Special Feature—City of Stars

Atlas

ATLAS Lee Lawrie and Rene Chambellan, 1936 International Building, Rockefeller Center Fifth Avenue at 50th Street Manhattan

Everyone knows that Atlas is big and strong and that his job is to hold up the world. That’s precisely what he is doing here, in art deco splendor, all two tons of him. Like most depictions of Atlas, this one shows him carrying the world in the form of an armillary sphere. The north-south axis of this particular sphere points to the North Star as viewed from New York City. Laid across Atlas’s muscled shoulders is a wide, curved beam that displays a frieze of the traditional symbols for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter (hidden behind Atlas’s thick neck), Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Adjacent to Earth (over Atlas’s right forearm) is a small crescent symbolizing the Moon. Affixed to one of the sphere’s rings are symbols for twelve constellations through which the Sun passes during the year. Apparently in a pinch for fresh imagery, artists continue to resort to this antiquated set of symbols, collectively known as the zodiac, when tasked with representing the universe.

ATLAS at Rockefeller Center

The sculpture of Atlas and his armillary sphere was somehow conceived and designed without any reference to the planet Pluto, which was discovered and named in 1930. In this respect, the sculpture must have seemed embarrassingly outdated at its dedication in 1937. In recent years, however, a movement to demote little Pluto from planet status has been gaining strength. The reason? For one thing, Pluto shares many important physical properties with a newly discovered class of comets in orbit beyond Neptune. Atlas, it turns out, had scientific integrity all along.

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