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Object Timeline

-0001

1935

  • Work on this object began.

1970

1975

  • We acquired this object.

2015

2024

  • You found it!

Drawing, Design for Living Room, Frederick and Emily Gash Apartment, 305 West 57th Street, New York, NY

This is a Drawing. It was designed by Donald Deskey and from the office of Donald Deskey and drafted by Donald Deskey. It is dated 1935 and we acquired it in 1975. Its medium is brush and blue and green gouache, pen and brush and black ink, graphite on illustration board. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

Throughout the 1930s, Minnesota-born Donald Deskey designed several lavish interiors for New Yorkers in the business, art, and literature communities including Emily Genauer — a 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning art critic — and her husband Frederick Gash. The couple, who married in 1935, hired Deskey to design their first apartment at 305 West 57th Street. A presentation drawing shows the designer’s open-plan concept for the clean, uncluttered space Deskey renovated from a separate living room, dining room, and closet. Built-in furnishings in the library nook, custom bookcases, and an L-shaped modular sofa bank with low cabinets and mirrored walls to articulate a spacious and light-filled interior. Smooth walls form simple planes (enhanced by the two-toned blue coloring) connected by a rounded fireplace whose curves are echoed in the tufted upholstered armchair and swoop-shaped piano. Completed in the Art Moderne style, which championed curved forms and pure lines, the Gash living room was a prime opportunity to promote a new modernism in America that Deskey, along with Paul Frankl and others, pursued by founding the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC) in 1928.

This object was donated by Donald Deskey. It is credited Gift of Donald Deskey.

Its dimensions are

30.4 x 40.5 cm (11 15/16 x 15 15/16 in.)

Cite this object as

Drawing, Design for Living Room, Frederick and Emily Gash Apartment, 305 West 57th Street, New York, NY; Designed by Donald Deskey (American, 1894–1989); USA; brush and blue and green gouache, pen and brush and black ink, graphite on illustration board; 30.4 x 40.5 cm (11 15/16 x 15 15/16 in.); Gift of Donald Deskey; 1975-11-7

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18487323/ |title=Drawing, Design for Living Room, Frederick and Emily Gash Apartment, 305 West 57th Street, New York, NY |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=26 April 2024 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>