But after Ronan Point in West Ham blew up in 1968, and the riots at Broadwater Farm in 1985, tower blocks were painted as social and architectural failures – making it easier to knock them down or flog them for profit.
Once assembled, the blocks were painted and gilded.
Blocks were painted and engraved; one for each colour.
This winter a show of 17 paintings called "Jacob Lawrence's 'Migration Series': Selections From the Phillips Collection" was to have appeared at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a few blocks from where the work was painted.
In the case of "The Gross Clinic," which was painted just blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the city where Eakins lived his entire life, its new restorers had the rare benefit of a paper trail — part of it provided by Eakins himself.
The show opened with washed-denim trousers and sheer white tops over bare skin that was painted in graphic blocks of pale blue, pink and tea green, to suggest T-shirts.
As decades passed, every single one was painted over or completely blocked by shelves and cabinets.
Fashioned from aluminum, one loop was painted bright pink and the other alternating blocks of blue, green, orange and yellow.
The concrete block walls are painted orange, pink, blue and purple; the ceilings are yellow; the metal stairs are maroon; and the painted concrete floors mimic Arabic-style tiles, with Oriental motifs in dark reds, yellows, blues and greens.
In a room where the cinder block walls are painted white, 14 men sit in facing rows, each man on a small, round pillow, his legs folded, his gaze lowered.
