Meet the Jewish architects who designed NYC’s iconic art deco buildings

The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Radio City Music Hall.

One thing these iconic New York buildings all have in common: They’re all built in the art deco style, which is characterized by geometric forms, bold colors and lavish ornamentation.

These famous buildings may be timeless, but as it happens, the art deco movement is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The design aesthetic first originated in Paris in 1925 at a seven-month art expo, “L’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs.”

From there, the art deco movement quickly took off in the United States, with New York taking up the art deco mantle and incorporating the style into the latest architectural trend: skyscrapers. Of course, art deco is also prevalent in a variety of New York City buildings dating to the 1920 and 1930s, including theaters and houses of worship.

Among art deco’s leading practitioners in NYC were a number of Jewish architects. These talented Jews, like Emery Roth and Ely Jacques Kahn, built renowned art deco buildings like Essex House, the Film Center Building, the El Dorado apartments and more.

Keep scrolling to meet seven Jewish architects and architectural firms who created some of New York City’s best-known art deco treasures, which have shaped the city’s skyline for a century.

1. Irwin Chanin

The Majestic Apartments, The Century, The Chanin

Jewish Architect Irwin Chanin actually attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des arts Décoratifs in Paris. Inspired, he incorporated art deco into his designs for New York City buildings. United States and incorporated in his designs.

Born in Brooklyn in 1891, Chanin spent part of his childhood in Bensonhurst before the family returned to his father’s hometown of Poltava, Russia (what is now Ukraine). The family returned to the United States in 1907, and Chanin graduated from Cooper Union in 1915; today the school of architecture at the downtown college is named after him.

Some of Chanin’s most renowned art deco accomplishments were for Upper West Side residential buildings, including the 32-story Majestic Apartments (115 Central Park West), which was Chanin’s first venture into designing an art deco residence. By the time the Majestic was constructed, the United States was already in the Great Depression, so much of the art deco design came from its height, and not from ornamentation.

According to a plaque on the exterior of the building, “The Majestic’s strong visual impact derives from an interplay of vertical and horizontal elements with ornamentation confined primarily to textures and patterns. Chanin believed in the benefits of sunlight and so designed wide wrap-around corner windows to create rooms he called solaria.”

Over the years, the Majestic has been home to many wealthy and influential Jewish New Yorkers, including comedian Milton Berle, theater actor Zero Mostel, designer Marc Jacobs, Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel (the theater entrepreneur behind Radio City and the Roxy), and even mobsters Louis Lepke Buchalter and Meyer Lansky.

“If the new Majestic is in existence after 1981,” Chanin told The New York Times in 1931, “it will be somewhat of an architectural curiosity.”

The Majestic is one of four “twin tower” style apartment buildings on the Central Park West skyline; Chanin also designed The Century, a similarly-styled building at 25 Central Park West.

Chanin was also the architect for The Chanin, constructed in 1928 — an office building that, at the time of its construction, was the tallest building in midtown.

2. & 3. Mortimer Freehof and David Levy

Congregation Beth Elohim (Temple House)

Architecturally, Park Slope’s Congregation Beth Elohim is probably best known for its domed Beaux Arts main sanctuary, which was constructed in 1910 by Jewish architects Simon Eisendrath and Bernard Horowitz.

Nonetheless, the Reform synagogue in Brooklyn also boasts a historic art deco “Temple House” — intended to house a community center and Sunday school  — designed and built by Jewish architects Mortimer Freehof and David Levy.

The Temple House (274 Garfield Place) was completed in 1929 after the congregation moved from downtown Brooklyn to Park Slope. The neo-Romanesque-slash-art-deco building includes the peacock-motifed Aaron Levy Memorial Chapel and a social hall. Today, the building is used for social events, as a nursery school, and includes clergy offices.

Little is known about Freehof and Levy, though Freehof was born in Brooklyn and studied at Columbia University, and later established his own firm. His wife Sylvia served as a host for a National Council of Jewish Women tea event in 1934.

4. Grad & Associates

J.W. Marriott Essex House

Jewish architect Frank Grad is probably best known for developing Newark in the mid-century. Nonetheless, his firm was also involved in designing one of the most recognizable structures on New York’s Billionaire’s Row: Essex House at 160 Central Park South.

The high-rise is art deco from the inside-out, and designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a historic hotel. Construction of Essex House began on Oct. 30, 1929 — the day after Black Tuesday, the Wall Street crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression. The hotel changed owners multiple times over the years, but always maintained the name “Essex House” somewhere in its name — a good thing, since “Essex House” is affixed in neon lights above the building.

Today, the hotel is known as J.W. Marriott Essex House, and though it has undergone renovations over the decades, it still boasts art deco gems like elaborate gilded doors (including the elevators), black-and-white checkerboard stone flooring, detailed wood paneling and gold-rimmed tray ceilings.

In addition to Essex House, Grad worked on a number of municipal buildings across New Jersey, and later in his life was also involved in projects for NATO as well as other defense and government projects in Europe and Asia. He also was responsible for designing the YW- and YMHA in Newark (long-closed and now functioning as a church), and the Rego Park Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue in Queens in the “moderne” style — similar to art deco.

