The Art Deco-style Chelsea mosaics that illustrate the needle trades

Contemporary New Yorkers don’t often hear the term “needle trades” anymore. But in the vernacular of the early 20th century, it referred to any work related to the creation of clothing—like sewing, pattern making, cloth cutting, and dressmaking.

Much of this work in the decades before World War II was done by immigrants and first generation New Yorkers in Manhattan’s Garment District, the stretch of showrooms, wholesale shops, and factories inside the towering new loft buildings built between Broadway and Ninth Avenue and 34th to 42nd Streets.

Before moving to this chunk of Midtown, the needle trades were centered in sweatshops on the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, and the work was also done piecemeal at home with little regulation or protection. A somewhat regulated Garment District was considered an improvement in progressive Gotham.

To train and supply prewar New York’s army of garment manufacturers, the city—with the help of the WPA—built an Art Deco-style vocational high school called Central High School of Needle Trades (top photo). Opened in 1940 on West 24th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, it was developed in conjunction with garment industry reps.

“This building has sixty-five shops and special rooms, ten regular classrooms and six laboratories in which will be taught all branches of tailoring, costume design, millinery design, dressmaking, shoe manufacturing, fur processing and allied subjects,” the New York Times wrote when the school opened, per The Living New Deal.

Since 1956, the school has been known as the High School of Fashion Industries. With the decline of manufacturing in what’s still called the Garment District, there’s much more of a focus on the business of fashion, per the school website.

Even so, students continue to attend class in the original Art Deco Needle Trades building. Outside the entrance are four proud mosaics illustrating different aspects of the needle trades—from sewing to measuring to threading a needle.

The work may seem primitive amid our digital age, but the mosaics are a reminder of all that used to be made in New York primarily by human hands.

An Upper West Side apartment house’s facade of flowers

The 18-story brick apartment residence at 40 West 86th Street was designed by J.M. Felson, and like so many prewar buildings in New York City, it’s a study in classic, if understated, elegance.

But this seemingly staid apartment house has something that gives it a little sparkle. Spread out on the facade of the lower floors are colorful terra cotta florals. The bright green hues, the curlicues of the petals—these panels are the perfect motifs for a lush, humid New York summer.

Three mythological Art Deco figures on a 57th Street apartment building

Walk along 57th Street, and you’ll see many examples of Art Deco architecture and ornamentation: geometrical shapes, zigzags, and even sculptures of mighty male figures toiling in the modern city. That last one is part of the facade of the 40-story Fuller Building.

Farther east, where office towers recede and elegant apartment buildings line quieter stretches of East Midtown, there’s a different example of Art Deco artistry on one specific residence.

The building is 320 East 57th Street. Take a look at the images above the entrance: three nude women hold hands in a kind of dance, surrounded by floral motifs. Helpful Ephemeral New York readers pointed out that these are the Three Graces, the goddess daughters of Zeus in Greek mythology. Each daughter bestows a particular gift on humanity: mirth, elegance, and youth and beauty.

The bas relief appears to be modeled after this sculpture by Antonio Canova from 1814-1817, which is currently housed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

I imagine the Three Graces has been here since the building was completed in 1926, according to Streeteasy—which attributes the ironwork in the lobby to French ironworker Edgar Brandt, a giant of Art Deco design.

Could Brandt be the sculptor behind the figures? I saw no attribution in the building, which only has a plaque outside noting that Paulette Goddard and Erich Maria Remarque resided there.

Art Deco poetry on a 1929 East Side high-rise

You don’t see a lot of green glazed terra cotta on New York City high-rise facades. But then 240 East 79th Street isn’t just another residential building on the Upper East Side.

This “rather plain brick building” completed in 1929 features a showstopping Art Deco entrance, “completely faced in colored glazed terra-cotta squares, with glazed terra cotta surrounds for the windows and the main entrance,” noted Anthony Robins in his book New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.

The building’s awning carries the address in a recognizable Art Deco typeface, as does the “No. 240 East 79 St” inscribed above the entrance.

Isn’t that eight-sided emblem amid all the green terra cotta unusual? Robins has this to say about it: “Above the inscription sits an octagonal piece of stone, set within a terra cotta frame and capped by a flowering form that curves out from the facade to hover protectively over it.”

“Frederick Godwin, the architect, was a great-grandson of American poet William Cullen Bryant—and his ornamental treatment here is quite poetic.”