Nov 09, 2023 - Sale 2652

Sale 2652 - Lot 203

Price Realized: $ 5,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000

LESLIE RAGAN (1897-1972)

CHICAGO / NEW YORK CENTRAL LINES. 1929.


40 3/4x27 inches, 103 1/2x89 1/2 cm. Latham Litho. & Ptg. Co., Long Island City.
Condition B+: overpainting in margins; light tape stains in top margin; small repaired tears at edges; minor creases and abrasions in margins and image.

This was Ragan's first poster for the New York Central Lines, "a cityscape of Chicago's Michigan Avenue dominated by a towering midday thunderhead . . . [in which he conveyed his newly-emerging style with] reflected light and building mass" (Zega p. 95). It shows the city's original Peristyle, designed by Edward H. Bennett, which was erected in Grant Park in 1917 and survived until it was razed in the early 1950s due to poor condition. The impressive architecture of the North Michigan Avenue streetwall features the Willoughby and Montgomery Ward Towers. Zega 119.