Born in Austria in 1882, Frank Grad attended the Technical School of Vienna and then moved to Newark, New Jersey as a young man, where he attended the Newark Art School before opening his own architectural firm in 1906. The firm changed names multiple times over the years — at one point going by Frank Grad & Sons, Grad Partnership, Grad & Grad, and finally Grad Associates — before closing its doors in 2010 during the Great Recession.

5. Ely Jacques Kahn

2 Park Avenue, The Film Center Building 

Architect Ely Jacques Kahn was one of New York’s best-known modernist architects, and he was particularly known for his work in interior design and his interpretation of the art deco style.

Born in New York in 1884 to Jacques and Eugenie Maximilian Kahn, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia and then a graduate degree from the Columbia School of Architecture in 1907. He is mostly known for his work in high-rise buildings and lofts, such as 2 Park Avenue in Murray Hill, a designated landmark completed in 1928, just as the area was transitioning into a hub for business.

Like other art deco buildings of the time, Kahn emphasized verticality, but he also included color in his design for 2 Park Avenue: colored terracotta tiles are visible in patterns on the higher floors of the facade in  blue, red, green, yellow and black — some solid and some with intricate patterns. But that’s not all: The entrance to 2 Park Avenue is bronze, as are several other features in the building.

Another one of Kahn’s best-known art deco constructions is the Film Center Building (630 Ninth Ave.), completed in 1929 as the film industry grew in and around Times Square, and later served as a film distribution center for theaters across New York. Also on the National Register of Historic Places, the Film Center is particularly noted for its lobby, which is intricately detailed with multicolored floor tiling in pink, ochre, and gray and with various golden ornamental detailing, even on the ceiling.

Kahn’s firm was also responsible for the construction of the iconic Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue between 1927 and 1928. Though most of the building is considered to be in the French classical style, there are art deco motifs throughout, including some spiral detailing on the exterior along the Fifth Avenue and 57th Street-facing sides.

Kahn was married three times, and had three children with his first wife Elsie Neut. He married Beatrice Sulzberger in 1938 and became the stepfather to her three children, including Cyrus L. Sulzberger, the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and father of New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger. His final marriage was to Liselotte Hirshmann Myller, a Holocaust survivor who fled the Nazis in Germany as an adult and escaped through Greece. Ely Jacques Kahn died in 1972 at the age of 88.

6. Robert D. Kohn

Temple Emanu-El

Architect Robert D. Kohn is listed on the 1917-1918 Jewish Communal Register, an important document that provides a comprehensive account of the Jewish people and organizations in New York City at the time. During those years, he served on the Repair, Equipment, and Maintenance Committee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York — the predecessor to what is now called the UJA-Federation.

Kohn’s greatest contribution to New York’s Jewish community may be Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side. Though the building is considered a mix of Romanesque Revival, Moorish Revival and Byzantine styles, certain components of the Reform synagogue are considered art deco, such as the gold and jewel toned mosaics by Hildreth Meière — evocative of the works of Gustav Klimt — inside. This art deco influence is reflective of the “modern” idea of Reform Judaism, which had only been in existence in the United States for a few decades by the time the synagogue was completed in 1929.

Kohn was also responsible for additions to the flagship Macy’s store in Herald Square made in 1924 (which made it the world’s largest store with an additional 20 stories) and 1931.

7. Emery Roth

The El Dorado

The El Dorado (300 Central Park West) is one of the four “twin tower” style apartment buildings that dot the Upper West Side’s skyline, and this particular building was designed by Emery Roth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect. Designed in 1929, as city laws allowed for higher and higher construction, Roth “was responsible for the massing and plan of the building,” while architecture firm Margan & Holder designed the facade, according to a Landmarks Preservation Commission report on the building.

Like many other towers built at the time, the construction of the El Dorado coincided with the 1929 stock market crash, which delayed the completion of the building until 1930. The main entrance to the building is framed in bronze, and above the entrance are ornamental plaques “embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms,” as the Landmarks Preservation Commission report describes. Other details on the exterior above the front entrance include frieze patterns of art deco chevrons, and panels featuring birds.

Famous Jewish residents of the El Dorado over the years have included Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Dreyfuss and Carrie Fisher.

Born in Hungary, Roth was one of eight children. Upon the death of his father in 1884, the family became increasingly destitute, and Roth, then just 13 years old, headed to the United States with the hopes of helping his family. The plan was for him to live with an uncle in Chicago, but upon Roth’s arrival there, he lost the address and had to make his way alone. Roth became an apprentice for a local architect, where he learned the trade. By the 1890s, Roth had established his name as an architect in New York, having already designed the Ritz, the Hotel Belleclaire on the Upper West Side, and a number of other now-landmarked buildings across the city.

Roth married Ella Grossman and the couple had four children. His sons, Julian and Richard, joined their father in the architecture business, forming Emery Roth and Sons, which, by the mid-20th century, had become one of the most high-profile architectural companies in New York City. Emery and Sons was tasked with building the World Trade Center.

Roth was also a member of Central Synagogue, according to his obituary.