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Jim Free, associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters has signed the certification for flight readiness following the completion of Flight Readiness Review (FRR) on Aug. 22, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The FRR is an in-depth assessment of the readiness of the agency’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft to support the uncrewed flight of Artemis I on its mission beyond the Moon and return to Earth. The meeting concluded with a poll of all managers. Artemis I is scheduled to launch at 8:33 a.m. EDT on Aug. 29, 2022, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39B. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human presence to the Moon and beyond. The primary goal of Artemis I is to thoroughly test the integrated systems before crewed missions by operating the spacecraft in a deep space environment, testing Orion’s heat shield, and recovering the crew module after reentry, descent, and splashdown. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Heres information about central florida broadcast stations
Broadcast Tower,WFTT-TV is the Telefutura affiliate for Tampa Bay, owned by Univision and operated by Entravision, owners of WVEA-TV. The station, which broadcasts on UHF channel 50, is based at WVEA's studios on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, and transmits from Riverview. WFTT can be seen on cable throughout the Bay Area on Bright House channel 5, and on Comcast in Sarasota County on channel 23.
With the completion of the 442.550 repeater in Riverview at 805ft in January, the western pointing antenna on the 442.825 repeater caused a expected overlap that was unnecessary. Since 442.550 now blankets Hillsborough County, we have as of April 11th taken the antenna off the west leg of the Pebbledale tower site at 800ft and moved it to the east leg of the tower. What does mean for users? The tower has a 7 foot wide face, which creates a null that is created behind the antenna. This null used to face a huge portion of Polk County. By moving this antenna to the east, the null is now facing essentially Brandon/Riverview, where 442.550 is now located at 805ft. So far we have gotten incredible results from users in eastern Polk County. Some users in Sebring reporting almost full scale signal, and mobile users with hand helds on 27 at 5 watts can use 442.825 now. None of this was previously possible. So with this move, expect to hear more Polk, Osceola and I-4 corridor area users making it into the network.
A nother tower WVEA (channel 62) is Tampa Bay, Florida's first Spanish-language TV station, which had its start in the early-1980s as low-powered W50AC ch.50, which offered programming from the Spanish International Network (SIN), the forerunner of today's Univision. In 1988, to make way for new HSN flagship WBHS (now WFTT-TV), the station relocated to channel 61 and became W61BL. In the mid-1990s, the station was re-called "WVEA-LP". In 2000, WVEA's parent company, Entravision, acquired Sarasota English independent WBSV channel 62, with the intent of moving the transmitter from Venice to the antenna farm at Riverview. WBSV signed on May 3, 1991 as the Sarasota area's own independent station, designed to compete against WWSB and the other stations in the Tampa Bay and nearby Ft. Myers markets. Licensed to Venice, Florida the call letters stood for Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, the three cities it primarily served. WBSV had a variety of syndicated and local programming, plus infomercials and home shopping programs. early on, they also had its own newscast. But, WBSV was eternally in red ink, and relied more on home shopping and infomercials to keep the station afloat....
And then,WTVT, channel 13, is a television station in Tampa, Florida. It is an owned and operated station of the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsdiary of the News Corporation. WTVT's studios are located in Tampa, and its transmitter is located in Riverview, Florida.
Overall the WUSF (89.7 FM) is an NPR-member radio station licensed to Tampa, Florida, USA. The station is currently owned by the University of South Florida. WUSF signed on in 1963, seven years after USF's founding in 1956.
WOPX channel 56 is a television station based in Orlando, Florida, USA. An affiliate of the ION Television network, it transmits its analog signal on UHF channel 56 and its digital signal on UHF channel 48, both from a transmitter located near Holopaw. The station signed on the air in 1986.
WIWA (1160 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a Spanish language Christian format. Licensed to St. Cloud, Florida, USA, it serves the greater Orlando area. The station is currently owned by Centro De La Familia Cristiana Inc.
WAFZ-FM (92.1 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a Regional Mexican format. Licensed to Immokalee, Florida, USA, the station is currently owned by Glades Media Company LLC. WAFZ's programming is also heard on WAFZ AM 1490 in Immokalee.
WTVY or WTVY News 4 is a CBS-affiliated television station broadcasting on channel 4 in Dothan, Alabama, owned by Gray Television. The station's signal, originating from a transmitter in Holmes County, Florida, reaches large portions of Alabama, Georgia and Florida. WTVY is also the designated CBS affiliate for the Panama City, Florida market, where Gray also owns that city's NBC affiliate, WJHG-TV. In exchange, WJHG is available in Dothan on cable since Dothan does not have its own NBC affiliate. In fact, WTVY's transmitter is located within the Panama City market. WTVY-DT uses digital subchannels to operate MyNetworkTV affiliate My 4 and CW affiliate Dothan's CW.
WJED (91.1 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a Christian radio format. Licensed to Dogwood Lakes Estate, Florida, USA. The station is currently owned by Bethany Bible College.
WTVJ, channel 6, is the NBC owned-and-operated television station for South Florida, licensed to Miami. Its analog transmitter is located in Redland. The station's digital transmitter is located near Dolphin Stadium in north Miami-Dade County. Owned by NBC Universal, the station is sister to South Florida's Telemundo owned-and-operated station, WSCV. The two share studios at Peacock Plaza in Miramar.
WOIR (1430 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a Spanish News/Talk format. Licensed to Homestead, Florida, USA, the station serves the Miami area. The station is currently owned by Amanecer Christian Network, Inc..
WTLH is a Fox television affiliate licensed to Bainbridge, Georgia and serves the Tallahassee, Florida television market. It broadcasts its analog signal on UHF channel 49 and its digital signal on UHF channel 50. The station began operations on November 25, 1989. Its transmitter is located in Metcalf, Georgia. The Station is owned by CP Media, LLC. The station runs a duopoly with WFXU, The CW station in Tallahassee. WTLH programming is also seen on a low-powered, Class-A repeater, WBVJ-LP channel 35 in Valdosta.
WTXL-TV is the ABC affiliate station for Tallahassee, Florida, Thomasville, Georgia, and Valdosta, Georgia, broadcasting on channel 27. The station is owned by Calkins Media, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based mass media company that owns several small newspapers in Pennsylvania and two other television stations: WWSB in Sarasota and WAAY-TV in Huntsville, Alabama. It was previously owned by Media Ventures Management, and operated by the Sinclair Broadcast Group pursuant to an outsourcing agreement (See: [1]), the first of its kind in the United States. This agreement merged virtually all of WTXL-TV's operations with that of Sinclair's NBC affiliate WTWC. Denis LeClair, General Manager of WTXL-TV and WBXT-TV at the time, was made General Manager for WTXL, WBXT and WTWC under this agreement. He would be followed by Chris Butterick and then Bob Franklin. Eventually, Kim Urbuteit (who was fired in May, 2007) would be named General Manager of WTXL only as Bob Franklin (now in Mobile, AL) oversaw WTWC. Gary Wordlaw is the current General Manager of WTXL-TV.
WFSU is the callsign (or variations thereon) for public radio stations operated by Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. WFSU also operates 3 radio stations that serve northern Florida: * WFSU-FM 88.9 FM: Tallahassee-based news/talk/public affairs station carrying several NPR programs and overnight BBC World Service programming. Also heard on these low-powered repeaters: * 97.1 - Carrabelle * 106.1 - Marianna * 96.7 - Apalachicola * 93.7 - Downtown Tallahassee (necessary because the main WFSU transmitter must conform its signal to protect WTSU in Troy, Alabama) * WFSQ-FM 91.5 FM: Tallahassee-based classical music station. Also heard on WFSL-FM 90.7 in Thomasville, Georgia, and on low-powered 92.7 FM in the northeast portion of the city of Tallahassee. * WFSW-FM 89.1 FM: Panama City-based news/talk/public affairs station. Offers many of the same programs as WFSU. Also heard on low-powered 91.1 FM in the Port St. Joe area along the Gulf of Mexico, as well as 94.5 FM in Fort Walton Beach.
WESH is the NBC affiliate in Orlando, Florida. It is licensed to Daytona Beach, with studio facilities in Winter Park. It transmits its analog signal on VHF channel 2 and its digital signal on VHF channel 11, when viewed over the air PSIP will display 2.1 for WESH DT and 2.2 for WESH Weather Plus. It is currently owned by Hearst-Argyle Television along with the area's CW affiliate, WKCF. WESH's transmitter is located in Orange City, Florida. The tower is the tallest man-made structure in Florida, at 1,740 feet (530 m). The station also serves as the default NBC affiliate for the Gainesville market, and can be seen on the fringes of the Tampa Bay and Jacksonville markets. WESH was the first station in Orlando to carry an on-site RADAR facility, SuperDoppler 2 as opposed to relying on National Weather Service RADARs. It is installed on top of the tower located at the Winter Park broadcast studio. Today it also promotes a VIPIR 3D RADAR system, taking advantage of the fact that the RADARs at Melbourne, Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami can all reach Orlando, in addition to SuperDoppler 2. The primary news anchors at WESH are Martha Sugalski and Jim Payne....
WOMX is a radio station located in the Orlando, Florida area and broadcasts at 105.1. WOMX 105.1 plays the "Best MIX of the 80s, 90s and Today," though the station programming focuses mostly on rock and modern rock music from the 90's and 2000's. Every Friday from 5:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., Mix 105.1 presents Friday Night 80's. The "Saturday Night Party MIX" airs every Saturday night from 7 p.m. to midnight. The "Saturday Night Party MIX" replaced the Orlando heritage show "Seventies Saturday Night" in 2005.
WOTF-TV Channel 43 is the TeleFutura station serving the Orlando/Daytona Beach/Melbourne, Florida television market. It is owned by Univision and managed by Entravision which owns Univision affiliate WVEN-TV 26 and radio station WNUE 98.1 FM and offers a Spanish language entertainment format featuring movies, dramas, comedy shows, and kids shows. The studios are located in Altamonte Springs which is also shared by WVEN.
WOFL, "Fox 35", is the Fox owned-and-operated television station serving the Orlando, Florida metropolitan area. It is licensed to Orlando, with studios located in Lake Mary. It broadcasts its analog signal on UHF channel 35, and its digital signal on UHF channel 22. Its transmitter is located in Bithlo, Florida. Its Digital TV transmitter has a power of 1,000 kW. Its Analog TV transmitter has a power of 2,570 kW. WOFL and sister station WTVT of the bordering Tampa market commonly share reporters and footage, as other station groups do.
WFTV channel 9 is a television station based in Orlando, Florida, affiliated with the ABC network. It transmits its analog signal on VHF channel 9 from a transmitter located in Bithlo, Florida, and its digital signal on UHF channel 39 from a transmitter located in Christmas, Florida. It is owned by Cox Enterprises along with independent station WRDQ TV 27. The primary news anchors at WFTV are Bob Opsahl and Martie Salt. They anchored the main afternoon newscasts from 1984 through 1994, when Ms. Salt transferred to WFTS, a TV station in Tampa (where she was known as "Martie Tucker"). She returned to anchor WFTV's news again with Opsahl in 2003. Opsahl is one of the longest-serving (at one station) local news anchors in Florida. Barbara West, a 20 year veteran at WFTV and the station's medical reporter is paired with Opsahl at 5:30. Marla Weech, a former anchor for WFTV, was paired up with Bob Opsahl during most of Salt's absence. Weech currently works for WKMG. Tom Terry is the "Chief Meteorologist". WFTV's Severe Weather Center 9 includes WFTV's own doppler weather radar station located at Joint Venture TV Tower Bithlo. Its radar has features that are...
WRBW-TV is the MyNetworkTV owned and operated station serving the Orlando/Daytona Beach/Melbourne, Florida television market. It is owned by the Fox Television Stations Group, along with Fox station WOFL Channel 35. Known on-air as "My65", the station offers sitcoms, cartoons, court shows, and talk/reality shows. Its transmitter is located in Christmas, Florida.
WNTF (1580 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a News Talk Information format. Licensed to Bithlo, Florida, USA, it serves the Orlando area. The station is currently owned by Rama Communications, Inc.
WBCC is an educational television station serving the Orlando television market. It broadcasts on UHF channel 68, with a digital signal on channel 30. It is one of the Orlando market's PBS member stations. WBCC's digital signal, on channel 30, offers programming from the University of Central Florida (channel 68.2) and BPS-TV from Brevard Public Schools (channel 68.3), in addition to WBCC's standard programming.
WRDQ, channel 27, is an independent television station in Orlando, Florida. Its analog transmitter is located in northeastern Osceola County. The station's digital transmitter is located in Christmas. Onwed by Cox Enterprises, WRDQ is sister to ABC affiliate WFTV. The two stations share studios on East South Street in downtown Orlando. WRDQ offers the Retro Television Network on its second digital subchannel. It can also be seen on Bright House digital channel 1028. Syndicated programming on WRDQ includes: South Park, Scrubs, Merv Griffin's Crosswords, Oprah, According to Jim, and George Lopez. The station can be considered an alternate ABC affiliate. As such, it may take on the responsibility of airing ABC programs whenever WFTV may not be able to do so as in a news-related emergency.
WXPX is a television station licensed to Bradenton, Florida. Operating on channel 66, it is an ION Television affiliate, owned and operated by ION Media Networks (formerly Paxson Communications), which has owned the station since its founding in 1994. Current programming on WXPX is virtually the same as other ION affiliates -- infomercials throughout the day and during the overnights, plus ION programming in the evenings. WXPX also shows Tampa Bay Lightning hockey, Orlando Magic basketball, some college football and Tampa Bay Rays baseball, though most of these games are in the evenings only, as WXPX tend to reserve non-prime-time hours for infomercials. Rays games air in high definition on WXPX in the 720p format, the same format as FSN Florida, the producers of the games (See: [1]). The only local programming on WXPX is i on Tampa (public affairs) and the aforementioned Rays and Magic games. The station once aired Miccosukee Magazine along with WPXM Miami and WPXP West Palm Beach, but no longer airs the program. (the latter two stations still do, along with WOPX Orlando) WXPX started in 1994 as WFCT, which featured infomercials at all hours under...
Wesh News Cast Bay News 9 Cast Weather Channel
Kristina
Abernathy
Stephanie
Abrams
Natalie
Allen
Tetiana
Anderson
Adam
Berg
Mike
Bettes
Vivian
Brown
Jim
Cantore
Jennifer
Carfagno
Kelly
Cass
Betty
Davis
Kristin
Dodd
Jorma
Duran
Dr Marcus
Eriksen
Paul
Goodloe
Ryan
Goswick
Rich
Johnson
Bill
Keneely
Danny
Lipford
Warren
Madden
Mark
Mancuso
Dr Anna
Marie
Julie
Martin
Jeff
Mielcarz
Jarod
Miller
Nicole
Mitchell
Samantha
Mohr
Jeff
Morrow
Carl
Parker
Kim
Perez
Sharon
Resultan
Kevin
Robinson
Marshall
Seese
Mike
Seidel
Alexandra
Steele
Heather
Tesch
Nick
Walker
Alex
Wallace
Dr Steve Lyons
Dr Greg Forbes
Dr Heidi Cullen
Stu Ostro
Aixa Diaz (NEWS ANCHORS
Jen Holloway
Al Ruechel
Leigh Moody
Erica Riggins
Rick Elmhorst
(METEOROLOGISTS)
Mike Clay
Juli Marquez
Josh Linker
Diane Kacmarik
Brian McClure
Alan Winfield
(NEWS REPORTERS
Jennifer Anderson
Dalia Dangerfield
Laurie Davison
Melissa Eichman
Samantha Hayes
Chuck Johnson
Troy Kinsey
Jason Lanning
Emily Maza
Carol Minn Vacca
Jonathan Petramala
Josh Rojas
Summer Smith
Kathryn Simmons
Melanie Snow
Melissa Sogegian
Anna Tataris
Ferdinand
Zogbaum
(EN ESPANOL
Lydia Guzmán
Roy De Jesús
Sandra Pinto
Jim Payne
Syan Rhodes
Martha Sugalski
Scott Walker
Eryka Washington
Weather:
Jason Brewer
Tony Mainolfi
Malachi Rodgers
Amy Sweezey
WESH.com Web Staff:
Jeff Cousins
Managing Editor
Jessica Seeley
Washington Reporters:
Sally Kidd
Nikole Killion
Laurie Kinney
Orlando Sentinel:
Roger Moore
Movie Critic
Sports:
Pat Clarke
Guy Rawlings
Reporters:
Danielle Bellini
Dan Billow
Greg Fox
Bob Kealing
Jeff Lennox
Craig Lucie
Dave McDaniel
Michelle Meredith
Claire Metz
Amanda Ober
Kendra Oestreich
Gail Paschall-Brown
Tim Trudell
Todd Wilson
Other Talent:
Jason Chepenik
Financial Analyst
Dr. Todd Husty
Dan McCarthy
Chopper 2 Pilot
Kimberly Williams
Traffic Reporter
SNMG1-Ships in formation on completion of exercise Cold Response off coast of Norway: (HNoMS STORM (P-961), HNoMS STEIL (P-963), ESPS CANTABRIA (A15), ESPS ALVARO DE BAZAN (F101), HDMS NIELS JUEL (F-363), HMS IRON DUKE (F-234), FS PRIMAUGUET (D-644) - 07 MAR 2016 - Photo by WO C.ARTIGUES (HQ MARCOM).
1/48 scale model at the last stage of completion. Little bits like the landing gears and doors await its attachment.
Lt. Governor Karyn Polito joins state and local officials to celebrate the completion of a solar carport at Worcester Business Center on Nov. 2, 2022. [Joshua Qualls/Governor's Press Office]
Grand Central Terminal (GCT) is a commuter (and former intercity) railroad terminal at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Built by and named for the New York Central Railroad in the heyday of American long-distance passenger rail travel, it covers 48 acres (19 ha) and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all below ground, serve 41 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower, though the total number of tracks along platforms and in rail yards exceeds 100.
