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.33The American premiere of Metropolis took place in New York s Rialto Theater on13 August 1927.34 Some ten thousand people are said to have lined up during the firstweek of its run to see the film, and its popularity did not soon abate.35 Philip Johnsonsaw the film at that time,36 and more than likely he was not the only architect to see it.Reviews made mention of the film s architecture, sometimes without noting itsutopian and fictional character.There were moments, according to the critic of theSpectator, in which Metropolis achieved true greatness, to which its beautiful architec-ture contributed.37Two years after the film s American premiere, Hugh Ferriss s The Metropolis ofTomorrow was published.The book s third section includes sketches of buildings and apoem that recall the same projects of Mies cited by Metropolis.Ferriss s TechnologyCenter, with its parallel buildings holding the street wall, incorporates constructionalprinciples and an aesthetic formal language that Mies had used six years earlier in hisdesign for an office building in concrete: horizontally oriented rectilinear volumes withnarrow side walls and long front facades, flat roofs, alternating facade banding of glassand an opaque material, and an almost complete departure from classical tripartitearticulation.In these respects, Ferriss s drawing also refers to Richard Neutra s designfor an office building in the 1927 book Rush City Reformed.38Another sketch depicts a skyscraper whose frame construction resembles Mies sskyscraper in glass and steel of 1921 1922.This association is strengthened by the factthat the building is shown under construction.The sketch, and a poem that Ferrissincludes elsewhere in the book, also bring to mind Mies s earliest, near-expressionistoffice tower project for Friedrichstrasse (1920 1921).The poem is entitled Night inthe Science Zone :Buildings like crystals.Walls of translucent glass.Sheer glass blocks sheeting the steel grill.No gothic branch: No Acanthus leaf:No recollection of the plant world.A mineral kingdom.Gleaming stalagmites.Forms as cold as ice.Mathematics.Night in the Science Zone.39The architectural principles published later by Ferriss but written in the earlythirties also parallel fundamental thoughts of Mies van der Rohe s writings.In 1930,Ferriss wrote: Architecture is more than the science and art of building. It is a recordof civilization.Our way of living is shown, in large measure, by the kind of buildings 45 IMPLICIT INFORMATIONwe build. 40 Ferriss was well acquainted with the European avant-garde.41 Since 1913,he had worked for various New York architects who were in contact with their Euro-pean colleagues.42 His Zoning Envelope Studies were produced in collaboration withHarvey W.Corbett,43 who had met Gropius on his 1928 visit to New York and hadbeen introduced to Frederick Kiesler by Katherine Dreier.Prior to his emigration in1926, Kiesler had been a member of the De Stijl movement and coeditor of the jour-nal G, through which he had known Mies van der Rohe since 1925;44 he had madeMoholy-Nagy s acquaintance in Berlin in 1923.In New York, he met Philip John-son and Henry-Russell Hitchcock.Kiesler was in contact with a number of Americanarchitects who followed European developments: it was he who supplied SheldonCheney with the image of the German Pavilion in Barcelona that is included in The NewWorld Architecture.45 Corbett shared Kiesler s interest in modernism, and Ferriss be-longed to the well-informed circle around Corbett.46 Able to translate his impressions33 Lotte Eisner, Fritz Lang, 89.34 Peter Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America, 124.35 Jensen, The Cinema of Fritz Lang, 58.36 Author s interview with Philip Johnson, 16 October 1990.37 Iris Barry, The Cinema: Metropolis, 540.38 Hugh Ferriss, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, 131, and Richard Neutra, Wie Baut Amerika?, 73.39 Ferriss, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, 124.The poem may also be compared to Taut and Scheer-bart s Glasarchitektur, which was still influential in Mies s work, if in a technologically and aes-thetically transformed way.See Norbert Huse, Neues Bauen, 42.For a discussion of furthersimilarities between Metropolis and The Metropolis of Tomorrow, see Ulrich Conrads and HansSperlich, The Architecture of Fantasy, 158ff.40 Hugh Ferriss, Power of America, 61.Compare this with Mies, Baukunst und Zeitwille and Die neue Zeit. Mies was not the only German architect with whom Ferriss s work has affinities.In a 1929 Encyclopaedia Britannica article on architectural rendering, Ferriss praises ErichMendelsohn as an architect who can draw and paint as well as he can design ( ArchitecturalRendering, 310)
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