{"id":1767,"date":"2016-01-29T13:34:36","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T17:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/?p=1767"},"modified":"2016-01-29T13:34:36","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T17:34:36","slug":"art-decos-wisdom-of-the-ages-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/explore-new-york\/art-decos-wisdom-of-the-ages-part-ii","title":{"rendered":"Art Deco\u2019s Wisdom of the Ages, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many schoolchildren over the decades glanced above the doorway to see a woman reading to a boy while a girl nearby is working on an abacus? It is a simple, beautifully sculpted panel, attentive to detail, as the architectural historian William Rhoads writes<\/a>, \u201cdown to the shoelaces.\u201d The scene is one of two on the carved stone panels on the Marlboro Middle School in the Hudson Valley, an Art Deco-style school completed in 1937. Today\u2019s school buildings are far smarter, in using energy efficiently and caring more for the environment, but they aren\u2019t as full of the wisdom of storytelling in their exterior design. In those historic panels, the designers imparted the value of learning.<\/p>\n

Like the reliefs of the Marlboro school, the architectural panels of another Art Deco-style structure, at 20 Exchange Place in Lower Manhattan, hearken to know-how. They, too, tell stories intended to elevate mankind, in this instance on the exterior of a major bank. Although City Bank Farmers Trust Company had to scale back its ambitious plans to be the \u201cworld\u2019s tallest\u201d skyscraper when the Great Depression ravaged the economy, the bank still invested much in the exterior\u2019s decorative elements that look not only to the present but to other eras for meaning. The building\u2019s splendid, ornate doorways exemplify this best, showing both historic means of transportation, like sailing ships, and the newest of that era, in airplanes.<\/p>\n

At the core of both, as in so many panels on these Art Deco structures, is the value of human progress and discovery, whether it’s in the technology advancement of the present or the wisdom of ancient cultures. The buildings imparted this value and saluted ingenuity and learning, a sort of stubborn optimism in the midst of a society seeking to emerge from the Great Depression. (For Part I of Mindfulwalker.com\u2019s exploration of these reliefs, see \u201cSymbol and Story in Art Deco Panels<\/a>.”)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the exquisite panels on these two buildings.<\/p>\n

Marlboro Middle School, Marlboro, N.Y.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally the Marlborough Central High School and Grade School, the current middle school has been \u201cinsensitively altered\u201d over the decades, as architectural historian Rhoads observes. The sculptural panels are on an Art Deco structure that Gerard Betz designed. Betz was a Hudson Valley architect whose designs during the 20th century encompassed a wide variety of styles. The school, built in 1936-1937, was a project of a New Deal program, the federal Public Works Administration (PWA). Despite the various alterations to the school over nearly eight decades, the sculptural panels of stone, fortunately, have survived. Each doesn\u2019t stand out to a passerby, but they are worth a close-up look.<\/p>\n

The panels can be read for what they seek to convey and what they tell us about the 1930s. They\u2019re historic artifacts of a society seeking uplift, both economically and philosophically, in the years following the Great Depression. They also express the timeless virtues of wisdom and learning. The WPA\/Federal Art Project likely commissioned the reliefs, according to Rhoads. They reflect the frequent efforts of WPA art on school buildings to inspire and to hearken to the progress of human civilization \u2013 in essence, to hold up the worth of education at a time when society had come apart at the seams.<\/p>\n

In the first panel, a woman reads to a young boy, whose upright posture seems to signal a respect for and intent to listen well to what the woman is reading. Nearby, a girl sits in front of and works on an abacus, the ancient counting tool still in use in the 1930s and today in some schools\u2019 programs and activities. The relief\u2019s symbols reinforce the worth of learning, from a book and globe to a large owl radiating the light of wisdom.<\/p>\n

\"Doorway<\/a>