McGraw-Hill Building

Abstract

FOR THEIR watershed 1932 exhibition at the newly founded Museum of Modern Art, “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922,” Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson chose only one New York City skyscraper: Raymond Hood’s McGraw-Hill Building. “The lightness, simplicity and lack of applied verticalism marks this skyscraper as an advance over other New York skyscrapers and bring it within the limits of the International Style,” the critics wrote. “The setbacks are handled more frankly than in other skyscrapers, though still reminiscent of the pyramidal shape of traditional towers.” However, they faulted Hood’s billboard top: “the heavy ornamental crown is an illogical and unhappy break in the general system of regularity and weights down the whole design.” Of course, in the postmodern era, the sign with 11-foot-high letters that spell out the company’s name is one of the building’s most welcome aspects.