Whenever I see Georgia O'Keeffe's 1927 painting The Radiator Building at Night (pictured here), I think of poet Sara Teasdale's "From the Woolworth Tower," because even though the works focus on different structures, they still give a sense of the glamour and scope of skyscrapers in the early 20th century. Teasdale isn't as well-known as the iconic O'Keeffe, but she was born in St. Louis in 1884, wrote a kind of penetratingly bittersweet poetry, and seems to be often overshadowed by her slightly younger contemporary Edna St. Vincent Millay. (And ironically, according to Wikipedia, novelist Thomas Hardy once noted that America's two major attributes were the skyscraper and the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay.)
Teasdale had a significant relationship with Vachel Lindsday, another poet with strong Midwestern ties, but she did not marry Lindsay and instead opted to make businessman Ernst Filsinger her husband instead. She divorced Filsinger in 1929; Lindsay committed suicide in 1931 and Teasdale herself took a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in 1933. All quite sad, but the eternal moments behind Teasdale's "From the Woolworth Tower" fortunately live on. Here's an excerpt, and click here to read the full text. Over the edge of eternity we look
On all the lights,
A thousand times more numerous than the stars...
The strident noises of the city
Floating up to us
Are hallowed into whispers.
Ferries cross thru the darkness
Weaving a golden thread into the night....
British artist John William Godward was one of the last great Neo-classicist painters and did not handle the advent of modernism well. In fact, it essentially led to serious depression and feelings of hopelessness, and to Godward's eventual suicide in 1922. Godward was a "beauty painter" and produced many lovely female visions during his career, and he was also considered part of the "marble school" like Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, known for their frequent use of Greco-Roman marble elements and backdrops. This painting (top image) by Godward of a blossoming red almond tree makes me wonder why he was so troubled by changing styles in art, because it almost has Impressionist tendencies. However, it may have been that he dreaded new artistic trends along with changes in social values and attitudes, as the structure and standards of the Victorian era gave way to the intensities of the 20th century. 
