Raymond Loewy Railroad Renderings
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APPRAISER:
These are renderings developed by the Raymond Loewy studios. Raymond Loewy was a designer for the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1930s and '40s, and he had a retainer and he designed things whether the railroad wanted them or not. I acquired these out of a dumpster at the time of the merger of the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. A lot of things were being thrown away. I did work for the railroad at that time, though.
APPRAISER:
Well, what you have is an excellent representation of historical documentation, of architectural documentation, of railroad documentation. And collectors would be interested in these pieces for a lot of various different reasons. The first example here, which I think is the most important, is Pennsylvania Station in New York. And this piece was actually used, making it very rare. The next piece that I'd like to talk about is this piece, because I think historically, it's very important looking at the architecture. He was designing these in the late '30s. You can see the Art Deco influence by looking at the bright yellow colors and the aluminum that they were using on the chairs. And even if you look down here, you can see on the floor how much the Art Deco influence was still being seen in transportation. And then we go down to look at this piece here, which was actually used for the world's fair. It's an excellent piece of train memorabilia and transportation memorabilia, as well as world's fair memorabilia. And lastly, we just have another beautiful architectural drawing. As a collection, I would estimate each piece to be worth $1,000 to $1,500 and together, the whole collection to be worth $5,000 to $6,000.
GUEST:
That's very nice. Thank you very much.
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