The terminal serves commuters traveling on the Metro-North Railroad to Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York State, and Fairfield and New Haven counties in Connecticut. Until 1991, the terminal served Amtrak, which moved to nearby Pennsylvania Station upon completion of the Empire Connection. The East Side Access project is underway to bring Long Island Rail Road service to the terminal.
Although the terminal has been properly called “Grand Central Terminal” since 1913, it has "always been more colloquially and affectionately known as Grand Central Station", the name of the previous rail station on the same site, and of the U.S. Post Office station next door, which is not part of the terminal. It is also sometimes used to refer to the Grand Central – 42nd Street subway station, which serves the terminal.
Grand Central Terminal features both monumental spaces and meticulously crafted detail. In a February 2013 BBC News article, historian David Cannadine described it one of the most majestic buildings of the twentieth century. In 2011, travel magazine Travel + Leisure rated it the sixth-most-visited tourist attraction for its roughly 21.6 million annual visitors.
The Main Concourse
The Main Concourse is the center of Grand Central. The space is cavernous – 275 ft (84 m) long, 120 ft (37 m) wide and 125 ft (38 m) high: – and usually filled with bustling crowds. The ticket booths are in the Concourse, although many now stand unused or have been repurposed since the introduction of ticket vending machines. The large American flag was hung in Grand Central Terminal a few days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The main information booth is in the center of the concourse. This is a perennial meeting place, and the four-faced clock on top of the information booth is perhaps the most recognizable icon of Grand Central. The clock, designed by Henry Edward Bedford and cast in Waterbury Connecticut, is made from brass. Each of the four clock faces is made from opalescent glass (now often called opal glass or milk glass), though urban legend has it that the faces are made of opal and that Sotheby's and Christie's have estimated their value to be between $10 million and $20 million. A 1954 New York Times article on the restoration of the clock notes that "Each of the glass faces was twenty-four inches in diameter...". Within the marble and brass pagoda lies a "secret" door that conceals a spiral staircase leading to the lower-level information booth.
Hercules, Minerva and Mercury, statuary by Jules-Félix Coutan, atop the terminal, with the MetLife Building behind
Outside the station, the 13-foot (4.0 m) clock in front of the Grand Central façade facing 42nd Street contains the world's largest example of Tiffany glass. It is surrounded by sculptures of Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury. The sculptures were designed by French sculptor Jules-Felix Coutan and carved by the John Donnelly Company. At its unveiling in 1914, the 48-foot (14.6 m)- high trio was considered the largest sculptural group in the world.
The upper level tracks are reached from the Main Concourse or from various hallways and passages branching off from it. On the east side of the Main Concourse is a cluster of food purveyor shops called Grand Central Market.
Display board
The original blackboard with arrival and departure information by Track 36 was replaced by an electromechanical display in the main concourse over the ticket windows that displayed times and track numbers of arriving and departing trains.[when?] It contained rows of flip panels that displayed train information, and became a New York institution, as its many displays would flap simultaneously to reflect changes in train schedules, an indicator of just how busy Grand Central was. A small example of this type of device hangs in the Museum of Modern Art as an example of outstanding industrial design.
The flap-board destination sign was replaced with high-resolution mosaic LCD modules manufactured by Solari Udine of Italy, the maker of the original flap boards for train stations and airports. Similar modules are now also used on the trains, both on the sides to display the destination, and on the interior to display the time, next station, calling points, and other passenger information.
The Main Concourse has an elaborately decorated astronomical ceiling, conceived in 1912 by Warren with his friend, French portrait artist Paul César Helleu, and executed by James Monroe Hewlett and Charles Basing of Hewlett-Basing Studio, with Helleu consulting. Corps of astronomers and painting assistants worked with Hewlett and Basing.
The starry ceiling is astronomically inaccurate in a complicated way. While the stars within some constellations appear correctly as they would from earth, other constellations are reversed left-to-right, as is the overall arrangement of the constellations on the ceiling. For example, Orion is correctly and beautifully rendered, but the adjacent constellations Taurus and Gemini are reversed both internally and in their relation to Orion, with Taurus near Orion's raised arm where Gemini should be. One possible explanation is that the overall ceiling design might have been based on the medieval custom of depicting the sky as it would appear to God looking in at the celestial sphere from outside, but that would have reversed Orion as well. A more likely explanation is partially mistaken transcription of the sketch supplied by Columbia Astronomy professor Harold Jacoby. Though the astronomical inconsistencies were noticed promptly by a commuter in 1913, they have not been corrected in any of the subsequent renovations of the ceiling.
The original ceiling was replaced in the late 1930s to correct falling plaster.
There is a small dark circle amid the stars above the image of Pisces. In a 1957 attempt to counteract feelings of insecurity spawned by the Soviet launch of Sputnik, an American Redstone missile was set up in the Main Concourse. With no other way to erect the missile, the hole was cut so the rocket could be lifted into place. Historical preservation dictated that this hole remain (as opposed to being repaired) as a testament to the many uses of the Terminal over the years.
By the 1980s, the ceiling was obscured by decades of what was thought to be coal and diesel smoke. Spectroscopic examination revealed that it was mostly tar and nicotine from tobacco smoke. A 12-year restoration effort completed in autumn 1996 restored the ceiling to its original luster. A single dark patch above the Michael Jordan Steakhouse was left untouched by renovators to remind visitors of the grime that once covered the ceiling.
St. Stephen 's Church ( Bratislava )
Coordinates 49 ° 8'43 " S 17 ° 6'19 " W
Architect Ignatius Feigler ml .
Neo-Romanesque style
Completion 1860 - 1861
Roman Catholic Church
Consecration St. Stephen
Address : Župné Square
Church of St Stephen of the Capuchin monastery is a sacral building located on a County Square in Bratislava, in the historic Old Town.
Capuchin complex in Bratislava is one of the important architectural monuments. Interesting is its history, unique architectural form and interior furnishings, reflecting ordinal habits, as well as works of art, their copyright and iconographic contexts.
History
In July 1676 came from Vienna to the then capital of Hungary members of the Order of Capuchins. Their first posting was at the chapel today on Michalska Street. Next thirty-five years here were held worship and other spiritual activities. As preachers were active in addition Brothers of Mercy, in uršulíniek and in other parishes; self-sacrificing service held during the plague epidemics.
The gain in 1698 buying land on the east side of the castle of Baroness Ghillányiovej that next year a gift of land from neighboring countess Czobor considerably widened. Thanks dobrodinstvu (open-handed) Eleanor Theresa, Countess de Strattmann and Payerbach, construction of Capuchin church and monastery on today's spot could start (in the chorus you can now notice a commemorative plaque with the German inscription - in translation: "Pray for the accidented founder Eleanor Teresa 1709"). The foundation stone of the monastery was laid 17 December 1708 and by the end of September of the following year it was ready chorus with a small tower, sacristy and adjacent oratory. 3 October 1709 was held the first Mass, which serves Hungarian Cardinal-Primate of Christian August of Saxony. Construction, led by religious Father John Damasceno (real name Johann Wers, died 04.25.1744 in Vienna) of the Vienna New Town, continued until 1712, when the monastery moved to our new friar.
The foundation stone of the church was laid on 20 decembra 1711. In 1717 the church was finished and 6 June consecrated it bishop of Nitra Ladislav Adam Erdödy.
In 1727 the monastery extended towards the skin street and Palffy Garden. The sacristy to briefly library hall. Outbuildings financed directly by Imrich Esterházy, a big supporter of the Capuchin Order.
In 1735 the church was about to happen, because allowed the basics (for it was the muddy soil). Therefore, let the archbishop Imrich Esterházy, at their own expense from the ground renovate church on the condition that the Capuchins take over management of the chapel of St. John the Merciful in the cathedral of St. Martin. Capuchins part of the church demolished and mandated military engineer Felice Donata Allia the rebuilding, which in the years 1736 - 1737 the building structurally secured and church went hand in hand with the builder - Capuchin friar Berthold (real name Ferdinand Ziegerhoffer, died 12/05/1763 at Tate), who also built a church altar.
Statue of the patron saint of the church in the niche on the facade, the work of Anton Brand.
In 1737 Francis Portenhauser, under the supervision of Archbishop Imre Eszterházyho, has completed the construction of the monastery, which was built two more tracts with sacristy and library. The gate was built a new wing with five forehead for domestic and foreign. In the garden was established a hospital.
In 1779 the church received a new bench, in the years 1819-1824 was built a chorus, in which Juraj Klokner built a new organ.
A major reconstruction was neoslohová update the front facade in the years 1860-1861 Bratislava builder Ignatius Feigler ml, thus entered into a romantic look. Then was in recess located on the front stone statue patron of the church (the work of sculptor Anton Brand Bratislava), which replaced the original painting. 1892 placed in the interior of the church Calvary with reliefs from the Upper Austrian carver M. Gaige (drawings by prof. Klein). In the nineteenth century was carried repainting the interior, which, however, undermined its original simplicity.
In 1895, the church got a restoration. At that time in Bratislava monastery and study theology.
Another repair of the church took place after a fire in 1913. In the second half of the 20th century it came to several modifications, interior (wooden wall coverings, fixtures and supplement historicist supplement).
In the years 1867 - 1895 was fixed crypt, which was later filled up, even today we do not know its fate lobby or buried bodies. According to available data, would it be buried more than 200 people, among them the painter Anton Rosier and Prince Lobkowitz Georg Christian de Sagan.
Architecture church
Churches of all the Capuchin religious buildings have individual character. Capuchins - reformed branch of the Franciscan order, strictly comply with the requirement set out religious poverty of St. Francis of Assisi and applied it to the shape of their temples. Their churches were without the tower: the street is proceeds around a simple gable, tectonically unitary facade. Were arched barrel vault with lunettes. The interior walls were smooth, tectonically unitary, painted in white, from which well reflect modest sĺpové dark brown altars. Unlike polychrome and richly decorated interior fittings other churches were Capuchin altars covered with walnut graining, which could revive only lighter inlaid ornaments and beads and capitals in ivory color.
General view of the Church. Stephen with Marian column in front of the main entrance.
Austere character and visual simplicity Capuchin church corresponds to the pastoral aims of this order as their efforts to lead the faithful to deepen the internal life according to the Gospel. Extending the temple area to the side spaces on one side chapels allowing individual piety and confessional room, allowing internal focus - believers preparing for confession. Medieval church against the Mendicant Orders, where the choir stalls stood before the main altar, in the Capuchin church rendition of the main altar in the Oratory associated with specific presbytery into a single unit. The two spaces separated by only a massive baroque main altar of artistic expression on the front and the back. Under strict monastic cloister area visually separated from the church accessible to lay people, but also downsized voices and singing brothers odbavujúcich prescribed watch, what is the visitor of the church to act as engrossing example.
Outside the church
Church building is located in the southeast-northwest direction. The floor of the church is well below the surrounding terrain. Monolithic facades without vertical structuring is finished off with a steep ridge. The portal is designed by predstavanou hall, with a distinctive rosette window, culminating in a gabled roof, over the hallway is a stone niche with a statue of St. Stephen.
The interior of the church
Nave church of St. Stephen's arched barrel vault with lunettes. The ship is separated from the chancel triumphal arch. An interesting feature is the building interior architecture separating the chancel altar of the Oratory Brothers. On the right side of the church is the chapel and sacristy, the left side of the monastery hall.
The church is entered through predstavanú hall. Above the entrance to the ship of the church is the Latin inscription in the form of a chronogram of 1860 (in translation): "Behold! Pokojamilovným open the door to these Seraphic cells of which were rebuilt from God's favor and innate love of King Franz Joseph."
Internals of the church (benches, altars, pulpit) is of tmavomoreného wood, decorated with inlays (a typical phenomenon in the Capuchin church in western Slovakia). Brother Berthold, who completed the construction of the monastery complex, built the altar in the church.
The main altar
The main altar of St. Stephen from 1737 consists of a massive baroque architecture, separating the sanctuary from the oratory, visual design on both sides. Monumental altarpiece (created in 1737) is probably the work of monk Udalricha from Wels (real name Thomas Wimberger, died 19.7.1743 in Buda).
The main altar with the image of the monk Udalricha in 1737
The picture shows the first Hungarian King Stephen I. giving the Virgin Mary to protect his son Imre and Hungary, symbolically expressed on a pillow lying royal crown.
The picture is interesting from an architectural point of view: namely silhouette captures the contemporary Bratislava with its important buildings, the castle, house and city hall. It is expected that the show was not accidental starts of Bratislava. Bratislava has been since 1563 coronation city, which it wanted to pay tribute to the author of the image and at the same time emphasize the importance of capturing buildings symbolizing the three components of the then society - not sovereign, suzerain ecclesiastical and municipal administration.
Scenes on the side of the main altar are paintings of St. Joseph and St. Theresa of Avila .
The side altars
The side altars of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Anthony Padua (from around 1737) stands on the sides of the triumphal arch and mast have the same architecture. Altarpieces - Stigmatization of St. Francis and St. Anthony's Vision - painted by Karol Anton Rosier, a student of G. R. Donner. The Raiser altar are paintings Holy Fidelius with a book and an angel (on the altar of St . Francis) and St. Felix with an angel (on the altar of St . Anton).
The boat is in nike altar of the Holy Cross (from 1737), which forms columnar baroque architecture with a central image of a cross with the corpus. Construct it gave Karol ble. Counterpart of the altar is the altar of St. Fidelism of Sigmaringenu, martyr and saint of the Order of Capuchins. The altar dates from 1749 and has a post-top architecture. Altarpiece painted the Death of St. Fidelis Capuchin Father Norbert from Vienna (real name Johann Baumgartner, died 29.09.1773 in Vienna). By the same author as well as religious paintings of saints and two box- reliquaries of 1st half of the 18 century.
Shrine of Our Lady (from 1742) on the right side chapel has a post-top baroque architecture, but the statue of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus came into being in the 20th century. Below the niche is on an oval painting of St. John of Nepomuk.
Other sights include the church cycle of eight large paintings in the nave, showing Christ's suffering (work Frater Udalricha), two box and two pyramidal reliquaries in the rococo frame, a late baptistery of 18 century baroque oratory behind the main altar, Stations of the Cross in 1892 (Work Upper Austrian woodcarver M. Gaige).
In 1725, erected on the Esplanade in front of the church baroque column with a statue of the Immaculate, built in 1723, standing in front of the county near the house .
Interestingly
Church in Bratislava is the only Capuchin church dedicated to St. Stephen throughout the former Kingdom of Hungary.
sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostol_sv%C3%A4t%C3%A9ho_%C5%A0tefana_(Bratislava)
Construction on a vehicle maintenance warehouse near the company and battalion operations centers south of U.S. Army Garrison Grafenwoehr's PX/Commissary complex nears completion as one of the final projects in U.S. Army Europe's $700+ million Efficient Basing Grafenwoehr program, which is set to complete in spring 2010. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Justin Ward)
The James A. Farley Post Office building at Eighth Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets in New York City. The building was constructed in 1912, and was designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White.
The Wikipedia article (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farley_Post_Office) on the building observes, in part, that "The James A. Farley Post Office Building is the main post office building in New York City. Its ZIP code designation is 10001, and it is commonly addressed on letters as JAF Station. Built in 1912, the building is famous for bearing the inscription: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. In 1982, the post office was officially designated The James A. Farley Building, as a monument and testament to the political career of the nation's 53rd Postmaster General. The Farley Post Office is home to "Operation Santa", made famous in the classic 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street and it is the inspiration for the post office in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, with its "Glom of nit" legend."
Hwy.62/102 Interchange Improvements.& 8th Street Widening (Bentonville)
49
d9 District 9
County:
Benton County
Length:
1 Miles
Location:
Log Mile 85.85 - 86.85
Work Began:
March 2017
Est. Completion:
Mid 2019
ARDOT Job Number:
090376
RE Office:
94
Contractor:
Crossland Construction Co., Inc.
Contract Amount:
$28.8 Million
Description:
The purpose of this project is to extend 8th Street and construct a new interchange at 8th Street on I-49, make improvements to the interchange at Hwy. 62/102, and add auxiliary lanes on the I-49 between the two interchanges in Benton County.
* Help break the cycle of poverty and environmental degradation by
educating the indegious Mayan children of Comalapa, Guatemala.
*
I am writing you just a few weeks after the completion of the construction
of a sustainable home for an indigenous Mayan family in Comalapa,
Guatemala. A total of 96 people, including members of the Earthship
Biotecture Crew, Long Way Home
Team,
local Guatemalans, and 65 volunteers from countries including Austraila,
New Zealand, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, England, The
Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, and the United
States, worked together in unison to build a 'Simple Survival Pod'
Earthship for Long Way Home's Guatemalan Foreman, Romeo Apen and his
family. In three weeks time, the home was complete and ready for its
finishing touches so that Apens could move into their new home. Not only
will Romeo's home collect and filter its own rainwater and run on solar
energy, it will also use and reuse water a total of four times, which is
used to grow food in an indoor greenhouse.
[image: BBBB]
The experience can only be described with words such as "amazing",
"incredible", "magical", and "heart-warming," and the project clearly
demonstrated the power that is possible when people come together for a
unifying cause.
All of this began by a small group of individuals working together
with Earthship
Biotecture andLong Way Home to
help raise donations for a worthy and charitable cause: Bottle Buildings
and Bamboo Bicycles in
Guatemala.
Through this campaign with indiegogo
,
a total of $4,200USD was raised in one month to help secure the necessary
funds to complete the construction of the home for Romeo and his family.
The support and interest we received for this campaign from family,
friends, and many other interested parties, was nothing short of
awe-inspiring.
*Today, the cause continues with The Long Way Home and the children of
Guatemala...*
[image: Los Ninos]
After spending three weeks in Comalapa, I began to realize how the work
Long Way Home does is vitally important to Compala, Guatemala. Long Way
Home Team are addressing very real issues that not only affect Guatemala
and other Latin America countries, but countries around the world, there is
an over-abundance of waste and trash that goes completely unchecked. This
later ends up in our streets, gardens, playgrounds or, even worse, our
lakes, streams, and groundwater where many people in countries like
Guatemala get their drinking water.
