Following on from last week’s ‘Picture Postals’ post, more sinister doorways. On 24th-25th October 1924 H.P. Lovecraft went on a long walk with Kirk to further explore New York City. As part of this they visited the new American Radiator Company building, a distinctive and free blend of new modern deco and old-world gothic that must have been very stimulating to Lovecraft’s sensibilities.
the new black & gold Dunsanian skyscraper design’d by the Pawtucket architect” (Letters to Family)
“Radiator Building” (1923-34) etching by Hugh Ferris.
The pair “for the first time explored the interior”, and specifically they visited the building’s basement.
A crack formed and enlarged, and the whole door gave way […] whence reached a sucking force not of earth or heaven, which, coiling sentiently about the paralysed detective, dragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured spaces filled with whispers and wails” (“The Horror at Red Hook”)
After exiting the ornate elevator visitors found the basement was styled like a complex crypt. This was, according to an architecture journal of the time…
reached by stairs leading down a series of platforms … The lowest level will contain the boiler-room[s and air conditioning chambers running at 300,000 cubic feet per hour] [with] a stone floor and wainscot and a decorated vaulted ceiling
Modern interior pictures of the building are for some reason almost unknown online, while there are thousands of pictures of the now-famous deco exterior in black brick and gold trim. But above and below are some interior pictures from The American Architect and Architecture Review, 19th November 1924. They have been rescued from Archive.org microfilm so far as is possible, and they indicate the spaces and atmosphere as Lovecraft would have seen them.
The ‘crypt’ gates.
He and Kirk walked down and found, as Lovecraft described it…
The basement is a dream of picturesqueness and spectral charm — crypt under crypt of massive vaulted masonry … terrible arches on Cyclopean columns, black things & haunted niches here & there, & endless stone steps leading down… down… down… to hellish catacombs where sticky, brackish water drips. It is like the vaulted space behind the entrances to some ancient amphitheatre in Rome or Constantinople — that, or some ghoulish tomb-nightmare not to be imagined save in visions of nameless drugs out of unfathomable Ind.” (Lovecraft, Letters to Family)
This visit was before the writing of “The Horror at Red Hook” (written early August 1925) so might have somewhat inspired the final scenes of that tale which is set in… “those nighted crypts, those titan arcades”.