This building, once the center of the center of New York’s popular music industry, features a magnificent Art Deco façade over its main entrance. Its polished brass decoration speaks symbolically of the importance of the structure. It implies wealth, stability and importance. The rhythmic bars that seem to move up and down in unison can even be seen as a symbol of the music that once was created within.

However the most important detail in this 1931 façade is the incongruously lonely bust of a well-dressed young man placed within the niche at its center. The entire Art Deco embellishment revolves around this bust. It strikes a comparatively somber note when seen in the context of such energetic gleaming brass. When I later researched the Brill Building, I learned that this bust was placed there in memory of the building developer’s son, who had died of anemia at the age of just 17, while the building was being built. Once we have this context, the entire image changes its meaning. Instead of energy, nostalgia, and beauty, we see a memorial to a lost child.