The problem is compounded in places like Guatemala where there is almost no
infrastructure for recycling or even basic waste disposal. Most of the
garbage goes directly into the street or, as previously mentioned, into a
lake or stream.
So what do we do about what seems to be an ever-increasing problem with no
end?
Although there are no perfect solutions at the moment, Long Way Home Team
are making serious head way on some of the problems that not only affect
Guatemalans, but affect us all.
Thus far, Long Way Home has collected and used 262 tons of garbage for
building projects in Comalapa, Guatemala. Their primary project is a
sustainable school which, in addition to the standard curriculum, currently
teaches 46 indigenous children Kaqchikel (the traditional local Mayan
dialect), traditional Mayan culture, English and environmental stewardship.
The school will teach 350 students when the school is complete.
Additionally, they have paid upwards of $110,000USD in salary to local
Guatemalan workers employed for sustainable projects in Comalapa. These
community members are being trained to build sustainable homes and they can
use these skills to start their own alternative building business.
Because of my great admiration for what the Long Way Home is doing, I have
decided to stay in Comalapa and do what I can to help.
*Now...I need your help! :)*
*
*
*
*
* *
*Who is The Long Way Home?*
Long Way Home was founded in 2004 when Mateo Paneitz finished his Peace
Corps service and realized his work in the small town of San Juan Comalapa,
Guatemala was not done. He brought together a group of dedicated activists
who were interested in helping this community change their future. Mateo’s
goal was to address two primary issues: the lack of appropriate waste
management strategies; and the lack of educational and employment
opportunities for local, indegious youth. His team came up with a unique
solution that would tackle both issues simultaneously: build a primary and
vocational facility out of waste materials!
*Background*[image: joel]
The Técnico Maya school needs funding, and the dedicated staff and faculty
at the school have donated time and money to provide a multicultural
education at a low cost to students, only charging a nominal fee and
providing scholarships for those who cannot afford to pay. All students are
required to bring plastic bottles filled with trash each week as part of
their "tuition."
The Impact*[image: Romeo]Sustainability*
The Vocational School will provide a venue for young Comalapans to learn
such trades as masonry, carpentry and bicycle repair. The workshops in the
school will serve as hands-on classrooms, and will be viable businesses
where the students will work as apprentices to professionals in each field.
The income generated by the workshops will pay the teachers’ salaries,
helping the school near its goal of financial sustainability. The school
plans include an area where students can learn alternative energy
production. Once the school is successfully producing alternative fuels,
the sale of fuel will provide additional funding for the institution.
Interns and volunteers from around the world who come to work at the
Técnico Maya Vocational School will also contribute to the financial
sustainability of the project. The fee that each volunteer pays will
directly fund educational programs at the school and supplement teacher
salaries.
[image: bottles]Environmental Contribution
Using environmentally friendly construction methods such as trash bottles,
rammed earth, and earth bag, the school is a practical demonstration of how
to reuse discarded materials. The locals who participate in the school’s
construction have hands-on experience with these money-saving construction
techniques and will hopefully apply their new knowledge within the
community.
Environmental education will be a main focus of the school’s new
curriculum. From organic permaculture to environmentally friendly
construction methods, young Comalapans will be learning responsible
stewardship of the Earth through their coursework. The addition of
alternative fuel production education should make a long-term impact on the
surrounding communities as well.
*[image: Economic]Economic Contribution*
The most immediate way that the construction of the vocational school will
contribute to the economy of Comalapa is through providing jobs for
teachers. Not only will the current Técnico Maya teachers have a more
consistent source of income, but the newly added vocational curriculum will
require the addition of several new teachers from within the community. The
long-term economic effects of the vocational school will be felt when a
group of skilled young Comalapans, uniquely trained to be environmental
entrepreneurs, enter the Guatemalan job market.
What I and The Long Way Home Need
*For this campaign, all that I am asking for is $1,000USD. *A breakdown of
funds is below:
- $300USD goes towards my monthly volunteer and housing fee, which goes
directly to Long Home to help pay for their operational costs.
- The $200USD will be used for personal food and other everyday
miscellaneous necessities.
- I am also raising an additional $500USD for Long Way Home, which
brings a total of $800USD going towards helping pay for teachers' salaries,
school materials for the children, and the sustainable school building
project.
Where can I donate and support this campaign?
www.indiegogo.com/projects/educating-our-children-for-the...
What happens if we don't reach our goal? Then what?
If we don't reach our goal, I will not be able to stay with The Long Way
Home, and The Long Way Home will not get the helpful funds they need to
continue their mission of educating and employing the youth, promoting
community and cooperation through environmental stewardship, and
eradicating poverty and pollution in Comalapa, Guatemala.
Other Ways You Can Help...
If you can't donate money, no problem!
You can help tremendously by spreading the word about our fundraiser with
your friends and family and in your social networks! Every little bit
helps! Share through Facebook, Twitter and e-mail! Thanks for your time,
support and donations! Together, we can make a difference! :)
[image: child]
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret
Mead
Sincerely,
Justin Lee Henson
www.facebook.com/justin.lee.henson
www.facebook.com/BottleBuildingsAndBambooBicyclesInGuatem...
Additional links for your information:
Video on Long Way Home: youtu.be/WGt3sY54vyg
Long Way Home website: lwhome.org/
LWH Facebook:
www.facebook.com/pages/LONG-WAY-HOME/297639413189?group_i...
Completion of the ISO rounds with rebranded Ferrania. I like this film. It's cheap.
Minolta SRTMC
Rebranded Ferrania Solaris 400 (Western Family)
This conceptual visualization shows plans for the new SR 509/South 160th Street Interchange in Burien. This southbound view shows the new roundabout interchanges at South 160th Street and new noise walls that will be constructed to the southwest and northeast of the interchange.
Learn more at: wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/search-projects/sr-509-completion-project
Riyadh, Elf-One, AWACS, Aug-Nov 1981
·
In May 1981, I re-enlisted in the Air National Guard at the completion of my first 4 year hitch. I had made E-5, Staff Sergeant, and was enjoying my time in the service. Our unit had gone to Korea for a Team Spirit exercise in the spring and Pusan had been a lot of fun.
I was working as a security guard and going to Sac State. When the Air Guard asked me if I would like to spend a couple fo months in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in August, I jumped at the chance to travel again. My aunt Clyda had been working as a nurse at King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh for several years and liked it (and the money she was making) well enough to stay there.
So, some time in August 1981 (don't remember exact dates) I boarded a flight for Oklahoma City, site of Tinker AFB, the headquarters of the 552nd AWACS Wing as well as the 3rd Combat Comm Group, a regular Air Force equivalent to my own ANG 162nd Combat Comm Group. I was on loan to the 3rd Herd for my stay in Saudi.
After a day or two at Tinker, we flew via C-141 to Rhein Main AFB in Frankfurt, Germany,refueled and from there continued on to Riyadh. Like Rhein Main, the air base at Riyadh shared runways with the commercial airport.
We were supporting Exercise Elf One, which was playing I Spy on the Iran-Iraq War. The Saudis had asked the US to fly AWACS radar planes and have radar ships in the Gulf to watch the Iranians, in case they decided to attack Saudi Arabia, which was suporting the Iraqis in the war. I don't think the Iranians ever did attack the Saudis, but they did bomb Kuwait one day when we were there. After that, I think the Kuwaits asked that we warn them if any Iranian planes came their way. We had picked up the Iranian planes going to and from Kuwait, but had no agreement to inform them before that.
In those days, the Iranians were flying US made F4s and F14s, while the Iraqis had Soviet MiGs and French Mirages. We didn't know it at the time, but the Iranians were getting parts for their planes under the Iran-Contra deal.
There are western compounds in Riyadh, where the normal Saudi rules are relaxed. The US Army had a training mission, and companies such as Lockheed and British Aircraft also had compounds. Alcohol was strictly forbidden under Saudi Sharia law, but the western compounds would brew jungle juice and serve it at parties, with the Saudis turning a blind eye, as they needed the Americans, Brits and others to keep things working. I saw the aftereffects of bathtub grapefruit wine on some of the guys and decided I could wait until I got back to Germany and have some decent German beer.
Our compound or Elf One was the ai Yamama Hotel on Airport Road between downtown and the airport (duh!!!). It was a regular hotel, but had been taken over by USAF for the Elf One people. The regular staff managed it, and we ate breakfast and dinner in the hotel dining room for free. After a while, the same 6 or 7 items for dinner did get old, and we would sometimes eat at other restaurants in town, but Riyadh is not known for its swinging night life.
I was one of two Teletype techs in Riyadh while I was there. We also had crypto, sattelite radio, HF radio, ground power, HVAC maint people, who hung out in our shop van near the flight line on base, as well as a bunch of radio and Teletype operators who did the work of running the gear. The maint people mainly hung out, repaired problems, and did periodic maintenance on the equipment. That explains the photos of us hanging out in the shop van, reading, napping, playing cards and generally goofing off.
The aircraft maint people worked elsewhere.
USAF had KC-135 tankers and E3 AWACS planes in Riyadh for Elf One. An E3 was in the air at all times, flying in 12 hour shifts. We could, if we wanted to, go on "morale flights" on the AWACS, but I never did as sitting in a plane for 12 hours with nothing to do sounded slightly less appealing than sitting in the shop van for 12 hours with nothing to do.
We could also, take morale flights on the KC-135s when they went up to refuel the AWACS every afternoon. They left about the same time every day, taking off southbound over downtown Riyadh and our hotel and you could always tell the 135 by the distinctive sound of its water injection turbojets as it flew over.
I went up on two morale flights on KC-135s and on the first one I remarked to the pilot that I would love to take photos of the refueling. He was cool with it, so the second time I went up, I brought my camera and asked permision from the pilot on that trip. He didn't care, although I think the Saudis did not want people taking arial photos of the country. Oh well. This was 35 years ago and all of the air crews on these planes are out of the service or retired by now.
I have to say that the midair refueling of the AWACS as seen from next to the boom operator on the KC-135 is one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. Boom operators joke that they have 3 college graduates fly them around so they can pass gas, and USAF does midair refueling dozens of times a day all over the world, but it is remarkable to see two planes flying close together, connected by a refueling boom.
My TDY was originally for 2 months, but with no job to return to and having missed the Fall 1981 semester at Sac State, I extended it for another month.
In 1981, Riyadh had a rail connection to the Gulf at Damman with a daily passenger train, and freight service. I saw the passenger train at Riyadh, but did not feel comfortable taking out my camera to get any photos. It had a GP38 (IIRC) pulling new stainless steel cars that had been made in Europe. I've heard that one of the Twin/Nebraske Zephyr sets wound up in Saudi Arabia (the other is at Illinois Railway Museum), but I saw no sign of it and I did not try to take a ride on the railway as we only had one day off a week and a round trip required an overnight stay. I did get a few photos another day when I found the yard and shop. One is posted here, and when I find the others, I will post them. The Saudis had some F7s and I saw a couple of those as well as what I think is a GL8, an EMD export model.
I tried to meet Aunt Clyda during the whole time I was there, but she could not get into the al Yamama and I could not get into her nurse's quarters, and,as I said, there were not a lot of places to meet in downtown Riyadh. I knew she worked at the hospital's blood bank and we could give blood there, so toward the end of my stay, I joined the guys donating blood and at least was able to say hi to Clyda for a few minutes.
The weather was very hot when we got there, dry heat, of course, but by November, things had cooled off and we even had a bit of rain before I left in mid-November.
I planned to stop off in Europe and travel around for a month before returning to the US, so I mailed most of my stuff home before I left and when our plane got to Rhein Main, I joined the crowd heading to the bar for a beer, then went to the base hotel for the night.
The next morning was rainy and green and rain and green never looked so good!
liquid painting is very liberating for the painter.
SEE PHOTO BELOW in the comment section for an example of what this painting's left side used to look like.
it's a good visual description of LIQUID PAINTING's purpose/changes.
and it's very exciting to overpaint.
it provides its own form of escapism -- the ability to be free to paint over what is finished in a way that builds and destroys at the same time. just like life!
in life when we have a goal or an accomplishment that we want to achieve, we set out toward the completion point.
if we work hard enough and have the necessary aptitude for success within the project, eventually the TASK is completed.
and there is perhaps a celebration?
but then the next chapter of this incessant struggle rears up to make itself frontal to our next accomplishment.
we seem to live between the accomplishments, ever-focused on the end point of achievement.
and liquid painting is like this without the neurotic sadness.
it is about literally PAINTING OVER already wonderful and finished products.
it is ANTI-MATERIALISTIC.
it is an exploration into change.
it is an adventure about letting go of something.
it is like a tibetan sand painting that is fated to be blown away.
and so are dynasties and earthly power.
as the RISE OF A GLOBAL TELEVISION NETWORK continues its mad race toward existence, nation states will be used like pawns. they will become like the characters on the Dopaquel Peninsula.
they will eat horses and chop off the arms of their daughters.
they will seek an illusion of the pre-electric world reintegrated with the post-havoc world of nuclear energy and atomic warfare. they will look to the past as though it had become a heaven.
and the inversion of the demented CHRISTIAN FALL will make heaven into an "historical" notion that can only be reached by going back into time, whereas hell will become a "future possibility".
the threat of CRIME BLOTTER posing as news will make the peaceful tranquility of the Dopaquel Peninsula irresistible to the betteroffs and the prettyoffs.
the idea of CLEAN AIR, CLEAN LAND, CLEAN WATER, CLEAN FOOD will be the plaintiff cry of all the people.
but few will have access to it.
so keep shoveling those fking MEDZ down your throat, america.
blake's poetry that you didn't read or understand because all you could stand was the image of a tiger burning bright.
you never made it to the real poetic works, did you?
got hung up at the door jam,
again and again and again.
the piscean slave syndrome of catch and release, catch and release.
but who if not you ever listened or read our government's abominations in the 9/11 commission report?
did NOT ONE american take time to hear what the government "claims" happened?
is this inconceivably sharp question so DAMNING?!?!
how could NOT ONE american take time to examine 9/11?
how could GLOBAL TELEVISION crush the story and the fall out so THOROUGHLY?
it literally KILLED the show friends.
i don't know, but i'd bet that you never took the time to understand just exactly what our rogue government was up to, but you acted like you did.
you pretended that these new unnamed organizations weren't stool pigeons of your own government, set up and paid for and then "allegedly" they went sideways?!<| maybe not.
liars tell lies.
instead, you probably know at least a couple of people who took time and money to out and buy duct tape and plastic wrapping.
and all of us bought so much gas it could fill swimming pools and a whole neighborhood could fill lakes and underground oceans have been consumed by cities.
it was US!!!
i gave my car up for three years, but after i was almost run down on my mountain bike by a confused motorist who had never used a "roundabout" before, i too returned to the petroleum speed addiction of instant travel power.
it's a life/death issue -- don't go up against armored vehicles with your windmill tilting two wheeled pedaler.
that's just stupid.
and even though i've only put 60k miles on my car in 12 years, we are all in this game and working it.
so it's on us.
we did it.
we are guilty.
and the outside world knows and sees this VERY CLEARLY.
they aren't hindered by all the GOOD TIMES we had.
instead, they remember every flagrant fku we sent their way.
historically, this is why the party kids never realize how much they fk others up. they are so fkt up that they think they're funny and attractive and special and deserving.
and that's sad and true.
so the party kids blow off their human duties to other humans.
they suppress those truths and hide those memories,.
they live on borrowed money's pleasure and then they pretend they never have to pay it back.
they neglect their most basic obligations .
seriously can you fking believe that american kid stole a poster from the north koreans.
i mean, too bad for him and all, that's a private family issue and none of my concern in ANY WAY.
but what a fking horrible person!!!!!
fking GD AWFUL TREASONOUS AMERICAN!!!!
how DARE him!!!!
or "how a kid hired by the C.I.A. tried to start a war with NORTH KOREA" at our EXPENSE.
i wish that was fake news.
but we fall for it every fking time.
it doesn't occur to us to think that that young man violated our NATION'S trust with a NATION by his fkt up actions.
it was INTENTIONAL GLOBAL SABOTAGE.
and even if it wasn't, it was.
that's the STANDOFF rules and don't fake like you don't know that.
no true american would ever stain their country's nation's state reputation with such fkt up behavior. that's something an entitled ditch would do. OR A YOUNG MAN ON MEDZ.
and true americans aren't ditches.
it is against all the values of americanism to be a ditch.
but MEDZ make remorseless ditches out of their users.
and i can't diagnose that kid, but his pupils had what i call MEDZ eye syndrome. it is a darkening of the actual eye color. a tinting that makes the pupils appear to be dilated larger than the light values would naturally dilate an eye.
but i saw some pics of him and i'd give 7:1 odds that he was using pharmaceuticals or had been using pharmaceuticals before the incident.
but this kid's actions aren't really my point.
my point is that we get so worked up by the FAKE CRIME BLOTTER because we secretly know that if we don't go to war with everyone at some point, everyone is coming for us.
will this mean that americans will be physically invading other countries as rogue individuals?
it's happening to putin's government now, so why wouldn't it also happen to ours?
we've had the white gee-hadists who go rogue and the reality is that the "rebel" element is a condition of the human WHOLE.
until we address these philosophical NECESSITIES, we will continue to be swept up in the drama of the circumstances that are intentionally manufactured FOR THAT PURPOSE.
we will be "GRETEL/HANSELED" down the prescribed bread crumb path of "the nation state game" when the nations are just pawns in the GLOBAL NEWS NETWORK SCHEME.
somehow we innately know this in our soceity. but it's literally so much easier to refocus our intentions on fking GLUTTONY and constant feasting and bad health options and all that alcohol and the MEDZ for depression and the wanton sickness of overindulgence when it becomes BORING is such an OBVIOUS choice to make.
it's not very poetic.
it's not noble or uplifting.
it's not smart.
it's not very realized and has a variable suicide contract attached to it.
some come with murder warnings.
