During the rise of New York from the capital of an upstart nation to world-class metropolis, the visual language of classical antiquity played a formative role in the city's art and architecture. Classical New York: Greece and Rome in New York City's Art & Architecture, 1830-1940 examines the reception and redeployment of classical forms in the art, architecture, civic spaces, and public monuments of New York from the height of the Greek revival in the 1830s through the Gilded Age's artistic and architectural triumphs of the early twentieth century.
Scholars from a range of disciplines--Classics, Art History, Architectural History, History, and Archaeology--focus on select examples that demonstrate how Classical art, architecture, and myth critical are repurposed help shape many of New York City's most important buildings and works of art from this period. Pennsylvania Station derived its form from the Baths of Caracalla; Federal Hall evoked the Parthenon as an architectural and democratic model; Atlas and Prometheus of Rockefeller Center recast ancient myths in a new light during the Great Depression. The Pantheon served as a model for the creation of Libraries at New York University and Columbia University.
Classical Antiquity also influenced the construction of public space and the establishment of New York's Museums. The new civic center planned at Foley Square was modelled after ancient civic spaces, while the newly formed collection of Classical Art at Metropolitan Museum of Art reflects the tastes of New York's elite and how the city saw itself as a cultural mecca.