Trinity Portland Cement Company Promotional Materials, Lobby and Escalators, Presentation Drawing

Renowned architectural illustrator Hugh Ferriss was best known for his dramatic renderings of Art Deco skyscrapers, featured in his 1929 book The Metropolis of Tomorrow. His drawings of illuminated skyscrapers at night had a strong influence on popular depictions of the city in that era, including the shadowy look of Gotham City in the first comic book devoted to Batman, in 1940. In 1943 Ferriss produced a yearlong series of plates that appeared on the back covers of the magazine Progressive Architecture. These drawings presented his high-tech vision of the America of the future—from a network of winding highways and houses with helicopter pads to glass high rises—later published as prints by Trinity Portland Cement Company. Common in Ferriss’s renderings are spaces of communication and transportation, two functions that are highlighted in this image of a large urban plaza connecting a seemingly endless network of escalators, an innovation that became widely used in American cities in the 1930s.