Item Details

USA, 1973, Disbound

VG+

[NYC PHOTO ARCHIVE] c1970s Original Photo Print Archive CERVIN ROBINSON: Skycraper Style ART DECO BUILDINGS

Original photo print archive – unbound – with NYC photo lab envelope and 1976 typed letter from Oxford University Press returning the photos to photographer Cervin Robinson.

Included in the lot of black & white gelatin prints are: (5) 11” x 14”, (1) 9 ½” x 13”, (9) 7 ½” x 9 ½”, and (17) smaller images ranging up to 6 ½” x 8 ½” for a total of 32 images. There are no markings or stampings on the prints.

The images were included in Skyscraper Style: Art Deco New York published by Oxford University Press, 1975.  With Rosemarie Haag Bletter, Robinson co-authored Skyscraper Style. The book presents the remarkable New York Art Deco buildings of the late 1920s and '30s white photographs, with two essays pointing out the style's main features, its European and American sources, the major buildings, and their architects' intentions in designing them. 

Architectural Photographer Cervin Robinson (1928–2022)

Cervin Robinson was an architectural photographer known for his commanding, monochromatic images of early-20th-century architecture.

Born in Boston in 1928, Robinson always had a knack for photography, architecture, and writing—three disciplines that defined his career. He began taking photographs at age 12, was the son of an architect, and studied English literature at Harvard University. After serving in the U.S. Army, Robinson worked in New York from 1953 to 1957 as an assistant to photographer and photojournalist Walker Evans.

In 1958, he began turning his own camera’s lens toward architecture’s largely unphotographed past for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Among his images are the original Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, whose demolition presaged the modern historic preservation movement; the William G. Low House, featured on the cover of Vincent Scully’s The Shingle Style Today (1974); and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building.

Beginning in the 1960s, his images were increasingly used by architects and architectural publications alike, including Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, Architectural Review, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and Places.

With Rosemarie Haag Bletter, Robinson co-authored Skyscraper Style: Art Deco New York (1975), which gave the interwar style intellectual heft. The book presents the remarkable New York Art Deco buildings of the late 1920s and '30s white photographs, with two essays pointing out the style's main features, its European and American sources, the major buildings, and their architects' intentions in designing them.