MARS NEEDS MARTIANS!!!!!
but remember this, those who have become MATERIALLY-entitled nazi people (the big difference between the nazis and modern average americans is that the nazis had pride and enthusiasm for ideals and achievable dreams whereas americans are awash in medz and alcohol and entertainment):
you should examine your government.
read what they have been forced to share with you in the official reports.
get out a fking map and start to make some connections.
a true republic or democracy is so much stronger when the people are aware of the actions of our own people.
the delusion is of no strategic or spiritual benefit to any humans including us, but we are bigger than us.
and all of these avoidance techniques are the insider's view.
and this is NOT the outside experience.
it is the TOWER OF BABEL view from the outside
it's the burning man of hades.
it's that crazy place in the disney version of pinocchio where all the boys get turned into jackasses.
so that outside view is clearly different and very CLEAR.
those outside are hindered only by their ability to throw envy and jealousy as hard as they can at the raging partiers.
same trap, different time zone.
same war, new leaders.
hateful to be gratefully hatefilled.
the nemesis and the zenith-makers.
the death of music.
the murder of art.
the villianification of truth.
but we can all dream the same dream of CLEAN AIR, CLEAN LAND, CLEAN WATER, CLEAN FOOD.
it is a worthwhile dream because it will make CLEAN PEOPLE.
HMS Edinburgh (foreground) conducts her first Replenishment at Sea of their South Atlantic deployment with RFA Black Rover off the coast of West Africa.
HMS Edinburgh is currently deployed to conduct maritime security patrols around the British South Atlantic Islands, including the Falklands and South Georgia.
On her journey south the type 42 Destroyer will visit a variety of countries off the West coast of Africa and arrive in the Falklands in mid-July. On completion of her tasking Edinburgh is due to arrive home in Portsmouth in Dec 2011.Photographer: LA (PHOT) Kyle Heller
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LUC has worked with a large multi-disciplinary team to deliver a sustainable infrastructure and development masterplan to guide the long term transformation of Shawfield in Glasgow’s East End. LUC also led the design and implementation of an advanced phase of public realm and landscape works that now forms a framework for new development to be realised over a 20-25year horizon.
Prior to construction the site was heavily contaminated and consisted of large areas of vacant and derelict land together with dated business and industrial premises. The site was completely cleared and underwent significant ground remediation in advance of the public realm works to ensure the site is ‘development ready’.
LUC developed a green infrastructure strategy to inform the masterplan design with an emphasis on integrated surface water drainage and pedestrian connectivity to surrounding communities, transport nodes and the River Clyde corridor.
The Clyde riverbanks have been manipulated to provide new pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and this now provides an extension to the strategically important Clyde Walkway.
An ecologically diverse mosaic of riparian woodland, grassland and wetland habitats has been created that will improve the biodiversity of the River Clyde corridor.
A new strategic pedestrian and cycling link has been created linking the new South Dalmarnock Smart Bridge with the centre of the masterplan site, improving connectivity in the area. In contrast with the more naturalistic riverside treatment this link is more formal in character with strong tree avenue planting, lighting and paving patterns.
For more information, visit: www.landuse.co.uk
Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything (42). In the first novel and radio series, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. The Ultimate Question itself is unknown. When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, Deep Thought says that it cannot; however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer, the Earth, that can. The programmers then embark on a further ten-million-year program to discover The Ultimate Question. This new computer will incorporate living beings in the "computational matrix", with the pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of mice. The process is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans and then is ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons to make way for a new Hyperspace Bypass. This is later revealed to have been a ruse: the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of psychiatrists, led by Gag Halfrunt, who feared for the loss of their careers when the meaning of life became known. Lacking a real question, the mice decide not to go through the whole thing again and settle for the out-of-thin-air suggestion "How many roads must a man walk down?" from Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind". At the end of the radio series (and television series, as well as the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) Arthur Dent, having escaped the Earth's destruction, potentially has some of the computational matrix in his brain. He attempts to discover The Ultimate Question by extracting it from his brainwave patterns, as abusively suggested by Ford Prefect, when a Scrabble-playing caveman spells out forty two. Arthur pulls random letters from a bag, but only gets the sentence "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" "Six by nine. Forty two." "That's it. That's all there is." "I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe" Six times nine is, of course, fifty-four. The program on the "Earth computer" should have run correctly, but the unexpected arrival of the Golgafrinchans on prehistoric Earth caused input errors into the system—computing (because of the garbage in, garbage out rule) the wrong question—the question in Arthur's subconscious being invalid all along. Quoting Fit the Seventh of the radio series, on Christmas Eve, 1978: Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Some readers subsequently noticed that 613 × 913 = 4213 (using base 13). Douglas Adams later joked about this observation, saying, "I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13." In Life, the Universe and Everything, Prak, a man who knows all that is true, confirms that 42 is indeed The Answer, and confirms that it is impossible for both The Answer and The Question to be known about in the same universe (compare the uncertainty principle) as they will cancel each other out and take the Universe with them to be replaced by something even more bizarre (as described in the first theory) and that it may have already happened (as described in the second). Though the question is never found, 42 is shown as the table number at which Arthur and his friends sit when they arrive at Milliways at the end of the radio series. Likewise, Mostly Harmless ends when Arthur stops at a street address identified by his cry of, "There, number 42!" and enters the club Beta, owned by Stavro Mueller (Stavromula Beta). Shortly after, the earth is destroyed in all existing incarnations. The number 42 Douglas Adams was asked many times why he chose the number 42. Many theories were proposed, including the fact that 42 is 101010 in binary code, the fact that light refracts off water by 42 degrees to create a rainbow, the fact that light requires 10−42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton. Adams rejected them all. On November 3, 1993, he gave an answer on alt.fan.douglas-adams: The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story. Adams described his choice as 'a completely ordinary number, a number not just divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it's the sort of number that you could without any fear introduce to your parents'. While 42 was a number with no hidden meaning, Adams explained in more detail in an interview with Iain Johnstone of BBC Radio 4 (recorded in 1998 though never broadcast) to celebrate the first radio broadcast's 20th anniversary. Having decided it should be a number, he tried to think what an "ordinary number" should be. He ruled out non-integers, then he remembered having worked as a "prop-borrower" for John Cleese on his Video Arts training videos. Cleese needed a funny number for the punchline to a sketch involving a bank teller (himself) and a customer (Tim Brooke-Taylor). Adams believed that the number that Cleese came up with was 42 and he decided to use it. Adams also had written a sketch for The Burkiss Way called "42 Logical Positivism Avenue", broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 12 January 1977[10] – 14 months before the Hitchhiker's Guide first broadcast "42" in fit the fourth, 29 March 1978. In January 2000, in response to a panelist's "Where does the number 42 come from?" on the radio show "Book Club" Adams explained that he was "on his way to work one morning, whilst still writing the scene, and was thinking about what the actual answer should be. He eventually decided that it should be something that made no sense whatsoever- a number, and a mundane one at that. And that is how he arrived at the number 42, completely at random." Stephen Fry, a friend of Adams, claims that Adams told him "exactly why 42", and that the reason is "fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it, completely obvious." However, Fry says that he has vowed not to tell anyone the secret, and that it must go with him to the grave. John Lloyd, Adams' collaborator on The Meaning of Liff and two Hitchhiker's fits, said that Douglas has called 42 "the funniest of the two-digit numbers." The number 42 also appears frequently in the work of Lewis Carroll, and some critics have suggested that this was an influence. Other purported Carroll influences include that Adams named the episodes of the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "fits", the word Carroll used to name the chapters of The Hunting of the Snark. There is the persistent tale that forty-two is actually Adams' tribute to the indefatigable paperback book, and is really the average number of lines on an average page of an average paperback book. On the Internet The number 42 and the phrase, "Life, the universe, and everything" have attained cult status on the Internet. "Life, the Universe, and Everything" is a common name for the off-topic section of an Internet forum and the phrase is invoked in similar ways to mean "anything at all". Many chatbots, when asked about the meaning of life, will answer "42". Several online calculators are also programmed with the Question. If you type the answer to life the universe and everything into Google (without quotes or capitalising the small words), the Google Calculator will give you 42, as will Wolfram's Computational Knowledge Engine. Similarly, if you type the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything into DuckDuckGo, the 0-click box will read "42".[19] In the online community Second Life, there is a section on a sim called "42nd Life." It is devoted to this concept in the book series, and several attempts at recreating Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, were made. In the OpenOffice.org software, if you type into any cell of a spreadsheet =ANTWORT("Das Leben, das Universum und der ganze Rest"), which means the answer to life, the universe and everything, the result is 42.[20] ISO/IEC 14519-2001/ IEEE Std 1003.5-1999, IEEE Standard for Information Technology - POSIX(R) Ada Language Interfaces - Part 1: Binding for System Application Program Interface (API) , uses the number '42' as the required return value from a process that terminates due to an unhandled exception. The Rationale says "the choice of the value 42 is arbitrary" and cites the Adams book as the source of the value. The random seed chosen to procedurally create the whole universe including all the regions, constellations, stars, planets, moons and mineral distribution of the online massively multi-player computer game EVE Online was chosen as 42 by its lead game designer in 2002. Cultural references The Allen Telescope Array, a radio telescope used by SETI, has 42 dishes in homage to the Answer. In the TV show Lost, 42 is the last of the mysterious numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. In an interview with Lostpedia, producer David Fury confirmed this was a reference to Hitchhiker's. The TV show The Kumars at No. 42 is so named because show creator Sanjeev Bhaskar is a Hitchhiker's fan.[24] The band Coldplay's album Viva la Vida includes a song called "42". When asked by Q magazine if the song's title was Hitchhiker's-related, Chris Martin said, "It is and it isn't." The band Level 42 chose its name in reference to the book. The episode "42" of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who was named in reference to the Answer. Writer Chris Chibnall acknowledged that "it's a playful title". Ken Jennings, defeated along with Brad Rutter in a Jeopardy match against IBM's Watson, writes that Watson's avatar which appeared on-screen for those games showed 42 "threads of thought," and that the number was chosen in reference to this meme.
Originally dating to around 1320, the building is important because it has most of its original features; successive owners effected relatively few changes to the main structure, after the completion of the quadrangle with a new chapel in the 16th century. Pevsner described it as "the most complete small medieval manor house in the county", and it remains an example that shows how such houses would have looked in the Middle Ages. Unlike most courtyard houses of its type, which have had a range demolished, so that the house looks outward, Nicholas Cooper observes that Ightham Mote wholly surrounds its courtyard and looks inward, into it, offering little information externally.[9] The construction is of "Kentish ragstone and dull red brick,"[10] the buildings of the courtyard having originally been built of timber and subsequently rebuilt in stone.[11]
The moat of Ightham Mote
The house has more than 70 rooms, all arranged around a central courtyard, "the confines circumscribed by the moat."[10] The house is surrounded on all sides by a square moat, crossed by three bridges. The earliest surviving evidence is for a house of the early 14th century, with the great hall, to which were attached, at the high, or dais end, the chapel, crypt and two solars. The courtyard was completely enclosed by increments on its restricted moated site, and the battlemented tower was constructed in the 15th century. Very little of the 14th century survives on the exterior behind rebuilding and refacing of the 15th and 16th centuries.
The structures include unusual and distinctive elements, such as the porter's squint, a narrow slit in the wall designed to enable a gatekeeper to examine a visitor's credentials before opening the gate. An open loggia with a fifteenth-century gallery above, connects the main accommodations with the gatehouse range. The courtyard contains a large, 19th century dog kennel.[12] The house contains two chapels; the New Chapel, of c.1520, having a barrel roof decorated with Tudor roses. [13] Parts of the interior were remodelled by Richard Norman Shaw.[14] wikipedia
16th century-late 19th century
The house remained in the Selby family for nearly 300 years.[3] Sir William was succeeded by his nephew, also Sir William, who is notable for handing over the keys of Berwick-upon-Tweed to James I on his way south to succeed to the throne.[4] He married Dorothy Bonham of West Malling but had no children. The Selbys continued until the mid-19th century when the line faltered with Elizabeth Selby, the widow of a Thomas who disinherited his only son.[5] During her reclusive tenure, Joseph Nash drew the house for his multi-volume illustrated history Mansions of England in the Olden Time, published in the 1840s.[6] The house passed to a cousin, Prideaux John Selby, a distinguished naturalist, sportsman and scientist. On his death in 1867, he left Ightham Mote to a daughter, Mrs Lewis Marianne Bigge. Her second husband, Robert Luard, changed his name to Luard-Selby. Ightham Mote was rented-out in 1887 to American Railroad magnate William Jackson Palmer and his family. For three years Ightham Mote became a centre for the artists and writers of the Aesthetic Movement with visitors including John Singer Sargent, Henry James, and Ellen Terry. When Mrs Bigge died in 1889, the executors of her son Charles Selby-Bigge, a Shropshire land agent, put the house up for sale in July 1889.[6]
Late 19th century-21st century
The Mote was purchased by Thomas Colyer-Fergusson.[6] He and his wife brought up their six children at the Mote. In 1890-1891, he carried out much repair and restoration, which allowed the survival of the house after centuries of neglect.[7] Ightham Mote was opened to the public one afternoon a week in the early 20th century.[7]
Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson's third son, Riversdale, died aged 21 in 1917 in the Third Battle of Ypres, and won a posthumous Victoria Cross. A wooden cross in the New Chapel is in his memory. The oldest brother, Max, was killed at the age of 49 in a bombing raid on an army driving school near Tidworth in 1940 during World War II. One of the three daughters, Mary (called Polly) married Walter Monckton.
On Sir Thomas's death in 1951, the property and the baronetcy passed to Max's son, James. The high costs of upkeep and repair of the house led him to sell the house and auction most of the contents. The sale took place in October 1951 and lasted three days. It was suggested that the house be demolished to harvest the lead on the roofs, or that it be divided into flats. Three local men purchased the house: William Durling, John Goodwin and John Baldock. They paid £5,500 for the freehold, in the hope of being able to secure the future of the house.[8]
In 1953, Ightham Mote was purchased by Charles Henry Robinson, an American of Portland, Maine, United States. He had known the property when stationed nearby during the Second World War. He lived there for only fourteen weeks a year for tax reasons. He made many urgent repairs, and partly refurnished the house with 17th-century English pieces. In 1965, he announced that he would give Ightham Mote and its contents to the National Trust. He died in 1985 and his ashes were immured just outside the crypt. The National Trust took possession in that year.[8]
In 1989, the National Trust began an ambitious conservation project that involved dismantling much of the building and recording its construction methods before rebuilding it. During this process, the effects of centuries of ageing, weathering, and the destructive effect of the deathwatch beetle were highlighted. The project ended in 2004 after revealing numerous examples of structural and ornamental features which had been covered up by later additions.[1]
Pier 45 (Christopher Street Pier), Greenwich Village, Manhattan
The Empire State Building is today the best-known symbol of New York City. Its name, Its profile, and the view from its summit are' familiar the world over, and a visit to New York is generally conceded to be incomplete without a trip to the Empire State Building's observatory.
The Empire State was the final and most celebrated product of the skyscraper frenzy produced by the economic boom of the 1920s, and'the most prominent of the modernistic towers that created the midtown skyline in those years. Its completion in April, 1931, on the former sits of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, marked the transformation of midtown from New York's preeminent residential area for the social elite into the commercial center of the metropolis.
The engineering and construction of the Empire State Building were perhaps the most awesome accomplishments of its creators. Its design, in many ways shaped by the constraints of time, cost, and structure, was the finest work of architect William Lamb, chief designer for Shreve, Lamb 6 Harmon. The slender, modernistic silhouette he created fit the building so well that even today, when it is no longer the tallest, it remains one of the handsomest of New York's skyscrapers.
With the decline in construction which accompanied the Depression, and the tendency in the post-war period towards shorter, denser office buildings, the Empire State it 1250 fser remained the world's tallest building until the 1970s, when the Sears Building in Chicago took the title of the world's tallest, end the World Trade Center took the title of New York's tallest. Yet despite the loss of the title which was one of the sources of its original renown, the Empire State Building remains New York's most widely recognized symbol, and the city's quintessential landmark.
The Site Development of Midtown Manhattan into the commercial center of New York
The site of the Empire State Building was part of a farm, owned by John Thompson, which was acquired In 1827 by William B. Astor. The site remained in Astor hands over a hundred years of development until Its purchase, in 1929, by the Empire State Building Interests.
Astor was the second son of John Jacob Astor, founder of the Astor dynasty in America. Using the family fortune, he acquired a great deal of undeveloped property in Manhattan, foreseeing that the northward expansion of New York along the island would eventually make his property worth many times its original price. Over the next fifty years, the area around 34th Street and Fifth Avenue developed first into an outlying rowhouse neighborhood of New York, and then into the city's most fashionable residential area.
By the 1850s, Fifth Avenue was lined with the palaces of the Vanderbilts, A.T. Stewart (the "merchant prince," one of New York's wealthiest men), and other millionaires. The Astors themselves moved from Astor Place up to Fifth Avenue in 1859, when John Jacob Astor, Jr., built his house at the northwest corner of Fifth and 33rd Street; shortly thereafter his brother William Backhouse Astor built an adjoining house at the southwest corner of Fifth and 34th Street. The Astor houses soon became known as the central meeting place of New York society, and home to the famous balls thrown by Mrs. Astor for "the four hundred," New York's social elite.
Following the traditional pattern of Manhattan growth, the city's hotels, theaters, clubs, and restaurants followed the residential development up Fifth Avenue. By the 1890s, guides to the city identified "the great hotel district" as lying "between 23d and 59th Streets, and Fourth and Seventh Avenues.... in that territory, which is little less than two miles long by a half mile wide, are half of the leading hotels of the metropolis.
In 1890, William Waldorf Astor, son of John Jacob Astor, Jr., having decided to move to London, tore down his house and filed plans for the Waldorf Hotel, a thirteen-story building designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh and completed in 1893. in 18S7, the neighboring Astor house having been demolished, the Astoria Hotel was erected by Astor's aunt, and connected to the Waldorf to form the Waldorf-Astoria. The new hotel soon became a major social institution of New York.
Forty years later the area was changing again, largely because of the influx of department stores just before and after World War i. During the final decades of the 19th century New York's fashionable stores had clustered in the area called the "Ladies Mile," along Fifth and Sixth Avenues and Broadway between 11th and 23rd Streets.
