November 21, 1935 Gelatin-silver print Gift of Joyce and Robert Menschel 2007.12.1 Berenice Abbott produced 305 photographs of New York City during her work on Changing New York. In many of them, she used her compositions to stress what she termed the "fantastic" relationship between recently erected structures and the surrounding neighborhoods. She often shot her photographs to comment pointedly on new buildings she felt were insensitive to the existing cityscape. The vertiginous bird's-eye viewpoint and bluntly asymmetrical design of Daily News Building suggest her unease with the way the colossal structure dwarfed the low-rise neighborhoods bordering it. ProvenanceCollection of Robert B. and Joyce F. Menschel, New York; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Gift of Joyce F. and Robert B. Menschel, 2007 Exhibition History"Women of the Chrysler: a 400-Year Celebration of the Arts," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., March 24 - July 18, 2010.Published ReferencesElizabeth McCausland, _New York in the Thirties: As Photographed by Berenice Abbott_ (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.. 1967), 65 ISBN: 0-486-22967-X Formerly Titled: "Changing New York"