Born into New York’s Gilded age society, Whitney Warren was the grandson of a US House Rep and a cousin to the Goelets and the Vanderbilts. Both families had accumulated millions in New York real estate. Young Whitney entered Columbia in 1883 to study architecture and then went off to Paris to study at the Beaux-Arts school, where the focus was on elaborate beauty, extravagance and function with classical Greek and Roman features.
He married into Mrs. Astor’s list of 400 Elite Families by winning the hand of Charlotte Tooker, the daughter of a prominent lawyer. With these connections and his training, Warren was to bring Beaux-Arts front and center to the United States.
Whitney Warren, courtesy of the Library of Congress
The timing was in line with the growth of the American titans of industry who desired their own Versailles to separate themselves from the merely rich.
Warren returned to New York after ten years in Europe. With Charles Wetmore, an early client, he started an architecture firm that won great praise for its designs of iconic buildings. Their work dominated the growing skylines of cities from the turn of the century through the Roaring ‘20s. They often partnered with other talented architects, but no one had their connections, so Wetmore was invited to collaborate on many high-profile projects.
Stereograph of Grand Central and the west side of the Terminal City area (Library of Congress)
Grand Central is indeed grand. No area was left unadorned
Most notable was Grand Central Station in New York. It was completed after ten years in 1913 for the Vanderbilts. The firm also designed many of the hotels (Biltmore, Ambassador, Commodore), and buildings (Helmsley) surrounding the station in the mid-town area called Terminal City.
Manhattan saw a boom in Beau-Arts structures like the main branch of the NY Public Library, the Morgan Library, Henry Clay Frick’s mansion, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Woolworth building.
The Providence Rhode Island Biltmore
Based on their work in New York, Warren & Wetmore won commissions all over. They did the Newport Country Club, a number of rail stations, and hotels. They designed the NY Ritz Carlton followed by Ritz’s in Philadelphia and Montreal. The Biltmore chain, also named for the Vanderbilts, also utilized the firm. The Providence Biltmore interior is pictured here.
As the 1920s progressed there was a movement toward more angular lines and less ornamentation. The firm simplified its designs. The Beaux Arts styling would be truly overtaken by Art Deco in the 1930s, as a cleaner, more industrial look took hold.
The first work for the firm in Asbury Park was the Berkeley-Cateret Hotel for department store magnate John Steinbach on property he acquired from the estate of founder James Bradley in 1921. Asbury Park had been the most popular shore resort from the gay 90s through WWI, attracting hundreds of thousands of summer visitors of all economic classes.
The town had hoped to acquire the land for a convention center to compete with Atlantic City’s new Boardwalk Hall. It took until nearly the end of the decade to select a new plot, finance and start work on the ambitious project.
Convention Hall, a grand theater with a covered arcade separating them in the center of the boardwalk, the Casino Amusement building, and the Carousel House at the south end were all designed by Warren and Wetmore after being granted a no-bid contract.
The buildings were to be powered by a steam plant, with room for three boilers to drive turbines for lights and to heat the municipal pool and all the new boardwalk buildings. Ground was broken on the hall, intended to hold 5,000, and a 1,300-seat theater with private boxes in 1928. There was an effort to make the resort a four-season destination with heated amusements. Paramount-Famous-Lasky leased the large NJ based theater chain of Walter Reade and would make the Paramount Theater their showplace as talkies replaced silent films.
The Beaux Arts styling of columns and a flat roof with symmetry was there, but the steam house reflected a more transitional style. The steam house had a rooftop deck for sunbathers, a solarium, and concessions on the ground floor.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression came before the work was complete. Asbury pulled back on its investment. The electric generators proved expensive, so they cut them out along with plans for the grandest of Wurlitzer organs. The custom grillwork for the organ pipes had already been installed.
Three boilers burning the dirtiest of all oil would be used to generate steam for heat, but electricity would come from the utility company. The city picked up a used Kilgen Theatre Pipe Organ from a defunct New York theater, the Earl Caroll, and fit its smaller pipes into the space. They hired a municipal organist to play music daily.
The Center of Asbury Park’s transition in the Roaring 20’s, The Convention Hall and Paramount Theater.
The Carousel House, Asbury Park
Around the same time, Warren also designed the first destination resort hotel, the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki for the Matson Steamship line. Competed in 1927, it’s Spanish Mission style mixed with a tropical motif, but still kept hints of Beaux-Arts in the symmetry, arched columns, and flat roof.
The central tower of the hotel along with arches mimics the Asbury Steam House.
Tropical mixes with California Mission, mixes with ornate railings.
The similarities of the steam house with the Royal Hawaiian are striking.
Whitney Warren retired in 1931, and it marked the end of the Beaux Arts era in America. The Great Depression did not allow for more extravagance, and the hostilities during the First World War sapped American’s taste for elaborate European monarchy-inspired design.
In Asbury Park, the boilers continued to heat the municipal salt pool and buildings until they broke down in 1955. The city balked at replacing them, noting the soot, the high cost of fuel, and a need to find another less expensive heat source. Instead, they spent $31,000 to clean the soot off the chimney, rubberized the popular roof deck, and sought separate, cheaper heating for the Convention Hall and Theater. The equipment chugged along until 1966 when the northern part of the boardwalk was finally heated with gas, and an ice rink in the Casino eliminated the need for heat. A fire at the Casino in 1967 closed it for a year and with it, the steam plant closed permanently.
Palace Amusements limped along for another 20 years, but the magnificent builds of the late 1920s fell further and further into disrepair. These buildings have National Landmark status, but they need massive restoration if they are to be saved.
The southern entrance to the Arcade between the Convention Hall and the Paramount Theater with nautical elements along the roofline