Issue
25/Spring
2005
The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts
Senior Editor
Leslie Sternlieb
Guest Editor
Molly W. Berger
How did luxury residential hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria significantly impact urban living conditions? Why was the Atlantic City Traymore Hotel’s use of design principles the first “branding” of its generation? What affected culture and politics of commercial hospitality in America? Who understood consumers’ attraction to glamorous theatrically of buildings? Find out these interesting tidbits and more in the 25th issue of The Wolfsonian-Florida International University’s award-winning Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. This latest issue, distributed by MIT Press, explores the material, social, and cultural world of the large American hotel and tells the story of how they evolved into some of the world’s most significant and interesting buildings.
Ten richly illustrated essays look at the architects, designers, and social forces that created this distinctly and complex urban institution, from Gilded Age New York to 1950s Miami Beach. Broadly imagined yet cohesively focused, the essays examine such major historical processes as consumption and modernism, as well as class, gender, and race.
The Journal complements The Wolfsonian’s upcoming exhibition In Pursuit of Pleasure: Schultze & Weaver and the American Hotel, which will open in November 11, 2005 as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations. The exhibition will provide a detailed look at the landmark luxury hotels designed by the architectural firm of Leonard Schultze and S. Fullerton Weaver, and help viewers to understand these buildings as the culmination of decades-long trends in the development of American hotels.
In addition, The Journal has also been awarded first prize in the category of scholarly journal by the American Association of Museums’ 25th annual Museum Publications Design Competition, which acknowledges excellence in the graphic design of museum publications.
Guest editor for the issue is Molly W. Berger, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and instructor of history at Case Western Reserve. The Wolfsonian’s publications manager, Leslie Sternlieb, is senior editor. Issue 25 of The Journal was sponsored, in part, by major support from the Cowles Charitable Trust and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
The 315-page book, which features more than 400 illustrations, is expected to be on store shelves by June (it is already available at The Wolfsonian’s museum shop, 305.535.2680). MIT Press will market The Journal to a variety of retailers, university and public libraries, museum shops, and major wholesalers in the U.S. and abroad. Besides having an academic following, The Journal has long been enjoyed by the general public, including collectors of the decorative arts, designers, and architects.
The essays in this volume are grouped into sections covering a broad range of concepts, below is a glimpse into The Journal’s contents:
Millionaires’ Elysiums: The Luxury Apartment Hotels of Schultze and Weaver The Rich Man’s City: Hotels and Mansions of Gilded Age New York
Early Twentieth-Century Hotel Architects and the Origins of Standardization The New South in the Ancient City: Flagler’s St. Augustine Hotels and Sectional Reconciliation
Revisiting Hotels and Other Lodgings: American Tourist Spaces through the Lens of Black Pleasure-Travelers, 1880-1950 Princes and Maids of the City Hotel: The Cultural Politics of Commercial Hospitality in America
William Price’s Traymore Hotel: Modernity in the Mass Resort
Merchandising Miami Beach: Morris Lapidus and the Architecture of Abundance
Living Large: The Brash, Bodacious Hotels of Dorothy Draper
“Wrecking the Joint”: The Razing of City Hotels in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
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