Altman's started the new trend northward by moving in 1906 from Sixth Avenue and 18th Street to Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. Others followed, and by the early 1920s Fifth Avenue was lined from 34th Street north by stores such as Best s, Tiffany's, Franklin Simon, Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor and Arnold Constable. Along with the department stores came several tall
office buildings, beginning in 1902 with the Flatiron Building at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street.' Rider's New York City Guide noted that "Hotels and restaurants that have long been landmarks, such as the Manhattan, the Buckingham and Sherry's, have disappeared and tall office buildings are multiplying even on the side streets.
Newspapers picked up on the changes taking place in the area. Capt. William J. Pedrick, executive vice-president of the Fifth Avenue Association, was quoted extensively on the development of Fifth Avenue; he noted in particular the avenue's new tall commercial buildings: the 15-story New York Trust, the 34-story Squibb Building, the 58-story Salmon Jower (500 Fifth Avenue), and the plans for the Empire State Building.
To demonstrate the rate of change on Fifth Avenue, Rider's Guide gave a capsule history of the site across Fifth Avenue from the Waldorf-Astoria: a house belonging to Dr. "Sarsaparilla" Townsend, popularlzer of soft drinks, was replaced in 1867 by the "marble palace" of A.T. Stewart; in the 1890s the house was converted for use by the Manhattan Club; in 1901 it was demolished to make way for the four-story Knickerbocker Trust Building, to which, finally, in 1920-21 were added another twelve stories to create the Columbia Trust Building.
The changeover of Midtown Manhattan from social to commercial center was finally consummated by the demolition In 1930 of the Waldorf-Astoria Itself, and the opening on its site the following year of the Empire State Building, a speculative office building and the tallest In the world.
A New, Modernistic Midtown Skyline and the Skyscraper Race
A new skyline was created for the newly commercial Midtown by the progressively larger office buildings being erected during the 1920s, Since the beginnings of skyscraper development in New York in the last decades of the 19th century, architects had tried to adapt historical sty.es to the modern American invention of the skyscraper. The most successful and famous of these attempts produced the Woolworth Building (Cass Gilbert, 1913), the sixty-story Gothic tower christened the "Cathedral of Commerce." Towards the end of the 1920s, however, under the influence of a "modernism" derived in part from the European Art Deco, New York architects created a new "skyscraper style" which, it has been argued, more fully expressed the nature--the verticality, the metal structure, the sense of an industrial and technological future—of the skyscraper. The series of skyscrapers constructed in midtown, including ;be Chrysler, Daily News, McGraw-Hill, Chanin, RCA (now GE), Fuller, and Empire State buildings, helped Introduce the new modernistic Art Deco style to urban America, and defined midtown's characteristic look for the next several decades, until the new round of skyscraper buildings began in the 1960s.
At the same time, the builders of skyscrapers began to reach for progressively greater heights. The WooIworth Building's sixty stories
had rested unchallenged for a decade, and Its observatory was considered to have the finest view of New York.
In the late 1920s, however, the new commercial buildings began to challenge the title. A 110-story building announced in 1926 by developer John Larkin was never built, but in 1929 two towers, the Bank of Manhattan (927 ft, 70 stories) downtown on Wall Street, and the Chrysler Building (1,050 ft, 77 stories) in Midtown on East **2nd Street, competed in a race to see which would be the new tallest building in the world. The race was heightened by the rivalry between the architects of the two buildings, H. Craig Severance and William Van Alen, who had formerly been partners.
Chrysler won by arranging to have the building's spire secretly constructed inside the building and then jacked up through the top at the last minute. Shortly thereafter, however, the Chrysler Building lost Its title to the Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building was a speculative office building planned by John J. Raskob, who hired former New York State Governor A1 Smith to be president of the Empire State Company. As an executive of General' Motors, Raskob no doubt considered himself a rival in many ways of Walter Chrysler.
According to rental manager Hamilton Weber, the originally planned 86 stories of the Empire State Building were only four feet higher than the Chrysler Building, and "Raskob was worried that Walter Chrysler would pull a trick—like hiding a rod in the spire and then sticking it up at the last minute." Hence, according to Weber, the Idea for the 14-story dirigible mast which raised the building's height to 1250 feet but proved, in the end, to be unusable for its Intended purpose. The Chrysler and Woolworth buildings, seeing there could be no hope of competition with the Empire State, eventually closed their own observatories.
The 1920s procession of skyscrapers might have continued producing ever taller buildings: according to a Herald Tribune article discussing the Empire State project in 1930, "Charles F. Noyes let it be known some time ago that he was considering erecting 150 floors over two square blocks in the old mercantile district downtown."
The Depression put an end to any such plans, however, and the Empire State Building remained the tallest by far of the city's commercial towers.
John Jacob Raskob and Al Smith.
The man who conceived the idea for the world's tallest speculative office building was a self-made multi-millionaire industrialist named John J. Raskob.
Born Into a poor family in Lockport, New York, Raskob went to work early In life to support his widowed mother and family. He found work as a secretary for a small street railway company in Lorain, Ohio, that happened to be owned by Pierre Du Pont, of the Du Pont chemical industry family.
When Du Pont bought the Dallas Street Railway Company In Texas, he made Raskob treasurer, and eventually he took Raskob with him to Wilmington, Delaware, where Du Pont became president of E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Raskob became vice president in charge of finance.
Early In the century, Raskob Invested heavily In the newly formed General Motors Corporation, and convinced Du Pont to do the same.
In 1915, Du Pont became chairman of General Motors, and in 1918 Raskob became chairman of its Finance Committee. The spectacular growth of the value of General Motors stock made Raskob a multi-millionaire, and one of the wealthiest men in the country. Shortly before the Depression Raskob co-authored an article in the Ladies' Home Journal entitled "Everybody Ought to be Rich."'
Aside from his organizational abilities, Raskob's chief contribution to General Motors was the invention of the installment plan for buying automobiles.
Like many businessmen of the time, Raskob was interested in politics, and like most millionaires he was a Republican. His entry into politics, however, was as a contributor to the gubernatorial campaign of populist Democratic governor A1 Smith. Raskob was introduced to Smith in New York City in 1926.16 The two men came from similar backgrounds--poor Irish Catholic famlies—and shared a dislike of the Prohibition amendment, an issue in Smith's later campaign for the presidency. They became friendly, and Raskob volunteered generous contributions to Smith's 1926 gubernatorial re-election campaign. Although many of Smith's closest aides distrusted Raskob, they were unable to prevent his appointment two years later as campaign manager for Smith's unsuccessful 1928 race with Hoover for the Presidency, an appointment which resulted in the anomaly of a conservative Republic millionaire becoming Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
(One of Raskob's first actions as Chairman was to move thecommittee to offices in the General Motors Building on West 57th Street.)
Although Raskob was blamed by some Smith aides for the loss of the 1928 election, and by others for Smith's gradual shift towards a more conservative political philosophy, the relationship between the two men remained strong. When Raskob decided to get into the real estate business, and to build the tallest building in the world, he offered Smith the $50,000 a year job of President of the Empire State Corporation.
Al Smith and the World's Tallest Building: Public Relations at the Highest Levels."
Raskob's rationale for building the world's tallest building, and for making Governor Smith its president, was never clearly stated, although several explanations have been offered. Unlike its immediate predecessors—the Woolworth Building for Frank W. Woolworth and his company, the Manhattan Company Building for the Bank of Manhattan, and the Chrysler Building for Walter Chrysler and his company—the Empire State was not built to symbolize one man or company: it was not the General Motors Building or Raskob Tower, for instance.
The Empire State Building was instead simply a speculative office building, and it was named for New York State, home of the building and the state of which Al Smith had been four times governor. Rather than being a corporate symbol, the building became identified as the world's tallest building and a venture of Al Smith's.
The explanation of its height offered by the company in Its various promotional brochures was simply that of a human adventure, carrying on "the Pharaoh's dream":
Down through the ages, men have yearned and toiled and planned, that they might build a structure nearer to the skies than ever had been built before. Something of this great desire burned in the souls of the Pharaohs of Egypt, when the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was erected, 451 feet high, equal to thirty-four stories. St. Peter's, at Rome, lifts its dome 435 feet toward the sky. That slender and marvelous minaret in Cairo spears the heights at 280 feet and the Cremona Campanile in Italy rises 396 feet above the earth. The famous Cathedral of Cologne attains an altitude of 512 feet; the Washington Monument is 555 feet high. Then came the era of steel, heralded by the world-famous Eiffel Tower in Paris, 984 feet high, useless except as an awe-inspiring demonstration of what men, steel and machinery can accomplish.
The Woolworth Tower was for long the world's tallest building, rising in beautiful Gothic design to a height of sixty stories, 792 feet. The Bank of Manhattan at last surpassed it with its height of 838 feet, only to be in turn surpassed by the 1046 foot elevation cf the Chrysler Building's topmost spire. But Empire State is higher than all these. It carries to triumphant completion the vaulting ambition of the Pharaohs, of Pope Julius when he began the building of St. Peter's.
As for bringing ex-Governor Smith into the project, Raskob apparently suggested at the time that he was going to build the Empire State Building to give his old friend a job. Smith, having lost the presidential election and retired from the governorship of New York, faced an uncertain future.
His friend, actor and producer Eddie Dowling, recalled being present at the moment of Raskob's offer, the occasion being a dinner thrown by the New York State Democratic party for newly elected Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. Smith and Dowling had gone to the men's lounge during a lull in the proceedings, and Smith was telling him of his worries, when Raskob appeared and announced, "Don't worry, A1, I'm going to build a new skyscraper--biggest in the wor!d--and you're going to be president of the company," maintaining that he was doing it all to give Smith a high-paying job.
The key to understanding the actual motives behind the height of the building and the involvement of Governor Smith seems to involve a newly developing science that was becoming more and more important to the art of architecture: advertising.
Advertising seems to have become an accepted function of office buildings in the 1920s. Arthur Tappan North, writing on the subject, noted:
The incorporation of publicity or advertising features in a building is frequently an item for consideration.... This feature, when possessing intrinsic merit, is consonant with and is a legitimate attribute of good architecture. It stimulates public interest and admiration, is accepted as a genuine contribution to architecture, enhances the value of the property and Is profitable to the owner in the same manner as are others forms of legitimate advertising.
The Empire State Company in fact launched an extensive advertising campaign capitalizing on several features of the building: its "historic site," formerly that of the Astor Mansion and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; its convenience ot the two rail terminals in midtown; "a board of directors that inspires confidence;" and its advertising campaign, run by the public relations firm of Belle Moscowitz, former political aide to Al Smith, hit all the leading New York newspapers 'week after week with very clever ads.
The value of advertising for the Empire State Building was picked up by the Real Estate Magazine, in an article entitled "Good Publicity Something More Than 'Hitting1 Front Page," in which the Empire State Building was singled out as an excellent example of how it should be done:
The Empire State Building has received extensive newspaper attention because of former Governor Smith's connection with the enterprise and through a number of clever creative publicity stunts, notable the mast which will top the building as a mooring spot for Zeppelins duly authorized by official Washington with reporters and cameramen obligingly on hand.-1
The two primary subjects of the advertising, however, the two attributes most closely identified with the building, were the involvement of Al Smith, and the building's unmatched height.
Al Smith's relationship to the enterprise was frankly stated In the booklet released on May ], 1931> for the building's opening ceremonies:
Raskob and his associates selected a leader, a man so well known to the public that his very presence placed the seal of integrity upon their undertaking. He was Alfred E. Smith, four times Governor of New York State, Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.... known and beloved by his countrymen. He became president of Empire State, Inc. even while the mighty structure was only a dream.
Lists of the building's board of directors invariably began with Alfred E. Smith, and ended humbly with John J. Raskob. A New Yorker article of early
1931 noted that the building was "inevitably associated with ex-Governor Al Smith, fn its earlier stages his picturesque statements made excellent publicity and drew all New York's attention to the steelwork as it grew to dizzy heights."
Smith's biographers have noted that his functions at the building were "largely ceremonial.... The staff handled all the rental and maintenance problems, while Smith served as attention getter, greeter, and publicity man delux." To the public, however, the building was Al Smith's, and from the opening ceremonies, when his grandchildren, as representatives of "posterity," cut the ribbon at the main entrance, through the following years of giving tour upon tour to visiting royalty, politicians, sports heroes, and celebrities of every kind, he remained the building's symbol.
Similarly, the building's height played a major role in the company's public relations campaign. Besides constantly comparing the building's height to other tall monuments, the company emphasized the extraordinary daring of the construction workers involved in erecting the world's tallest building by commissioning photographer Lewis Hine to document the work.
The Company arranged for a special mechanical cage that would enable Hire to be swung out into the air to photograph the most difficult feats. The photographs were then used in advertisements, and put on display in the ground floor store windows.
The publicity value of tall buildings was apparently considered to be great enough that it could actually be figured in as a legitimate "expenditure," designed to bring increased prestige and, presumably, income. R.H. Shreve, one of the Empire State Building's architects, wrote in 1930 that the constraints of zoning, wind-bracing, and general costs of a very tall building determine a point...
...where the balance begins to swing back and the rate of return on capital investment begins to diminish as the building goes higher, unless the owner gets a markedly greater unit return for the higher space, or charges the decrease in the direct net return to "advertising."
Justification for this approach was probably found in the tremendous public interest which developed during the late twenties in skyscraper heights.
The New York Sun published a list of the fifty tallest buildings in New York, arranged by height, and shortly afterwards the architectural journal Pencil Points found It necessary to reprint it, in January 1931, noting that "Interest in the heights of New York skyscrapers does not seem to abate, if we may judge by the inquiries concerning them received in this office."
A cartoon in the same issue showed an architect with a rendering of a pointed skyscraper and a caption reading: "Enthusiastic Architect: 'You See, This Spike Runs Down the Entire Length of the Building and if Anyone Builds a Taller Building We Can Jack Up the Spike and Still Be the Tallest!"
In short, Raskob's strategy was based on an aggressive advertising campaign to market the Empire State Building, a speculative real-estate venture, as the world's tallest building, headed by the world's most popular former politician, with the world's most competent board of directors, on the world's most prestigious site, and the world's most
daring engineering feat, with Ai Smith personally conducting the world's famous to see the world's most overwhelming view.
If advertising was indeed the goal of the builders of the Empire State Building, they were extraordinarily successful. Twenty years later, Collier's described the effect of the building on the publicity-minded:
Douglas Leigh, who makes those superspectacular signs for Broadway, is itching to transform the top into a giant soft-drink bottle, or a glowing cigarette. Human flies want to walk up the front, flagpole sitters want to sit on the lightning rod, and high-wire artists want to traipse through space over to the Chrysler tower at Forty-second Street,
The effort spent on public relations paid off much sooner than the building's promoters imagined. Two weeks after the project was announced the stock market crashed, and throughout the early years of the Depression the building remained seriously undertenanted. The Empire State Building was saved from bankruptcy, in part, by the million or so visitors to the observation decks each year who paid one dollar a piece admissions.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
John J. Raskob was no doubt attracted to Shreve, Lamb 6 Harmon by their business-like approach to architecture. Raskob first encountered Shreve S Lamb in 1926 when his company, General Motors, commissioned a new headquarters on West 57th Street from the firm. He must have been impressed by their performance; he may also have considered it an advantage that Shreve, Lamb £ Harmon had been called in as consulting architects for the Bank of Manhattan Building, and therefore had some experience in races for the "tallest building" title, as well as experience working with the Starrett & Eken construction company which built the^Bank of Manhattan and which was later awarded the Empire State contract.
Richmond Haroid Shreve (1877" 1946) was born in Cornwall is, Nova Scotia, son of a former Dean of Quebec Cathedral. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduated in 1502, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the College of Architecture there. While at Cornel! he supervised construction of Goldwiri Smith Hall, designed by the prominent New York firm of Carrere £ Hastings, and at the conclusion of the work he joined the firm.
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1952), son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. After graduating from Williams College in 1904, he studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. Having received his diploma from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1911, he returned to New York and joined Carrere S Hastings. in 1920, both Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrere £ Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
Four years later they broke away to form Shreve & Lamb, and in 1925 they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958) to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon.Harmon, born in Chicago, had studied at the Art Institute there, and graduated from the Columbia University School of Architecture in .1901. From 1902 to 1911 he was a designer in the office of McKim, Head & White, in 1912-13 an associate of the firm of Wall is & Goodwlllie, and then practiced under his own name until joining Shreve £ Lamb. His work alone included battle monuments at Tours, Cantigny and Somme-Py in France, a YMCA in Jerusalem, and the award-winning Shelton Hotel in New York.
Of the three architects in the firm, Lamb was generally acknowledged to be the designer, and Shreve the administrator. Shreve was also active as a planner outside the firm's work; he was the director of the Slum Clearance Committee of New York after its formation in 1933, and chief architect of the group preparing plans for the Williamsburg Housing Project, as well as chief architect of the Vladeck Houses on the Lower East Side and also of Parkchester in the Bronx.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon worked principally on commercial office buildings, although they also designed a number of estates and residences in the New York suburbs, and a few apartment houses in Manhattan, Their residential work largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux-Arts ornament for which Carrere & Hastings had been famous.
Their buildings in New York, including 500 Fifth Avenue, 14 Wall Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building, and also their commissions outside the city, such as the Standard Oi! Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, and the Chimes Building In Syracuse, are all similarly designed with unadorned limestone cladding, metal framed windows, and simple set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
The spareness and economy of the firm's designs were a reflection of several architecturai notions gaining currency in the 1920s. As office buildings grew larger and their engineering and financing more complex, the nature of architecture had to adapt to new conditions, Many architects in the 1920s and 1930s, recognizing new constraints, adapted the language of the international Style and functionalist schools of thought and wrote about a new art of architecture.
