Norman Bel Geddes

Bel Geddes, Norman [né Norman Melancton Geddes] (1893–1958), scenic designer. Born in Adrian, Michigan, he studied at art schools in Cleveland and Chicago before his first designs were seen at Los Angeles's Little Theatre in 1916. Coming to New York under the auspices of Otto Kahn, he created the sets for several Metropolitan Opera productions before turning to Broadway, where his work was seen in, among others, a revival of Erminie (1920), The Truth About Blades (1921), The Rivals (1922), The School for Scandal (1923), Reinhardt's The Miracle (1924), Lady, Be Good! (1924), Jeanne d'Arc (1925), Ziegfeld Follies of 1925, Julius Caesar, The Five O'Clock Girl (1927), The Patriot (1928), Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), Lysistrata (1930), Raymond Massey's Hamlet (1931), Flying Colors (1932), Dead End (1935), Iron Men (1936), The Eternal Road and Siege (1937), It Happened on Ice (1940), and Seven Lively Arts (1944). Although not an architect, he designed several theatres. Bel Geddes's interests were so broad that he eventually drifted away from the theatre, but in his earliest days he pioneered in abandoning the proscenium and foresaw the vogue for arena stages. He was an ardent modernist, so his 1920s' musical sets were masterpieces of art deco. However, his most famous theatrical achievements were his settings for The Miracle, Hamlet, and Dead End. Writing of the first, the Times's John Corbin observed, “The cathedral into which the Century Theatre has been transformed . . . is indescribably rich in color, unimaginably atmospheric in its lofty, aerial spaces.” His Hamlet made ingenious use of stairways and rostrums to suggest the various settings. Autobiography: Miracle in the Evening, 1960.

(b Adrian, MI, 27 April 1893; d New York, 9 May 1958). American designer and writer. He studied at the Cleveland School of Art, OH, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and by 1914 he had established a reputation as an illustrator, making portraits of operatic luminaries for the New York Times. After producing plays in Los Angeles (1917), he joined the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1918) and became a leading stage designer; he invented the high wattage spotlight and developed modern theatrical productions that blended the play, its lighting, its performers, and their costumes into a cohesive whole. He gained international attention for his stage set (1921; unexecuted) for Dante's Divine Comedy, which revolutionized theatrical and operatic productions; it was conceived as a single, massive set with lighting coming first from below, signifying Hades, then, as the play progressed, from high above, signifying Paradise. This led Max Reinhardt, the distinguished German producer, to commission him to design the settings for a production of The Miracle in New York (1923), and for this Bel Geddes transformed the entire interior of the Century Theater into the nave of a Gothic cathedral, with pews replacing seats to make the audience part of the cast.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Bel Geddes was perhaps the most flamboyant publicist for the new profession of industrial design that emerged in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s. His visions of the future were widely publicized in popular magazines, his own book Horizons (1932), and high-profile events such as the 1939 New York World's Fair. Although many of his designs remained as paper visions he played an important role in the germination of American industrial design: Henry Dreyfuss was apprenticed to him in 1923-4, Eero Saarinen worked with him in 1934, and Eliot Noyes was Design Director in his practice in 1946. Geddes was also considered by the American business magazine Fortune in its seminal 1934 article ‘Both Fish and Fowl’ to represent the responsible arm of the industrial design profession.

After studying briefly at the Art Institute in Chicago, Bel Geddes became a practising portrait painter by 1913 before moving into advertising design. By 1918 he had become involved in theatre design, including sets for the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1918) and sets for W. D. Griffiths and Cecil B. De Mille in Hollywood (1925), but entered the burgeoning profession of industrial design in 1927. Amongst the influences on him was Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture, which he bought in English translation in 1927. He went on to design in a variety of media and was portrayed in 1934 by Fortune as maintaining a balanced stance in the often vilified new industrial design profession. By this time Bel Geddes's design practice had more than 30 staff involved in various aspects of design, from drafting and modelling through to technical matters, with outside specialists being brought in as necessary. Bel Geddes's commissions included office interiors for the J. Walter Thomson advertising agency (1929), metal bedroom furniture for Simmons (1929), window displays for the Franklin Simon department store in New York (1927-9), Oriole gas stoves for the Standard Gas Equipment Company (1932), and radios for Philco (1931). Bel Geddes did much to promote the idea of streamlining whether in prototype cars for the Graham Paige Company (1928-34), work on the Chrysler Airflow advertising campaign of 1934, dramatic plans for airliners, ocean liners, railway trains, motor coaches, and even architecture, industrial machinery, and domestic appliances. Many of his visions concerning the radical transformation of the everyday environment that the industrial designer could bring about in the later 20th century were contained in his Horizons. This blend of social utopianism, design rationale, and the contemporary fascination for science fiction and technocracy was extensively reviewed in the national press and clearly impacted on contemporary design and engineering thinking. A number of his futuristic designs were realized, at least in miniature form, in what may be regarded as his visionary tour de force, the Futurama for the General Motors Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1939. Visited by more than 5 million this was one of the most popular exhibits at NYWF and portrayed a future metropolis of 1960, complete with streamlined transportation systems and segregation of pedestrian and motorized traffic. This vision was also seen and discussed in his book Magic Motorways (1940). In the post-Second World War period Geddes's practice suffered a series of setbacks, including a rift with its leading figures in 1943 and, by the early 1950s, a serious decline in fortunes.

