#60

#60, Soho, NYC

For all the talk of the recession and grim evidence that we're headed, hell-in-handbasket style, for a second Great Depression, there's been precious little talk about, ya know, the good side of things. In 1929, just as the stock market was crashing and businessmen were leaping out of skyscrapers, THIS was being built. Two words: Art Deco. Those elegant modern forms, those geometric motifs, those fonts. It's probably too much to think we'll go backward in time to a place where there's nothing to do all day but hide out in speakeasies drinking bathtub gin, watching Eddie Cantor pictures, and listening to Al Jolson sing "Swanee" while we all go blind from moonshine and contemplate our unemployment checks. But if the Western Union Building made it out of the crash looking this good, there might yet be reason to hope.