Art
AT&T commissioned Evelyn Beatrice Longman to create a bronze sculpture that she called Genius of Telegraphy, that was to be placed atop a pyramidal structure on the top of the Fulton Street wing of the building. The statue that she created depicted a 24-foot-tall (7.3 m) winged male figure in gilded bronze on top of a globe, with the figure having cables around its torso and one of the statue's arms holding bolts of electricity. the statue was cast in bronze and covered with over 40,000 pieces of gold leaf. After a court-ordered divestiture of Western Union, the statue's official title was changed to Genius of Electricity. The statue was renamed Spirit of Communication in the 1930s, but has been better known by its nickname, Golden Boy.
One of sculptor Paul Manship's earliest public works was "The Four Elements," a set of four bronze reliefs that is on the lower facade of the building.
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Famous quotes containing the word art:
“Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has “cast up” in my time or is like to—this art by which even the “poor” can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn’t it be acting favourably on the morality of the country?”
—Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801–1866)
“So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.”
—William Morris (1834–1896)
“I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)