All three architects in the firm wrote on the subject of the changing nature of architecture. Harmon listed the various forces at work on design as: steel construction, congested business areas, the need for light and air, property shape, internal lighting, zoning, the ratio of rentable area to overall area, the cost of steel, wind bracing, and elevators. William Lamb, the partner concerned least with organization and most with design, concurred:
An interesting development in the planning of present day office buildings is the change in the conception that the architect has of his work. The day that he could sit before his drawing board and make pretty sketches of decidedly uneconomic monuments to himself has gone. His scorn of things "practical" has been replaced by an intense earnestness to make practical necessities the armature upon which he moulds the form of his idea. Instead of being the intolerant aesthete, he Is one of a group of experts upon whom he depends for the success of his work, for the modern large building with its complicated machinery is beyond the capacity of any one man to master, and yet he must, in order to control the disposition and arrangement of this machine, -have a fairly accurate general knowledge of what it is all about. Added to this he must know how to plan his building so that it will "work" economically and produce the revenue for which his clients have made their investment.39
Lamb's design inclinations corresponded very well to the kind of work that Shreve brought into the office. Mrs. Lamb recalls that his tastes in most matters tended to the simple and classical. The architecture he loved best was the spare Romanesque of the southern French cathedrals. Among his contemporaries he greatly admired Raymond Hood, particularly his spare, vertical Daily News Building; HoGd also wrote about the practical side of architecture, dismissing fantastic design as unnecessary. The two men were close friends. Although Lamb's "work had much of the Modernistic to it, his opinion of the flamboyant variety of Moderne represented by the Chrysler Building was rather low—he referred to it once as the "Little Nemo school of architecture," meaning fancy and fantastic, like the comic strip. He never considered his work to be in any way describable as "Art Deco."
Precisely because the firm was a well-organized producer of practical and unadorned office buildings, it was able to organize the myriad elements involved and produce a striking, handsome, but still economical design for the Empire State Building, which was above all a creation of business considerations and an unrivalled engineering feat.
Conception and Design
According to the architects, the Empire State Building was largely shaped by the various economic and engineering considerations involved.
The program was short enough—a fixed budget, no space more than 28 feet from window to corridor, as many stories of such space as possible, an exterior of limestone, and completion by May 1, 1931, which meant a year and six months from the beginning of sketches, The first three of these requirements produced the mass of the building and the latter two the characteristics of its design.
Planning of the building's layout — involving the placement of elevators, utilities, ventilation, and pipe shafts in such a way as to obtain the maximum amount of rentable office space-~centered on a prototypical plan for the 30th floor, at which point the tower legally began to rise with a zoning-mandated floor-area of one-quarter the lot size.
The principles, established by these cooperative investigations, which covered a period of four weeks, together with the owner's requirements... formed the complete program. The "parti" was arrived at in two hours, the evening before a meeting of the owner's corporation. An all-night "charette" produced the next day a series of five or six of the essential plans, an elevation, a perspective, and a fairly accurate tabulation of rentable areas and cube.
Lamb described the plan arrived at through the various consultations:
The logic of the plan is very simple. A certain amount of space in the center, arranged as compactly as possible, contains the vertical circulation, toilets, shafts and corridors. Surrounding this is a perimeter of office space 28 feet deep. The sizes of the floors diminish as the elevators decrease in number. In essence there is a pyramid of non-rentable space surrounded by a greater pyramid of rentable space....^
The massing of the building was to a great extent affected by the elevator system. The elevators were placed in four banks parallel to the building's main axis, with those on the east and west sides being the low-rise group. The low-rise elevators drop off as the building rises, enabling the tower to step back...
...from the long dimension of the property to approach the square form of the shaft, with the result that instead of being a tower, set upon a series of diminishing setbacks prescribed by the zoning law, the building becomes all tower rising from a great five-story base.^
Elevators and budget were said to be the determining factors of the building's height. The elevator contractor, and Starrett Brothers and Eken, asked independently to calculate the height limit of the building based on their economic priori tie:;, each arrived at a limit of eighty stories plus five for the executive offices.
Floor-plan, massing, and height arrived at, the architects turned to the building's exterior. The spare design, based on massing and vertical window strips, was a product of both the building program's practical needs, and Lamb's aesthetic preferences.
The exterior is defined almost entirely by a system of vertical strips of windows, projecting slightly beyond the limestone walls, set in continuous vertical metal surrounds, and separated by dull aluminum spandrels; these strips are arranged singly, in pairs, and in sets of three, and run continuously from bottom to top. There is almost no ornamental detail, other than modernistic ripples in the aluminum spandrels and modernistic caps where the window strips terminate at building setbacks.
The practical source of the window system was "the last and perhaps_ the most important item in the owner's program-speed of construction."
Completion of the building by May 1st was required because that was the traditional day for the signing of new commercial leases in the city, and therefore of crucial importance in the economic planning of a speculative office building. With such a complex building program, construction had to proceed smoothly and as quickly as possible. The advantages of the system were outlined by Shreve in a special article.
The total effect of the massing, height, and window-spandrel-wall design is of a very tall tower, rising from a five-story base, and topped by a modernistic spire. The window strips break up the mass of the building, and emphasize its verticality, while the elimination of reveals creates effectively a smooth glass, metal, and stone skin. The expression
of the building's taliness is simple arid elegant, the epitome of the kind of design most admired by William Lamb.
On the question of the building's style, Lamb wrote:
Whatever "style" it may be is the result of a logical and simple answer to the problems set by the economic and technical demands of its unprecedented program.
He never thought of it as Art Deco. Much of the ornament can only be described as "modernistic," especially the glass and steel dirigible mooring mast, and in that sense would fall under the generic term "Art Deco" or "Moderne," but the design of the building has little in common with that of the flamboyant Chrysler Building, almost its contemporary and the generally accepted prototypical Art Deco skyscraper.
In its reliance on stacked massing, vertical window strips, and simplicity of materials, and in the public insistence by its architects that these elements were largely determined by sheer practical necessity, the Empire State Building seems closer to Raymond Hood's Daily News Building, also contemporary with it.
It is quite possible that Lamb discussed his work with his close friend Hood; he admired his work, and the Daily News was Hood's most recent success at the time. The Daily News Building is also riot a purely Art Deco creation, but in some respects an International Style slab; similarly, Hood's contemporary McGraw-Hill Building combines aspects of both, If the Empire State Building, a spare tower on a base with some modernistic details, belongs In a line of succession, it might be that of the News and McGraw-Hill Buildings, followed by the RCA tower in Rockefeller Center, of which Hood was a chief designer.
By contrast with the News Building, however, the Empire State is thoroughly symmetrical, and not treated with bright colors. Unlike many skyscrapers, it does not present an overwhelming mass: in midtown, pedestrians are conscious only of its five-story base, which blends into the scale of the area, while from a distance It presents 3 slender silhouette, rising from the center of the metropolis, which Is visible and recognizable from almost every point in the city and some beyond. In this sense, the Empire State Building is in its own class, and its design reflects what it, uniquely, is.
Description
Although the 1250-foot high Empire State Building is often described as 102 stories tall, that is not quite accurate. The major portion of the building is comprised of 80 stories of commercial office space, with five stories above that for the building's executive offices, and the observatory at the 86th floor. The enormous metal "mooring mast" above the building contains only an elevator encircled by a staircase, and no floors per se; its height, however, is considered by the Empire State Building management to be the equivalent of 14 stories; these, added to the 86 offices floors and two basement levels, produce the figure of 102 stories.
The building's tower sits on a five-story base, with facades at the lot line on West 33rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and West 34th Street. The base is a monumental modernistic version of a classical scheme: basement, colonnade, and attic. The basement is formed by the first floor shops and entrances •> the colonnade is approximated by a giant order of molded stone piers piers flanking vertical window strips; and the attic consists of small windows alternating with molded stone panels.
The Fifth Avenue facade centers on the building's main entrance which consists of a central pair of doors flanked on either side by a revolving door; a three-story high, three-bay wide set of windows set in modernisticalIy-designed patterns; and an attic story of a pair of windows, all set off from the rest of the facade by two giant molded-stone piers topped by stylized stone eagles above which are inscribed the words EMPIRE STATE. The rest of the facade is comprised of monumental bays, three on either side.
Each bay consists of a storefront of chrome-metal and glass at the first floor levei, two three-story vertical window strips separated by a narrow stone mull ton and flanked by a wide stone pier with a modernistic top in place of a capital, and two windows at the fifth-floor level separated by a narrow squat molded-stone mull ion and flanked by wide squat stone piers. These three bays are set off from the central*-entrance bay by a half-bay comprising one vertical strip of windows, and end at either corner with a half-bay set between two monumental stone piers.
The identical 33rd and 34th Street facades each comprise three sections of monumental bays, similar to those on the Fifth Avenue facade, separated by two entrance bays. The three sections consist of six, seven, and six bays, slightly emphasising the central section. The two entrance bays on either facade, which project slightly outward, are less elaborate versions of the main Fifth Avenue entrance bay: doors at the first floor level, three vertical window strips, and a three-window attic story, all enframed by a wide stone surround.
The two West 33rd Street entrances, however, are actually recessed; these entrances have sets of side doors perpendicular to the building front, and front revolving doors; a moderne light fixture hangs In the center of the recess; the doors are aluminum, set in marble walls.
Streamlined metal marquee-type canopies with curving corners project over the entrances on West 33rd and West 34th Streets; each is ringed by three sets of continuous horizontal metal bands. The original storefronts are almost entirely glass-fronted. Each has a black-granite base, a cornice of horizontal molded-aluminum bands framing a black-granite panel, and a central recessed entrance, and each is separated from the next by narrow molded aluminum mull ions topped by modernistic finials.
The storefronts form a glass wall which projects three feet beyond the five-story base and forms a banding around it; the continuous black-granite cornices are at the same level as the metal canopies over the 33rd and 34th Street entrances and form a black band course at that level. Several of the storefronts have been unsympathetically altered.
The design scheme above the five-story base is determined simply by massing and fenestration. On both the eastern, Fifth Avenue, facade and the western, rear, facade, the tower is dramatically set back above its base, and rises, with shallow setbacks at the 21st and 25th floors, to the 30th floor; from there It rises unobstructed to a .shallow setback at the 72nd floor, then to the 81st floor setback, somewhat more pronounced, which marks the top of the commercial office portion of the building--wi th corresponding elevator banks—and the beginning of the five-story executive suite; a final setback at the 85th floor marks the observatory. Above the tower rises the metal-faced dirigible mooring mast, topped by an enormous television broadcasting antenna.
The tower on the east and west facades is nine bays wide from the sixth to the 25th floor, seven bays wide to the 72nd floor, six bays wide to the 81st floor, and five bays wide to the mooring mast.
The north (34th Street) and south (33rd Street) facades, wider than the east and west facades, are fifteen bays wide from the sixth to the 21st floor, eleven bays wide to the 30th floor, and nine bays wide to the mooring mast; the nine bays from the 30th floor up are divided into three sections of three bays each: a central section enframed by two projecting side sections; the central section rises unbroken to the 85th floor, while the flanking projecting sections rise to a shallow setback at the 72nd floor and another at the 81st. The various setbacks produce a symmetrical massing that emphasizes the verticality of the building, and creates at the lower levels the effect of a tower rising from a layer of surrounding tapered masses.
A fenestration pattern of long vertical window strips is used to break up the mass of the building and emphasize Its verticality. Each window In the vertical strips protrudes slightly from the Indiana limestone cladding of the tower, and is enframed by a strip of nickel-chrome-steel ; each window is separated from the one above by a dull aluminum spandrel with modernistic molding. Where the vertical window strips rise to a setback, they end in simple modernistic metal caps, and begin again above the setback. The three central window strips on the north and south sides end at the 85th-floor level in much larger and more elaborate modernistic metal plates.
The strips on most of the building are arranged in pairs, each level comprising two adjacent windows separated by a nickel-chrome-steel mull ion and enframed by nickel-chrome-steel surrounds, each window having an accompanying dull aluminum spandrel; several bays however comprise triple window strips, while others comprise single window strips. The alternation between paired, triple, and single strips Is used to create a horizontal rhythm of vertical lines accentuating the center of each facade.
On the east and west facades, all windows are arranged in paired vertical strips, with these exceptions: the outer bay on either side from the sixth to the 25th floor, and the outer four bays on either side from the 21st to the 25th floor, consist of single vertical window strips; the outer bay on either side from the 72nd to the 81st floor likewise consists
Sf a single vertical window strip, and also the outer two bays from the 81st to the 84th floods. The arrangement on the wider north and south fronts Is more complicated. The outer two bays, on either side, which rise from the sixth to the 21st floor, are paired vertical window strips.
The next five bays on either side, rising from the sixth floor to a shallow setback at the 25th, and projecting out past the central section, are symmetrically arranged with a centra! paired-window strip bay in the center flanked on either side by two single window strips; these bays above the 25th floor setback to the 30th floor are rearranged as two paired vertical strips and a triple strip. The central five bays, from the sixth to the 30th floors, are paired vertical window strips. Above the 30th floor, where these facades are divided into two projecting sections flanking a central section, the latter comprises three paired window strips, while the former are symmetrically arranged as a triple-window strip flanked on either side by a paired window strip.
Rising above the 86-story office building is the aluminum, chrome-nickel-steel and glass mast, originally designed to be used for mooring dirigibles but now serving only as a support for the upper observatory tower, and housing for display lights, Four progressively smaller rectangular levels form a base from which springs a cylindrical shaft rising to a conical top. The sides of the levels forming the base are ringed by continuous horizontal metal banding. At each of the four corners of the cylindrical shaft, rising to half its height, Is a set of three overlapping metal wings from which the shaft appears to grow; the four sides of the shaft are formed by continuous glass walls.
The top is Jr. three sections: a cylindrical enclosed observation level, still used, of the same circumference as the shaft; a second, smaller cylindrical level surrounded by an open-air observation area, no longer in use, originally Intended as a landing platform for dirigible passengers; and a top section In the shape of a truncated cone--pierced by eight circular openings--which houses the mooring mechanism and beacon lights, and which is topped by a metal mooring pole; each of these three sections is ringed by continuous tubular metal bands. The mooring mast Is now the base for a 200-foot high television antenna, added In 1953, which completes the silhouette of the building as It has been known since that year.
Empire State Building: Symbol of New York
Following the uncertain first years of the Depression, during -which the half-tenanted building was nicknamed "Smith's Folly*" or the "Empty State Building," the Empire State became a successful commercial office building. The continuing northward trend of Midtown took the prime corporate tenants whom Raskob had hoped to attract away to office buildings north of 42nd Street; the tenancy of the building therefore has since bean largely drawn from the surrounding garment district. Among others housed In the building are the notions, shoe, shirt and hosiery industries, as well as many international corporations and banks.
The Empire State Building, however went beyond the aspirations of
Raskob for a prestigious and profitable commercial office building. The success of the observatory in drawing crowds of tourists, arid the guided tours by Governor Smith for all visiting celebrities, started a process which helped make the building famous the world over. March 1940 saw the building's four-millionth visitor (actor Jimmy Stewart), and May 1971 its forty millionth. "
The Empire State Building's place as symbol of New York derives perhaps equally from its function as a place to visit, from where the most spectacular view of Mew York can be had, and its function as a centrally located landmark, whose slender, pointed silhouette can be seen literally from miles around, marking out midtown Manhattan, the center of the metropolis. The famous silhouette has been reproduced in countless images, and small statues of the. building have been spotted in Far-Eastern bazaars 55 as well as In Times Square tourist shops. The building has figured In television and movies--most famous of these being King Kong—as a symbol of the summit of New York, the greatest creation of a great city.
In the 1970s, when the building lost Its title as world's tallest, the office of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon announced a plan to remove the mooring mast above the 86th floor observatory and replace it with twenty stories of office space, to reestablish the building's position as world's greatest skyscraper. The plan—apparently more a public relations ploy than a serious proposal —was quickly forgotten, and indeed would have been counter-productive, as It would have destroyed the silhouette by which the building is known.
Despite the loss of Its "world's tallest." title, In fact, the Empire State Building has lost none of Its original distinction or renown. Its design, its history, and perhaps also its position In the center of the city, have all helped it retain Its symbolic significance.
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary—May 1, 1981--a special proclamation was Issued by the Mayor of New York, declaring the week of May 1-8, 1981, to be "Empire State Building Week."
The Empire State Building remains New York's preeminent landmark.
- From the 1981 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Completed Snow Hill Public Realm on Colmore Row.
I caught an X8 NXWM Platinum bus from Sheepcote Street in the Westside BID to Colmore Row in the Colmore BID.
For these views of the Snow Hill Public Realm.
Built during 2021, it was a bit late getting to completion.
I think they may also extend it beyond the Grand Hotel, at least as far as 103 Colmore Row.
I recently took part in my first Triathlon - The 2008 Blenheim Triathlon. The story of how I got to this starts at the end of my first ear of University, in the year 2000. I contracted glandular fever, and a doctor told me that I would feel "awful for two weeks, low in energy for a year, and have less energy for the rest of my life". I thought it would be a good idea to pull my finger out and work on getting fit, to prove the doctor wrong. My first efforts were extremely painful, and very short, and showed me quite how unfit I had become after a year of partying and very little exercise. When I spent two years in Japan, things moved up a couple of gears, and I started running, cycling and swimming longer distances. I found that the more exercise one does, the more one is inclined to do, until I was running half-marathon distances after work and cycling up mountains with friends (there's material for a retrospecitve blog if ever there was). Since these were the main sports I was doing, I wanted to do Triathlon, but I knew running was still my weak spot. With this in mind, I entered the Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham on my return to the UK.
The marathon was massively painful in one of my knees, but because it was the event I had been building up to, I ran to the finish. Afterwards, it took about a week to be able to walk normally, and I concluded that running is not good for me. Supporting evidence for this is the fact that several members of my family on both my mother and father's sides have had knee problems to the point of surgery, and there is a history of arthiritis, so I decided to listen to the painful alarm bells. The training route to the triathlon consisted mainly of carrying on as before, and in fact the main hurdle was getting hold of all the equipment. I had foreseen the main expense as being the bike, but in fact it turned out to be the wetsuit. I managed to snag a basic raodbike for a mere 116 quid at Decathlon in their winter sale, and she is still going strong after over 700 miles.
