1921 CE. The Woolworth through the Arch. Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
The gallery is grateful for the help of Professor Kevin D. Murphy for the acquisition of Joseph Pennell’s (American, 1857 – 1926) The Woolworth, through the Arch. Pennell, who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, was a prolific and talented printmaker and illustrator. During his lifetime Pennell produced more than 900 etchings and mezzotints and more than 600 lithographs on architectural and landscape subjects, among them this exquisite view of Manhattan’s Woolworth Building from 1921.
Since the gallery’s recent acquisition of architectural drawings of the Woolworth Building by the office of Cass Gilbert, faculty specialists in the history of modern architecture in Vanderbilt’s Department of History of Art and Architecture have created courses on the architecture of New York City, the skyscraper, and the history of modern architecture. The new Pennell print will be used in those classes and is planned for inclusion in an upcoming exhibition.