Eugene Lee Schoen, original Interior Designer (1880-1957)

RKO, Roxy Center Theatre, Rockefeller Center, New York (demolished in 1954)

Footnote¹:             Item was gifted to Mr. Prince by Mr. Schoen, of who adored Mr. Prince and his vast abilities and skills as an Architect, Designer and Interior Designer. Mr. Schoen also gifted to Mr. Prince his personal Art Deco Reference Library, including the one of the most important publications ever printed – the “GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT”, by Jones, Owen, (1809-1874) London, c.1856, and the “L’OERENEMENT POLYCHROME”, by Racinet, c. 1869, which remains the industry #1 Resource for Architectural Design and Interior Designs.

LOBEL, Paul (1899-1983), American, Silversmith and Metalwork

Paul Lobel was born in Rumanian, but raised in the United States. Though he is well known as a modernist studio jeweler Paul Lobel was also a painter, sculptor and designer of glass, furniture and silver hollowware. He studied commercial art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in the 1920s. He became a cartoonist and sold drawings to several national magazines and the New York Times newspaper. He attended the famous Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925 and in 1926 exhibited thirty-five of his own works in a solo exhibition at the Grande Librarie Universelle de Paris. During the years 1928-1934, Lobel worked with Leo J. Uris to produce decorative sculpture and accessories and also created modernist hollowware of chrome influenced by the work of Jean Puiforcat. He participated in the exhibition, Contemporary American Industrial Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1934.

Eugene Schoen (1880-1957), Designer

A native New Yorker, Eugene Schoen (1880–1957) received a degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1901, and upon graduation won a scholarship to travel in Europe where he met Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann. Schoen established an architectural practice in New York City in 1905, and after seeing the 1925 Paris Exposition he was inspired to set up an interior decorating business at 115 E 60th Street, New York, where he remained until the reversals of the Depression forced a move to 43 West 39th Street. His timing was fortunate: by the late 1920’s when modernism made its initial forays into the American home, Schoen was perfectly placed to capitalize on its advances. He was even able to display complete room settings in his gallery in 1928, when most of his colleagues were competing for space in department store exhibitions. Furniture, textiles and rugs designed by Eugene Schoen were exhibited in several contemporary design exhibits. He participated in the two exhibits of industrial design held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and exhibited furniture at the Pennsylvania Museum of Fine arts. Such example of this movement would have been illustrated within one of his commissions that he accepted to Interiors of the RKO Roxy Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center. Which the above item was extracted from and gifted to Mr. Prince, by Mr. Eugene Lee Schoen in 1953. At the time, Mr. Prince was the Chief Designer at the firm of Schoen & Hennessy. Though Mr. Eugene Schoen had retired from the day to day operations, he took a strong liking to Mr. Prince and developed Mr. Prince's areas of disciplines in the same manner as he had fifty years earlier. Mr. Eugene Schoen was one of the most important figures in development, shaping, and legitimizing of modern interior and furniture design in the United States from the 1920's to the early 1940's. He eventually turned to interiors and furniture design as forms of artistry compared to his architectural field. With the great influence from the 1925 International Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris, which allowed Mr. Schoen to refocus his career from a large firm to a smaller firm in order to take on more high profile commissions?  Such commissions were period rooms for several of the museum exhibitions, becoming better known for his design work and superior craftsmanship. His was commission to decorate the first fully functioning nightclub for the luxury liner, the S.S. Leviathan. This commission received much notoriety and set a new standard for all ocean-going luxury vessels to be built in the thereafter. From this prestigious commission, he received his largest commission up to 1932. He was awarded to design and furnishings the new RKO Roxy Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center. Although Schoen's work was received much praise from the critics, The RKO Roxy Center Theatre could not compete on a commercial level with Donald Deskey's Radio City Music Hall and was unfortunately torn down in 1954.