My wetsuit is an Aquasphere Mako, hurriedly purchased from "Mike's Diving" in the week leading up to the Triathlon, and fortunately it fits like a glove. Thus prepared, George, his girlfriend and I headed up to Blenheim Palace on the day of the event, though not without a hitch as the following photo illustrates:
On arrival, we had to rack up, which basically means putting your bike and running gear in a rack in the transition zone and hopefully remembering their location. We then made our way down to the lake in our as-yet untested wetsuits, and had a briefing. Briefing over, we made our way to the pier, and followed the triathletes, leaping like lemmings into the remarkably chilly lake. The icy bite of the lake made things painful during the seemingly long wait for the starting claxon. I reassured George that the pain would go away once we started swimming, having no idea whether it actually would. Finally the claxon sounded and the lake transformed from idyllic tranquility to a frothing tumult of swimmers, all vying for position. I had read that the first 200-400 metres are the most stressful part of any triathlon, and that a lot of triathletes freak out at this point due to the combination of cold water on the face, sudden exertion, and being in water teeming with other people, all of whom seem to want to swim over you. Having been forewarned, I was prepared for this and kept switching from crawl to breast stroke to keep my bearings, and my head.
At the end of the swim, we clambered out of the water and some helpful attendants unzipped our wetsuits as we made our way up the hill for the 400m run to the transition zone.
At transition, I spent about two minutes trying to extricate myself from my wetsuit, writhing around on the gravel in a most undignified fashion, before finally emerging and grabbing my t-shirt and bike from the rack, clipping on my helmet and wheeling the bike towards the exit of the transition. There are so many tules dictating what one can and cannot do in transition, I was quite worried about getting disqualified for doing something that was banned, like putting my helmet on at the wrong time, or walking inappropriately... Once on the bike I made a mental note to not go too hard, as I am wont to do on my commute when anyone overtakes me. I wanted to pace myself to leave something in reserve for the run. The route was three laps of a track through the beautiful grounds of Blenheim Palace, adding up to just under 20km. There were several downhill sections marked with "slow down", which obviously were the most fun parts to go as fast as possible on, and build up some momentum for the ensuing hill-climbs. I still had not encountered George by the end of the third lap, and was pondering this when I heard a shout of "COME ON CHUFFY!" as George flew by on his trusty steed. I gave chase and we entered transition at the same time, in our appalling-looking skimpy swimming trunks.
The second transition should have been more straightforward than the first, as no wetsuit removal was necessary. Despite this fact, I managed to remove my helmet too early, earning a shouting-at from one of the marshalls. George and I then headed out of transition heading in completely the wrong direction, and the same marshall alerted us to our glaring error before witheringly shouting "The run exit is over there where there's a huge sign saying 'RUN EXIT'!". Thus informed, we set off on the run leg of the event. George had to drop back briefly as he was suffering from cramp owing to the transition from one leg-intensive exercise to another. I didn't want to go into cramp so I kept jogging steadily. I ran alongside a friendly Aussie called Coops and we chatted until the end, when he had challenged me to a sprint finish.
As the time approached, Coops said he didn't really feel the sprint coming on, and I could totally sympathise with him after my previous marathon experience, so I went for it, and here is a video of the finish: [video:youtube:O7cHwRKMHZI] All in all, it was a fantastic event, with much less painful after effects than the half marathon. It is definitely something I want to repeat. In fact, George and I have booked places at the Nottingham Triathlon on August 3rd.
Baldwin Wallace University’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree (ABSN) program "pinning ceremony" as part of a distinctive celebration of completion.The pinning ceremony in the John Patrick Theatre of the Kleist Center for Art and Drama, marking the culmination of an intense, one-year program that features a concept-based curriculum for Bachelor’s Degree holders seeking a second degree in nursing. The graduates each received a nursing pin designed especially for Baldwin Wallace University, featuring symbols of nursing and scholarship.
Simple Lines shawl is done. Due to poor lighting, there are only teaser-type images. :)
blogged:
mysistersknitter.typepad.com/my-blog/2013/06/off-the-need...
The southern facade of the Ingenium Building (nearing completion) adjacent to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
As per Wikipedia:
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Ingenium, (Long name: Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation) formerly called the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation, is a Canadian Crown corporation responsible for overseeing national museums related to science and technology. The name is based off the Latin root of the word ingenuity.
The corporation oversees the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.
The corporation's museums are associated with the Canadian Museum Association, the Virtual Museum of Canada and the Canadian Heritage Information Network. Ingenium has an
open documents portal where the corporation shares working documents and corporate plans. It also maintains an open data portal.
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Sukhoi Superjet 100 Certification Program is progressing towards completion
Sukhoi Superjet 100 certification campaign is successfully progressing towards completion. All major certification flight programs are accomplished. The prototypes have gained 2245 flight hours in 948 flights.
On October 28 the aircraft 95003 returned from Iceland after a month testing for operation in side winds, having fully confirmed its compliance with certification requirements at side wind speed up to 15m/sec. Keflavík International Airport is situated at the Atlantic coast of Iceland. Its runways are built at 90 degrees angle each other, so when the wind follows the direction of one runway, it causes side wind at another one bringing the possibility tο conduct test landings іn side wind, nο matter whісh direction thе wind blows. Because of its unique wind conditions, Keflavik Airport is widely used for side wind testing by the European and American manufacturer. Keflavik has been used for side winds testing by A380 and B787.
Along with side winds testing program, the aircraft has successfully performed a series of testing for CATII landing, which is enough to get the Type Certification. Preparation to CATIIIA testing is in progress.
In Zhukovsky Flight Test Center SCAC engineers successfully completed air stairs and cargo compartment equipment testing.
“We’ve already gone through the most challenging testing certification programs. As per our estimations our team has already covered 90% of the overall certification testing scope. Now we are finalizing avionics safety failure testing, EMC, HIRF with emergency evacuation testing to follow”, - said Igor Vinogradov, SVP Certification.
The new track, sports field, grandstands, bus parking, playground and multipurpose room are nearing completion for use by the Kaiserslautern Raiders in Vogelweh, Germany April 11, 2013. The Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe project is 97 percent complete and will be ready for the DODDS-E track and field championships in late May. The state-of-the-art, all-weather running track surrounds a fully-lit turf soccer/football field. The field will require less water and maintenance than a traditional grass field. The project also includes a multipurpose room for the local elementary school. The MPR features a basketball court, rock climbing wall, performance stage and a fully-functional kitchen. In addition to this project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District is working with DoDDS-E to build new 21st century high-, middle- and elementary schools on U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern, the largest U.S. community overseas. USACE is currently designing and building 21st century schools for DoDDS throughout Germany, Italy, Belgium and the U.S., for more information read the following article: www.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsArchive/tabid/204/Article/42... (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jennifer Aldridge)
BAKOKO Director, Alastair Townsend designed and oversaw construction of the Cutty Sark Pavilion whilst working at Youmeheshe Architects and Designers, London. The cutting edge visitor center was built within a restricted budget and met a tight construction program of only 6 months from design to completion. The fast-track structure was the first building in the world to be designed using Bentley’s Generative Components parametric computational design software.
Cutty Sark is one of the world’s most famous sailing vessels. After being decommissioned, the historic clipper ship has rested in a dry dock in the centre of historic maritime Greenwich where it served as public museum. Grimshaw Architects in association with Youmeheshe Architects and Designers were commissioned to design a cutting-edge visitor centre within and beneath the ship as part of a 27 million pound conservation programme that required closing the attraction for a complete restoration overhaul.
The Cutty Sark Pavilion was built to provide an exciting and memorable temporary exhibition venue. It is dedicated to telling the story of the ship and the ambitious project underway to save her whilst she undergoes restoration and construction works. Originally, it was designed to remain on site during the Cutty Sark’s restoration and the construction of a Permanent Visitors’ Centre (taking 2-3 years). After serving its role in Greenwich, the structure will be disassembled and re-erected elsewhere; possibly serving as a remote classroom, museum, or exhibition space dedicated to telling the tale of Cutty Sark to audiences abroad.
The Pavilion’s role as a public face of the ambitious restoration project became all the more important when a devastating fire ravaged the ship in the early hours of May 21st 2007.
The design aim was to achieve an experience evocative of walking amongst the sails, masts, and rigging of a majestic sailing ship like Cutty Sark. Spherical steel nodes connect a hexagonal timber gridshell structure. A complex tension network of steel cables and masts give rigidity to the overall structure and prop the PVC fabric cladding with telescopic masts.
Tight integration of 3DCAD information between the design team and the contractors enabled the structure to be quickly designed, modified, and built. Digital manufacturing of elements such as the CNC’d structural timber components and the digitally tailored fabric cladding were vital to delivering such an ambitious structure in a mater of months.
Bentley’s Generative Components computational design software was utilized in designing the amorphous shape of this complex structure, giving an unprecedented level of global control over every element. Fairly radical adjustments to the structure’s design were possible even in the latter stages of design. This proved vital in meeting the tight program as well as reaching a cost-optimized solution.
The first building of it’s kind in the world, the Cutty Sark Pavilion’s experimental nature met the client’s demand that the temporary visitor center be relevantly engaging and intriguing in order to capture the public’s interest.
St. Paul's Chapel - Episcopal chapel located at 209 Broadway. It is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan.
A chapel of the Parish of Trinity Church, St. Paul's was built on land granted by Queen Anne of Great Britain, and Andrew Gautier served as the master craftsman. Upon completion in 1766, it stood in a field some distance from the growing port city to the south. It was built as a "chapel-of-ease" for parishioners who thought the Mother Church inconvenient to access.
Built of Manhattan mica-schist with brownstone quoins, St. Paul's has the classical portico, boxy proportions and domestic details that are characteristic of Georgian churches such as James Gibbs' London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it was modelled. Its octagonal tower rises from a square base and is topped by a replica of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates (c. 335 BC).
On the Broadway side of the chapel's exterior is an oak statue of the church's namesake, Saint Paul, carved in the American Primitive style. Below the east window is the monument to Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, who died at the Battle of Quebec (1775) during the American Revolutionary War. In the spire, the first bell is inscribed "Mears London, Fecit [Made] 1797." The second bell, made in 1866, was added in celebration of the chapel's 100th anniversary.
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960, in part because it is the oldest public building in continuous use in New York City. The chapel survived the Great New York City Fire of 1776 when a quarter of New York City (then confined to the lower tip of Manhattan), including Trinity Church, burned following the British capture of the city after the Battle of Long Island during the American Revolutionary War.
Early history
The Hearts of Oak, a militia unit organized early in the American Revolutionary War, and comprised in part of King's College (later, Columbia University) students, would drill in the Chapel's yard before classes nearby. Alexander Hamilton was an officer of this unit.
George Washington, along with members of the United States Congress, worshipped at St. Paul's Chapel on his Inauguration Day, on April 30, 1789. Washington also attended services at St. Paul's during the two years New York City was the country's capital. Above Washington's pew is an 18th-century oil painting of the Great Seal of the United States; adopted in 1782.
The chapel contains several monuments and memorials that attest to its elevated status in early New York: a monument to Richard Montgomery (hero of the battle of Quebec) sculpted by Jean-Jacques Caffieri (1777), George Washington's original pew and a Neo-Baroque sculpture called "Glory" designed by Pierre L'Enfant, the designer of Washington, D.C. The pulpit is surmounted by a coronet and six feathers, and fourteen original cut-glass chandeliers hang in the nave and the galleries.
September 11, 2001
The rear of St. Paul's Chapel faces Church Street, opposite the east side of the World Trade Center site. After the attack on September 11, 2001, which led to the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, St. Paul's Chapel served as a place of rest and refuge for recovery workers at the WTC site.
For eight months, hundreds of volunteers worked 12 hour shifts around the clock, serving meals, making beds, counseling and praying with fire fighters, construction workers, police and others. Massage therapists, chiropractors, podiatrists and musicians also tended to their needs.
The church survived without even a broken window. Church history declares it was spared by a miracle sycamore on the northwest corner of the property that was hit by debris. The tree's root has been preserved in a bronze memorial by sculptor Steve Tobin. While the church's organ was badly damaged by smoke and dirt, the organ has been refurbished and is in use again.[6]
The fence around the church grounds became the main spot for visitors to place impromptu memorials to the event. After it became filled with flowers, photos, teddy bears, and other paraphernalia, chapel officials decided to erect a number of panels on which visitors could add to the memorial. Estimating that only 15 would be needed in total, they eventually required 400.
Rudolph Giuliani gave his mayoral farewell speech at the church on December 27, 2001.
The Chapel is now a popular tourist destination since it still keeps many of the memorial banners around the sanctuary and has an extensive audio video history of the event. There are a number of exhibits in the Chapel. The first one when entering is "Healing Hearts and Minds", which consists of a policeman's uniform covered with police and firefighter patches sent from all over the country, including Iowa, West Virginia, California, etc. The most visible is the "Thread Project", which consists of several banners, each of a different color, and woven from different locations from around the globe, hung from the upper level over the pews.
The last of the three main structures that make up the UN permanent Headquarters.
The General Assembly building is now nearing completion and will be ready for the opening of the seventh session of the Assembly when it convenes, on 14 October.
The General Assembly building occupies the most prominent part of the site area and is the focal point of the Headquarters' composition. Its low sweeping lines stand in sharp contrast to the 39 story skyscraper Secretariat building (to which it is connected by the Conference area). The northern facade of the building (foreground) is made of translucent glass set between marble columns. The concave side walls are faced with English lime-stone, with panels and trimmings in marble matching the narrow ends of the Secretariat building.
Photo ID 475364. 01/10/1952. United Nations, New York. UN Photo/x. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/
42nd Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City
The 35-story blue-green McGraw-Hill Building sitting in the midst of parking lots , tenements and a bus station on the west side of Midtown, has been unique since its completion in 1931. Since its creation, the building has been hailed as New York's first monument to the International Style, reclaimed by proponents of the Moderne, and decried as an ugly "green elephant. It has been thought the key to great developments on the west side, and lamented as an "overinprovement" for a hopelessly depressed area.
As a design, it was the product of the gradual shift in architectural taste from the machine-age abstract decorativeness of the Moderne or Art Deco style to the corporate-age utility of the International Style, and of the constantly innovative and growing architectural genius of Raymond Hood. As a real-estate venture it was the product of the forces of extraordinary corporate growth in the 1920s which saw the merger of two small independent specialist publishing houses into a giant institution, and of the efficiency and economy-mindedness of James H. McGraw.
McGraw-Hill
James Herbert McGraw (1860-1948) and John Alexander Hill (1858-1916) were pioneers in the publication of specialized journals for the electrical and engineering fields.- Hill, originally from Sandgate, Vermont, grew up in Mazcmanie, Wisconsin; after working as a railway engineer out west he came to New York City in 1888 to join the American Machinist Publishing Company.
He quickly became editor of Locomotive Engineer. buying it in 1891 and going on to build the Hill Publishing Company (formed in 1901) which, by the tine of his death, was publishing five major engineering journals: American Machinist, Power, Engineering News, Engineering and Mining Journal, and Coal Age. In 1914 he built the twelve-story Hill Building for his growing company at 469-473 Tenth Avenue at 36th Street, and incorporated into it several innovations—including an early version of air conditioning combined with unopenable windows.
McGraw and Hill first joined forces in 1909. Each had branched out into the publication of engineering books, and in that year they merged their side-line operations into tiie McGraw-Hill Book Company -- a flip of a coin determined that Hill would be its president and that McGraw's name would ccme first in the new company's name. Following Hill's death in 1916 the two journal-publishing companies, which had been major rivals, considered merging as well, and in 1917 the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company cane into being, with James H. MoGraw its president.
McGraw-Hill expanded tremendously over the next twelve years. The new company moved into the Hill Building at Tenth Avenue, and sold the McGraw ruilding to the United Publishing Corporation, although the Book Company .remained as tenant until 1921 when it moved into the Penn Terminal Building at 370 Seventh Avenue at 31st Street. With the United Publishing Corp. the company purchased the Newton Falls Paper Company in 1920. In 1926 McGraw-Hill Catalog and Directory Conpany, Inc., was formed.
By 1929 McGraw-Hill was publishing over thirty journals, and its branches were spread all over New York City. The publishing company was becoming cranped for space in the old Hill Building, even though a thirteenth story had been added. The building's elevators could not handle the increasing loads. Even after the freight elevators had been adapted for passenger use, a memo was sent out requesting employees to walk up one and down one or two flights to help free up the service.
Clearly a new building was called for. In October 1929, a new building committee was appointed by the Board of Directors which was now chaired by James McGraw. The following year the Annual Report announced:
The present headquarters building has long been outgrown; offices of the Book Company, McGraw-Hill Catalog and Directory Company, the Business Publishers International Corporation, the Circulation Department, and Atlantic District Sales staff of the Publishing company being located at different addresses in New York City.
For the purpose of bringing all these units under one roof and effecting substantial economies in operation and improved efficiencies in administration, a thirty-three story modem office building is now being erected by an associated company, in which we will be the principal tenants under a favorable lease. It will occupy a plot of ground containing approximately 50,000 square feet can West Forty-Second Street extending through to ^orty-First Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and will provide every facility for the complete publishing operation
Site
The site of the McGraw-Hill Building is one of its peculiarities — the location of a tall office building west of Eighth Avenue was as much an anomaly fifty years ago as it is today. On the 42nd Street portion of the site were three four-story and two five-story tenement buildings; along the West 41st Street front were six four-story buildings.
Many of these had been converted to offices and stores by 1930. A 1940 real-estate assessment described the building's immediate neighbors on West 42nd Street as "old, obsolete structures, of limited, height.... cheap stores and restaurants.... poorer class lofts, offices
and teaming houses with considerable vacancies." Along Wast 41st Street, were "old mercantile and rooming house structures, commercial garages and parking lots." There were also a "local Greek settlement" and "tenements with colored occupancy."
