Art Deco Architecture: Everything You Need to Know as the Style Turns 100

Because of its widespread popularity, each city developed their own unique take on the look. In America, the style’s roots can largely be traced to New York City. “Until this point, American architects really tended to design their buildings with one eye looking over their left shoulder at Europe,” Robins explains. After World War I ended, the United States entered into the Roaring Twenties, “and New York emerges as this image of the brash, modern metropolis of the New World,” Robins explains. Here, Art Deco blossomed into a building aesthetic that didn’t look to copy or revise, but rather create anew. “It becomes this symbol. We’re no longer looking into the European past. We are looking to the American present and future.” It’s at this point that architects begin designing many of the most famous Art Deco buildings, like The Chrysler Building, that redefined the midtown Manhattan skyline before the style started spreading to other building types.

In the 1930s, Streamline Moderne, a simplified offshoot of Art Deco, emerged, showcasing curved lines inspired by the aerodynamic designs of trains and ships. Art Deco began to decline in popularity during World War II, when modernism took over with its unadorned emphasis on functionality and simplicity. But Art Deco has had enduring influence and resurgences in popularity. In the 1960s, the style came back into fashion, attracting fans such as Andy Warhol, who had an array of Art Deco objects in his vast personal collection, and Roy Lichenstein.

One hundred years later

In 2025, the beloved style celebrated its centenary with events and exhibitions around the world. Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs is celebrating the anniversary of the ​​Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes with the exhibition “1925–2025: One Hundred Years of Art Deco,” which runs through April 26, 2026. The show features over one thousand objects, including furnishings, decor, fashion, jewelry, and even a 1926 Art Deco cabin from the Orient Express. Famed interior designer and Art Deco collector Jacques Granges curated a room in the exhibition, which also has spaces dedicated to the work of important figures of the period, including Eileen Gray, Jean-Michel Frank, and Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann. The Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine explores the International Exhibition and its pavilions with “Paris 1925: Art Deco and Its Architects.” Louis Vuitton is also reflecting on the International Exhibition at its LV Dream exhibition space with “Louis Vuitton Art Deco,” an immersive installation that honors the brand’s participation in the event and the style’s influence on its archives.