The first word in Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1927 skyscraper painting title is “Radiator.”
The painting is titled Radiator Building—Night, New York. It presents the American Radiator Building in Manhattan as a dramatic, dark architectural form accented by glowing red and orange light. O’Keeffe completed it in 1927, during a period when New York’s skyscrapers became important subjects in her work.
The American Radiator Building, now known as the American Standard Building, was designed by Raymond Hood and André Fouilhoux. Its black façade and illuminated ornament made it especially striking at night. O’Keeffe translated those features into a tightly composed modernist image.
The work belongs to a group of New York paintings that helped establish O’Keeffe as an important modern American artist. “Radiator” is the distinctive title word; the building is not the Chrysler or Empire State Building.