ABSTRACT
In cities as far afield as Brussels, Tunis, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, and Shanghai, the diaspora of architects classically trained at the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts orchestrated, popularized, and interpreted Art Deco with elegance and panache. This chapter presents a larger study of the combined design acumen and social leverage of the “Beaux-Arts architect” in the US and Canada. It reviews Beaux-Arts tenets and strategies applicable to Deco work by focusing on spaces of consumption and leisure, comprehended as transatlantic typologies; their Parisian frame of reference is manifest, and their design was dictated by branding and visual agenda. Steadily produced since the 1980s, publications on Ecole-trained architects in North America still amount to the tip of the Beaux-Arts iceberg. In 1924, Jacques Carlu was hired as MIT’s chief design critic on the strength of his 1919 Grand Prix de Rome, but also for his charisma, youthful enthusiasm, and possibly his athletic stature.
