Art: Insurance Cathedral

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The cathedral idea enthralls the minds of U.S. tycoons, spreads from cinema to insurance potentates. Therefore when famed Architect Cass Gilbert designed the new $21,000,000 New York Life Insurance building he Gothicized its decoration, planned its gigantic foyer in the cruciform shape of a nave and transepts. Like a huge stalagmite the structure stands on the site of the old Madison Square Garden, lifts its glinting spire 617 feet above the pavements. In a banquet hall on the 14th floor a dedicatory ceremony was held, last week. President Coolidge, button-punching at the White House, flooded the feast with light. President Darwin Pearl Kingsley of the New York Life Insurance Co. made the opening address, which was broadcast to 2,300,000 policy holders whose insurance totals $6,800,000,000. Said he: "Beauty is the natural handmaiden of power and power is the dominant note in modern American architecture. Here, as in cathedral architecture, power fails without beauty and beauty works through her allies, color, mass and symmetry."