In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

ROOF GARDENS 201
reached the stage where they contain apartments the size and shape of
free-standing houses. Skyscrapers thus turn into an environment for
other buildings, and as such they occupy a sphere and fulfill a function
traditionally attributed to nature. This is yet another perspective which
makes plausible the flowers, ferns, and trees growing on the skyscrapers'
roofs. So fancy are the multi storey apartments, the houses-withinhouses,
that "the apartment architect [is] the man of the hour." In its
second year of publication, the New Yorker magazine features "a regular
column, signed either 'Duplex' or 'Penthouse,' which [reports] in depth
on the best new buildings in town" (Hawes, 221). The advertising of
leading real estate firms attests to the status of this fashion as a concrete
everyday reality. In the New York Times of September 21, the firm of
Pease and Elliman offers "Duplex Roof Garden Apartments" at 210
Madison Avenue, with "unusually large rooms and high ceilings" and
including "full housekeeping." Slawson and Hobbs presents a "9-Room
Duplex on 15th floor" and an "11-Room Roof Bungalow with 4 Baths"
at 277 West End Avenue, "overlooking Schwab Mansion." This display
of space-within the circumscribed space of a large apartment building
and in the border-zone of its encounter with nature-merits the term
"exceptionally distinctive."
No other space condenses the tensions between nature and civilization,
between outside and inside, between authenticity and artificiality
to such a degree as the roof garden. Thus, when Jack Dempsey organizes
a boxing match in July between his friend Rudolph Valentino and a
sports journalist [see Boxing, Reporters], in order to quash reports of
Valentino's alleged "homosexual inclinations," this public act of negotiation
between a sexuality viewed as "unnatural" and a virility desired
as "natural" [see Male = Female (Gender Trouble)] can be staged only
at a roof garden. The one chosen is the roof garden of New York's
Ambassador Hotel (Orbanz, 128).
Related Entries
Americans in Paris, Boxing, Elevators, Employees, Engineers, Railways,
Reporters, Authenticity vs. Artificiality, Sobriety vs. Exuberance, Male =
Female (Gender Trouble)