Customer Reviews

Mansions in the Clouds: The Skyscraper Palazzi of Emery Roth

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In the impersonal concrete and glass caverns of New York City, one can still find survivors of a more gracious, yet jazz-age modern, era. Mansions in the Clouds introduces readers to the career and major buildings of architect Emory Roth. His residential hotels and apartment buildings graced the New York skyline with impressive profiles while retaining human scale and classical detailing. The exterior renderings, interior photographs, floor plans, and descriptive detail assist the reader in recapturing and appreciating the genius of Emory Roth. Tea at the Ritz has become an impossible dream, but the Beresford, San Remo, and other Roth-designed buildings remain as inspirations for any of today's architects who are eager to appropriate these masterpieces of the past and express them in a contemporary idiom. Most of all, the book is an indulgence for all of us who daydream of our own manison in the clouds.

Ruttenbaum's book on Emery Roth (1871-1948) is a biography as well as a survey of the buildings he designed. The author successfully explains Roth's role in creating high-rise hotels and apartment buildings that combined attractive exteriors with more efficient, more livable interiors than had been the case before Roth. Architects like Wright, Pei, and LeCorbusier may be better known, but their buildings were designed as works of art, not buildings to be lived in. In contrast, Roth's buildings combined functionality and attractiveness. As Ruttenbaum walks us through Roth's career, we see how he gradually fine-tuned his ability to craft functional floor plans. Roth's works include such New York landmarks as the Beresford, Warwick, San Remo, St. Moritz, Ritz Tower, and hundreds of others.

Two small quibbles regarding this book: Why did Ruttenbaum omit the Hotel Dixie (now Hotel Carter), which was noteworthy for having a long-distance bus station in its basement, complete with turntable? And why did the author use the last chapter to fawn uncritically over the works of Emery Roth's sons, who, lacking their father's aesthetic sense, have produced buildings comprising the worst of 60s-era architecture? Ruttenbaum's book includes a multitude of photos, averaging roughly one per page, as well as 25 floor plans.

If you've ever lived in an older Manhattan apartment, or thought of looking for one, this book will tell you a lot about the history and design of such places. You will never take a foyer for granted again.

This is by far the best book I've ever read about Emery Roth. So good!