American designer, he became identified with the style known as ‘streamlining’, based on aerodynamics. He designed the General Motors Pavilion at the New York World's Fair (1939), and published Magic Motorways (1940). He was responsible for many interiors, designed the Toledo Scale Company Building, Ohio (1929), and produced a scheme of prefabricated housing systems for the Housing Corporation of America (1940).

Bibliography

• N. Geddes (1932, 1940, 1940a)
• W. Kelley (ed.) (1960)
• Welter (2002)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

The insignia used by Bel Geddes in his published works.

Norman Melancton Bel Geddes (April 27, 1893 – May 9, 1958) was an American theatrical and industrial designer who focused on aerodynamics.^[1]

Bel Geddes was born Norman Melancton Geddes in Adrian, Michigan, the son of Flora Luelle (née Yingling) and Clifton T. Geddes, a stockbroker.^[2] When he married a woman named Helen Belle Schneider in 1916, they incorporated their names to Bel Geddes. Their daughter was actress Barbara Bel Geddes.

He began his career with set designs for Aline Barnsdall's Los Angeles Little Theater in the 1916-1917 season, then in 1918 as the scene designer for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He designed and directed various theatrical works,^[3] from Arabesque and The Five O'Clock Girl on Broadway to an ice show entitled It Happened on Ice produced by Sonja Henie. He designed costumes for Max Reinhardt, and created the sets for the New York premiere production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935).

A street intersection in the City of the Future. Detail of the Futurama exhibit at the New York World's Fair.

Bel Geddes opened an industrial-design studio in 1927, and designed a wide range of commercial products, from cocktail shakers to commemorative medallions to radio cabinets. His designs extended to unrealized futuristic concepts: a teardrop-shaped automobile, and an Art Deco House of Tomorrow.^[4] In 1929, he designed "Airliner Number 4," a 9-deck amphibian airliner that incorporated areas for deck-games, an orchestra, a gymnasium, a solarium, and two airplane hangars.

Bel Geddes's book Horizons (1932) had a significant impact: "By popularizing streamlining when only a few engineers were considering its functional use, he made possible the design style of the thirties."^[5] He wrote forward-looking articles for popular American periodicals.^[6][7]

Bel Geddes designed the General Motors Pavilion, known as Futurama, for the 1939 New York World's Fair. For that famous and enormously influential installation, Bel Geddes exploited his earlier work in the same vein: he had designed a "Metropolis City of 1960" in 1936.^[8]

Bel Geddes's book Magic Motorways (1940) promoted advances in highway design and transportation, foreshadowing the Interstate Highway System ("there should be no more reason for a motorist who is passing through a city to slow down than there is for an airplane which is passing over it"). His autobiography, Miracle in the Evening, was published posthumously in 1960.

"Norman," written by Gerry Beckley of the band America and performed by Jeff Larson on his 2002 album Fragile Sunrise, is an homage to Bel Geddes.

While not widely known, the case for the Mark I computer was designed by Norman Bel Geddes. IBM's Thomas Watson presented it to Harvard. At the time, some saw it as a waste of resources since computing power was in high demand during this part of World War II and those funds could have been used to build additional equipment.^[9]

References

1. ^ Donald H. Dyal, Norman Bel Geddes: Designer of the Future, Monticello, IL, Vance Bibliographies, 1983.
2. ^ The Midwestern Roots of Barbara Bel Geddes
3. ^ Bernhard Russell Works, Norman Bel Geddes: Man of Ideas, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.
4. ^ Adrian Tinniswood, The Art Deco House, New York, Watson-Guptill, 2002; p. 20.
5. ^ Jeffrey L. Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925–1939, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 2001; p.48.
6. ^ Norman Bel Geddes, "Streamling," Atlantic Monthly, November 1934; pp. 553-8.
7. ^ Norman Bel Geddes, "Ten Years From Now," The Ladies' Home Journal, January 1931; p. 190.
8. ^ Peter M. Wolf, The Future of the City: New Directions in Urban Planning, New York, Watson-Guptill, 1974; p. 28.
9. ^ Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Grace Murray Hopper Interview, January 7, 1969, Archives Center, National Museum of American History [1]

External links

• Documentation of "Highways and Horizons"
• "To New Horizons" - a video document recording the display at the 1939/40 World's Fair (from Prelinger archives)
• Magic Motorways, by Norman Bel Geddes (from Prelinger Library)
• Horizons, by Norman Bel Geddes (from Prelinger Library)
• IDSA-Los Angeles, More about Norman Bel Geddes
• A Fine Road Not Taken (provides details of Airliner Number 4)
• Norman Bel Geddes Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

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