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This is Robert C. Weinberg critic at large and architecture reporting to you on the last landmark that is disappearing right under today where you to pass by the Americas at West Fifty third Street you'll see scaffolding up and a building coming down the Ziegfeld Theater has been demolished it remarkable an unusual building that deserved a better fate it was designed in the one nine hundred twenty S. by a genial genius of a Viennese architect Joseph one of the leaders of a sense has shown movement in Austria which was a phase of the art nouveau period that flourished about the time of World War One urban came to this country in the early one nine hundred twenty S. and rapidly became a leading figure in New York's architectural decorating and scenic design fields of the frenzy nine hundred twenty S. friend of such disparate groups as the Jimmie Walker political circle and the intellectuals who founded the New School of Social Research he left an impression on the face of a city that is rapidly becoming eradicated by the inevitable effects of so-called progress when the bloody it became in the early one nine hundred thirty S. He swept away the old casino in Central Park because it's because of its association with the notorious Tammany characters totally overlooking the fact that its interior had been explicitly decorated by the genius of Joseph of on as a friend of a glamorous producer Florence Ziegfeld urban design is it felt theater which was as remarkable a piece of contemporary design for its time as the Guggenheim Museum was a generation later its exterior is unique or I should say was called by the time this report reaches you there will be nothing left of it. One of its most ingenious features was the treatment of the side street and the fifty third Street facade where the required fire escapes were assembled into a delightful composition it carefully patterned filigree of delicate black eye and balconies silhouette against the solid wall background of light colored brick the Z. fells Avenue facade has been well known to New Yorkers over the years for it striking individuality most interesting of all was the interior the walls and ceilings of the auditorium formed a continuous smooth flowing concave surface which was a radical departure for those days from the pompous pseudo Renaissance but was our columns and arches. Had the surface decorated with a continuous mural which was executed by the artist million gap in the Palmetto she was commissioned shortly thereafter to do a similar mural for the plazas push a room that some of you may remember the subject in the Ziegfeld was a panoply of medieval scenes in multi-color variety of patterns covering the entire code of continuity in a delightful sequence which made it a going there and unusual experience this mural was a distinguished work of art of great ingenuity and was probably the highest achievement of the theory of the up at the core in New York City and that period for decades thereafter the Ziegfeld housed first the follies and then of a musical shows eventually it was acquired as an investment by Billy Rose It then became alternately a broadcasting studio and the host to occasional special performers like morish evaluate Finally Billy Rose who had in the meanwhile acquired other buildings on the block announced his intention of demolishing the seat felt to form part of a site for one of the great new skyscrapers that are marching up your the Americas. When this was announced I suggested to the Landmarks Commission that the seat felt should at least be thoroughly measured and photographed inside as well as out so that the complete graphic record could be preserved in the commission's archives it would have that meant it would have been impossible of course for the Landmarks Commission to have saved it in the popular sense of that and since plans for its destruction would do for events by the time the commission came into existence and a half ago it was my idea that this would appeal to Mr Rose and that he would underwrite the cost of this recording but hardly at the suggestion the made when Mr Rose died now was executors of going ahead and directed the demolition to proceed and I wonder whether there are any records photographic otherwise to mock the very existence of an important architectural landmark that today is disappearing and around very eyes this report is therefore a digital swan song for uniquely beautiful theatre probably one of the very few distinguished the optical monuments and off their city of the art nouveau secesh own style as practiced by one of its masters chosen by his New York masterpiece will remain only in the memory of those who knew it.