Art Deco

Art Deco buildings combine geometric ornament with new materials. Tall buildings step back in stages as they rise, a form shaped in New York by the 1916 zoning law, and their facades are often divided by continuous vertical strips of masonry. Ornament uses zigzags, chevrons, sunbursts and stylized flowers, drawn from Cubist painting and from ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and pre-Columbian art. Common materials include terrazzo (marble chips set in cement and polished), aluminum, stainless steel, chrome, and colored glass and tile.

William Van Alen's Chrysler Building in New York (1930) has a crown of seven terraced stainless steel arches with triangular windows, and steel eagle heads at the 61st floor. The Empire State Building (1931) and Rockefeller Center (1930s) are also in New York. Miami Beach's Architectural District has 960 historic buildings, many of them Deco hotels and apartment blocks in pastel stucco by architects such as Henry Hohauser and L. Murray Dixon. Napier, New Zealand, was rebuilt largely in the style after an earthquake in 1931.

Art Deco began in Paris in the 1910s, before World War I, and is named after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in that city. The term itself did not appear in print until 1966, when the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris held an exhibition on the period. The historian Bevis Hillier made it widely known with his 1968 book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s.

In the late 1920s the style spread to the United States, where it was used for skyscrapers, cinemas and department stores. The Chrysler Building was the world's tallest building for about 11 months after its completion in May 1930, until the Empire State Building passed it on May 1, 1931. During the Great Depression the ornament became simpler, and in the 1930s Streamline Moderne, with curved forms and polished surfaces, developed out of it. After World War II the International Style replaced Art Deco for most large buildings.