#LostLA continues with the Art Deco Richfield Tower
The Richfield Tower, Los Angeles, at night (Los Angeles Public Library) In 1929, the Richfield Oil Company of California moved into its new LA downtown headquarters, a black terracotta and gold-leaf tower designed by the famous architect Stiles O. Clements. An Art Deco masterpiece, meant to resemble an oil derrick, the tower became a Los Angeles landmark. By 1966, Richfield — by then merged with…
Norman Bel Geddes was an American industrial designer and futurist who had a major influence on the streamlined Art Deco design of the 1930s and 40s.
Few of Geddes’ designs came to fruition. A notable exception was the General Motors Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, also known as Futurama. (Click here for a collection of photographs from that year’s fair.)
One of his unrealized designs was “Airliner Number 4,” a nine-deck amphibian airliner that he sketched in 1929.
It would have been a mammoth airship, inspired by Germany’s Dornier Do X flying boat. Geddes wanted to seat up to 600 people and provide areas for concerts, deck games, a gymnasium, a solarium — even two airplane hangars!
He put the cost of building the aircraft at $9 million, which would be something like $125 million in today’s money.
Bel Geddes’ Fantastical Airliner #dieselpunk Norman Bel Geddes was an American industrial designer and futurist who had a major influence on the streamlined Art Deco design of the 1930s and 40s.
steampunkd