ABSTRACT
In the concluding scene of Busby Berkeley’s Hollywood fantasia 42nd Street (1933), the skyscrapers of Manhattan literally dance in the streets. The Chrysler, the McGraw-Hill, the Daily News, and the Empire State buildings engage in a free-wheeling revel that defies the statics of architecture. In the depths of the Depression, the flamboyant embodiments of American laissez-faire capitalism enact a delirious dream of liberation from the ground plane.
