?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
CHESLEY BONESTELL (1888-1986)
NEW YORK CENTRAL BUILDING / AT THE GATEWAY TO A CONTINENT. Circa 1929.
41x27 inches, 104x68 1/2 cm. Latham Litho & ptg co., Long Island City. Condition B / B+: partially-replaced margins; extensive expert-overpainting in margins and lower text; creases and restoration in image.
California-born Bonestell "was an American pioneer of space art who helped popularize manned space travel. He is well known for his cover art for science fiction magazines . . . as well as many books such as The Conquest of Space, The Exploration of Mars, and Beyond the Solar System" (https://www.bonestell.org/). In the 1920s, he lived in New York, and helped design some of the iconic Art Deco facades and architectural elements for the Chrysler building, the New York Central Building, and many office and apartment buildings around the city. He also collaborated on the designs for the Plymouth Rock Memorial, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and various state capitols. It is not too surprising then, that he could render this mesmerizing and dramatic nighttime view down Park Avenue of the New York Central Building, a modern ziggurat, in all it's glory. Construction on the building began in 1927 and was completed in 1929, at which point it was the tallest building in "Terminal City," the developed area that covered all of the tracks below in the terminal. Zega p. 75.
