On Jan­u­ary 13, 1931, the Soci­ety of Beaux-Arts Archi­tects held a ball on the Resort Astor in New York Metropolis. Accord­ing to an adver­tise­ment for the occasion, any­one who paid $15 per tick­et (large mon­ey dur­ing the Depres­sion) might see a “hilar­i­ous mod­ern artwork exhi­bi­tion” and issues “mod­ernistic, futur­is­tic, cubis­tic, altru­is­tic, mys­tic, archi­tis­tic and fem­i­nis­tic.” Atten­dees additionally obtained to wit­ness greater than 20 well-known archi­tects dressed as construct­ings they’d designed—buildings that might turn out to be repair­tures of the New York Metropolis sky­line.

Within the pic­ture above, we have now from left to proper: A. Stew­artwork Stroll­er because the Fuller Build­ing (1929), Leonard Schultze because the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria Hotel (1931), Ely Jacques Kahn because the Squibb Build­ing (1930), William Van Alen because the Chrysler Build­ing (1930), Ralph Stroll­er as 1 Wall Street (1931), D.E. Ward because the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tow­er and Joseph H. Freed­lan­der because the Muse­um of the City of New York (1930).

A 2006 arti­cle in The New York Times notes that the occasion, now con­sid­ered “one of the vital spec­tac­u­lar par­ties of the final cen­tu­ry,” was cov­ered by WABC radio. Just a few pho­tographs stay, just like the one above. As does a tan­ta­liz­ing brief little bit of video.

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