Despite the depressed state of the area, however, developer John A. Larkin, head of the 330 West Forty-Second Street Corporation, had assembled over three years "one of the largest plottages under one control on the west side of midtown Manhattan" comprising roughly 47,500 square feet in tie middle of the block bounded by 42nd and 41st Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues. In 1926 he surprised the real-estate world by filing plans for a 110-story, $22*5 million skyscraper on the site. The project, like many in the later 1920s, came to nothing, and in 1930 larkin effectively gave away the property to McGraw-Hill, in exchange for the old Hill Building and its site.
McGraw-Hill's new building conmittee had been looking at real estate between 34th and 47th Streets from Second to Ninth Avenues. After several possibilities had been considered and rejected, two final sites were put forward: the Larkin property, and a plot just around the comer from it at the northeast comer of West 41st Street and eighth Avenue.
The reasons for locating a major business headquarters so far west of midtown were strictly practical and economic, involving considerations of zoning, transportation, and land costs. McGraw-Hill planned to house its printing plant on the Iower floors of the new building, something the city's zoning laws did not permit between Third and Seventh Avenues.
West 42nd Street, even so far over, was a major traffic artery, and the site had easy access to Grand Central Terminal and Perm Station, as well as to post offices. A 1931 advertisement for the building included a map showing the "8 minutes walk to Grand Central Terminal."
Another consideration was that various engineering societies were close by, especially the Engineers' Club on West 40th Street which McGraw frequented to keep to with developments in the world serviced by his journals. The move in any case was not entirely into new territory, as the Hill Building was o:ily a few blocks away at Tenth Avenue and 36th Street.
A final consideration was the high cost of land in Manhattan. Not only was land cheaper outside of midtown, but the committee had worked out the exchange arrangement with Larkin, and felt that, "If these figures work out as we anticipate, we will acquire this new building in which all our activities in New York can be housed under one roof without raising any new money except by mortgaging our new property. "
Two days after the memo, McGraw-Hill and Larkin came to an agreement; this was announced in the Times on May 30, 1930, and the final exchange took place on July 1.
McGraw-Hill used only part of the plot for its building, reserving the western portion for future expansion or sale. The buildings there were demolished with the intention of erecting in their place an "attractive locking 'taxpayer'"; ultimately the lot was left vacant, however, to be used for parking, and finally sold in 1951, at which time the present post office was constructed.
Having chosen an out-of-the-way site in a depressed part of the city, McGraw-Hill spokespeople developed a tradition of rosy optimism about the area's future. In 1932, Frank Gale, editor of the McGraw-Hill News, wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that only six of the 33 stories of the building remained unrented, and
that property values in the neighborhood were going up thanks to the presence of McGraw-Hill. He quoted E.D. Conklin, president of the 342 Wast 42nd Street Corporation, which owned the building, as saying:
Interesting plans are afoot for the improvement of West Forty-Second Street. These plans, should they go through may give to our building the distinction of being a key structure in a great architectural scheme involving development and beautification of the area. Such plans would fit in perfectly with the presence at the comer of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Second Street of the world's largest subway station.
Four years later, in a similar burst of enthusiasm on the occasion of the opening of a bank branch in the ground floor of the building, the McGraw-Hill Bulletin announced:
The opening of Clinton Trust Company's "McGraw-Hill Building Office" (that's what they have named it) is evidence of a vast change that is taking place in the West Side. Zoning laws recently enacted will, in the course of a few years, eliminate many of the dwellings in this section, opening the space to business and industry. As the elevated motor highway is extended up the Hudson, it will become the main artery of traffic leading to the North. The New York Central Railroad has plans under way to put its tracks in a subway and turn Eleventh Avenue into a boulevard.
Nothing of the kind ever happened, and the 1940 appraisal of the building concluded that "the McGraw-Hill Building as a real-estate enterprise is an ever-improvement for the location."
The area had not changed significantly by the time McGraw-Hill finally sold its headquarters in 1970 on moving to Rockefeller Center.
At the McGraw-Hill Building he carried the advertising notion to its logical conclusion by crowning the building with eleven-foot high terra-cotta letters spelling "McGRAW-HILL," making the conpany's nana an inljegral part of the design.
When McGraw-Hill approached Hood in 1930, he was at the height of his career. He had been appointed one of the eight supervising architects for the Chicago World's Fair; he was one of the architects for Rockefeller Center; and his Daily News Building was rising on East 42nd Street. Articles about him were appearing everywhere, and one summed up his position in the architectural world as follows:
Leading the New York modernists at this moment are Ralph Walker, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Raymond Hood. ....Raymond Hood possesses the position in architecture that he wants. He is its brilliant bad boy.
The Building
In accordance with James McGraw's instincts for economy and utility, and with Raymond Hood's business-like approach to architecture, the design and construction of the McGraw-Hill Building were to an extent the results of practical considerations: "Economy, efficiency and good working conditions were the three factors uppermost in mind when we first started plans."23 To McGraw-Hill's requirements for space, approximately 350,000 square feet, were added 150,000 to 200,000 square feet of rentable area, enough to "yield sufficient income to insure our occupancy at a rental of 90C per sq. ft. without putting us too far i^to the real estate business."24 n^e conpany decided against using the entire Larkin plot for its building, because that would have produced "a squat type of structure with larger areas in the lower floors than could be economically used by us or rented. "
Instead, 130 feet of frontage was taken on West 42nd Street leaving enough to allow reasonable development on the rest of the plot in the future. The floor area requirements of the company, in oonbination with the setback requirements of the zoning law resulted in a 32-story tower.
Inside, the McGraw-Hill Building, although intended to be the office headquarters of a major corporation, was designed not as as an office building but instead as a less expensive "ordinary better grade loft type" building. 26 Fouilhoux, Hood's partner, explained:
The requirements for large areas for manufacturing purposes in the lwsr stories, and for big clerical forces in the office floors in the upper portion, also the dimensions of the property, led us to plan floors in large units extending from street to street.
The plans for consolidation of all the various McGraw-Hill functions in one building included housing the conpany's presses on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors, although the printing operation ultimately proved uneconomical and was sold in 1933. The second through tenth floors were therefore designed for the extra heavy loads necessary for manfacturing and printing industries, and given extra high ceilings — throughout the building these range from 12 feet to 18 feet 6 inches. Within these spaces the departments were arranged in the most efficient order possible.
Hood and Fouilhoux insisted, as they had for the American Radiator and Daily News Buildings, that the profile of the McGraw-Hill Building was the result of zoning laws, internal lighting needs, and economic requirements.
The same laws and requirements, however, had faced the same architect in the same year ca the eastern edge of the same street for a similar type of client, the Daily News, but had produced a thoroughly different profile. Raymond Hood's notions about skyscrapers were changing, and he handled the design of the McGraw-Hill Building in what to his contemporaries was a very striking, unusual, and, to some, unsettling manner.
In fact, the building has two distinct profiles. The setbacks, just one bay wide, create "a pleasant [shape] as it is seen when approached from the east or west. " This is a Deco contour, not unlike tliat of the Chrysler or Empire State Buildings, of a broad base narrowing in steps, out of which rises a slender tower, crowned by the ribbed pylon-like narrow end of the McGraw-Hill sign. It is the shape seen in most photographs of the building, in views from either end of midtown, and especially in views from across the Hudson River, where it joins the outline of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings as the major elements in the midtown skyline. But these setbacks "are not apparent from the north or south. "
Seen from those angles the building seams to be a slab rising straight up with no break to the crowning insignia — a classic International Style design.
The greatest amount of light possible was provided by the over 4000 double-hung windows: "every floor, whether it is the 28th, the 13th or the 6th, is wall lighted no matter what the position of the sun." Employees had adequate natural light from 40 to 60 feet away from tine windows, which were "placed as close to the ceiling of each floor as the building regulations would permit, and run down to about desk height from the floor. "
They were not arranged, however, in the standard Deco fashion of indefinitely long vertical strips, as for example in the Daily News Building, but rather as horizontal bands circling the mass of the building — the "ribbon windows" typical of the utilitarian International Style. They look, in fact, quite like factory loft windows. This arrangement gave the entire building a horizontal sense — even the individual windows were composed only of horizontal elements, narrow panes divided by muntins, with no mull ions used at all.
The vertical organization of Deco buildings vividly expressed the tallness of skyscrapers as compared to their surrounding lower neighbors. The horizontal organization of McGraw-Hill instead expressed the structure of the building, 33 floors laid one on top of another. The window bands are broken only on the eastern front, where two wide vertical brick strips run up the middle to meet the crowning ribbed pylon, accentuating the Deco profile of that side. The arrangement of its windows, more than any other single feature, marked the building for critics and historians as one of the first major examples of the International Style in New York City.
To the unusual profile and window arrangements of the McGraw-Hill Building Hood added the totally unexpected element of colored terra-cotta. Architectural terra-cotta had come into use in America following George B. Post's 1878 design for the Long Island Historical Society in Brooklyn Heights, and had been used to
face entire buildings, including the Bayard-Condict Building, the neo-Gotidc Liberty Tower and the Woolworth Building. McGraw-Hill claimed t)iat theirs was the "largest application of machine-made terra cotta on record."
The terracotta was manufactured by the Federal Seaboard Terra Cotta Corporation in South , Amboy, New Jersey.
When asked why steel and terra cotta were used on the face of the building instead of the usual brick or stone, Mr. Hood said that after six months or a year, the usual brick or stone facing begins to grow dingy and dank in appearance. Steel and terra Cotta are just as durable as brick or other materials usually used, and it has the decided advantage of not becoming dingy or nondescript.
The color of the terra-cotta sheathing, however, was completely without precedent. Many different colors were considered, including yellow, orange, green, gray, red, "and even Chinese red. "
The blue-green, or sea-green, finally chosen was said to be McGraw's own choice. Exactly what color it is was not unanimously agreed on: Rood called it blue, while McGraw-Hill has always called the terra-cotta green, and their headquarters "the Green Building," or "the Green Kremlin."
Hood's approach to the color, unlike his approach to the windows, was thoroughly Moderne and Art Deco in inspiration. The color has dimmed somewhat with time, but a contemporary account describes its original appearance in detail
This color was chosen because of its atmospheric quality, effective under all conditions of sky color and brightness, enhanced by the glazed reflecting surface. The metal covered vertical piers are painted a dark green-blue, almost black. The metal windows are painted an apple green color. A narrow band of Vermillion is painted on the face of the top jambs of the windows and across the face of the metal covered piers.
Vermillion is also used on the underside of the horizontal projections on the pent house and on the signs on the sides of the pent house and over the front entrance. The golden color of the window shades effectively complements the cool tone of the building. They have a broad blue-green vertical stripe in the center tying them into the general color scheme.
Their color is an unusually important element of the exterior design. The entrance vestibule is finished in sheet steel bands enameled dark blue and green alternately, separated by metal tubes finished in silver and gold. A portion of the main corridor adjoining the transverse elevator corridor is finished like the entrance vestibule. The walls of the main and elevator corridor are finished in sheet steel enameled a green color.
The color scheme was carried inside the building, where "experts have studied with interest the use of two shades of green for interior walls, a combination believed to give the maximum of rest to the eyes of office workers." Even the elevator cabs were finished in "green baked enamel an steel" and the elevator operators wore green uniforms with silver stripes.
Hood's own description of the exterior color gives away sctne of his true feelings about architectural color; he called it:
Dutch blue at the base, with sea green window bands, the blue gradually shading off to a lighter tone the higher the building goes, till it finally blends off into the azure blue of the sky. The final effect is a shimmery, satin finish, somewhat on the order of the body of an automobile.
The gradual shading of color — used also in buildings by Ralph Walker and others — and the reference to the automobile are both classic Art Deoo notions. The editor of the McGraw-Hill News continued the reference to the automobile, describing the colored steel bands at the entrance as being "lacquered like the body of a motor car, " and noting that in the future they would be "simonized, just like the old car."
The company was aware that its building's color was unusual, but was very proud of it, claiming its distinction as the largest polychromed building in the world:
We haw enough faith in the attractiveness and utility of color in business building exteriors and interiors to hcpe that our pioneering effort will set a good example for the designers of future tall bui.ldings.
The crowning "McGRAW-HILL" sign, Hood's final step towards making a building advertise its owner, was also a Moderne notion, adopted from the Russian Constructivist movement of the 1920s — a similar sign can be seen at the top of the PSFS Building in Philadelphia. Hood intimated that it was a terra-cotta version of the electric signs then prevalent on New York buildings.
Each letter, eleven feet high, was specially constructed of hand made hollow terracotta blocks. The main part of each letter was white, but each had an orange stripe inset into it in separate blocks. The sign served also to hide the building's viter tanks and other utility spaces. The horizontal ribs at the ends of the sign were also very much Moderne in inspiration, suggesting something of the German Expressionism of Eric Mendelsohn (cf. addition to the Rudolf-Mosse--Haus in Jerusalemer Strasse, Berlin, 1921-23).
Critical Evaluation
Critical response to the McGraw-Hill Building has depended to an extent on the importance attached by reviewers to its different stylistic aspects. In the 1930s, immediately following the building's completion, Moderne or Art Deco was the norm, and what struck reviewers most about the new building was its leaning, towards International Style forms.
The New Yorker in 1931 strongly disapproved of that leaning, expressing a dislike for the horizontal lines "which so many of our avant-garde have borrowed from Germany," and calling the colored terra-cotta "a rather dispiriting grayish-green tile." Its writer however noted approvingly that the design was "austerely free from any architectural ornament, since Mr. Hoed has adhered to his theory that ornament has no place m a business building any more than it has in a dynamo or a turbine."
Alfred T. North, writing in 1932, expressed seme of the general bewilderment about the building.
Today, it is necessary to establish new bases for appraising architectural excellence because the contemporary concept of architecture is new, as exemplified, for instance, in the recently constructed McGraw-Hill Building. Lacking all of the earmarks of historical architecture, this building is running the gauntlet of criticism.
....Mr. Hood undoubtedly has given an expression of his idea that architecture is the business of manufacturing shelter....
North saw its horizontality and practicality as major characteristics, but he was mostly taken with the building's colors, and described at length its changing hues at sunrise and sunset — which must have pleased Hood considering his interest in the "atmospheric qualities" of his choice. North ultimately postponed judgment, declaring the building to be "undoubtedly a decided step in a direction which, we cannot clearly distinguish at this time..."46
That direction was towards the International Style, and later that year the McGraw-Hill won the honor of being one of four American, buildings, and the only one in Mew York, to be included in Henry-Russell Hitchcock's and Philip Johnson's classic exhibition and book, The International Style. In the exhibition catalog, Hitchcock wrote:
Hood's latest important work, the McGraw-Hill Building, on West 42nd Street, built in 1931, marks a significant turning point in skyscraper design. It is the first tall commercial structure consciously horizontal in design executed by an architect since Sullivan's Schlesinger-Mayar Building in Chicago built in. 1903.
.... The continuous spandrels of the McGraw-Hill Building faced with sea green tiles, the vertical supports sheathed with dark green painted metal, and the wide groups of windows produce a standard wall pattern at once logical and agreeable.
In The International Style Hitchcock and Johnson praised the building for its "lightness, simplicity and lack of applied verticalism," but they ignored its coloring and Moderne entrance and lobby, and lamented the extraordinary McGraw-Hill sign, which they called "an illogical and unhappy break in the general system of regularity," suggesting that the body of the building was betrayed by an applied top and bottom.
By 1936, McGraw-Hill had accepted the label of "International Style" for its building:
The McGraw-Hill Building is what architects call the "International" Style, which was imported from Europe where it is popular in Holland and France.
----It is typical of this style to insist on the horizontal accent, and the late Raymond Hood emphasized that feature when he designed this building.
As the International Style became increasingly prominent, McGraw-Hill became more and more important as its first American example. Lewis Mumford t note in 1953 that it was "the first to discard vertical emphasis for horizontal bands of windows," observing that New York in the '30s brought the skyscraper "to its logical end: The Empire State Building, for its actual height, the Daily News for its proud verticality, the McGraw-Hill for its horizontal bands of windows, and the New York Hospital for its spacious setting."
Two years later, Emory Lewis wrote that post-war skyscrapers "have followed the pioneering McGraw-Hill building (1931) and discarded vertical emphasis for horizontal bands of windows."
Recent historians, however, in response to the revival of interest in Moderne and Art Deco, have claimed the McGraw-Hill Building as a Moderne or Deco creation:
In the McGraw-Hill Building of 1929-30 (sic) Hood turned to a machine aesthetic in tine streamlined lobby and ground floor exterior. Yet his surfacing material for the building above was the colored^craft material, terra-cotta, of the first Art Deco buildings.
In truth, the building is, in the words of Ada Louise Huxtable, "a unique blend of Moderne and International Style," a transitional step between the two approaches to architectural design.
The building's lobby and crowning sign, its "atmospheric" color, and its eastern and western profiles, are unmistakably Moderne in style. Even the "ribbon windows" are really a decorative illusion created by the painted metal dividers between the sets of double-hung windows. Yet it remains the first appearance of that type of window in a New York skyscraper, and the McGraw-Hill Building therefore has the double distinction of being both one of New York's major Moderne or Deco monuments, and the herald of the newly emerging International Style.
Conclusion
In 1970, McGraw-Hill left their 42nd Street building to move to new headquarters at Rockefeller Center, for precisely the same reasons they had originally moved to 42nd Street. The building was an embarrassment and its future uncertain. At the same time a growing awareness of its unique place in New York's architectural spectrum was eliciting pleas for its preservation. The company originally sold the building to the CRF Equity Corporation for $15 million; in 1973, however, CRF backed
out, leaving McGraw-Hill with a down payment and an empty building. McGraw-Hill maintained the building while proposals for using it as hospital space or housing ware considered.
It was filially bought in 1974 by Group Health Insurance, for use as its headquarters. As a result of that occupancy, the ' sign above the deer has been changed and the roof sign painted a dull color to obscure the terra-cotta letters. GUI recently sold the building, but remains as tenant.
Hopes for West 42nd Street and the Times Square area are rising again. The Port Authority Bus Terminal is building an addition directly abutting the McGraw-Hill Building to the east; theaters and actors' housing have been brought to 42nd Street wast of Eighth Avenue. As the West Side approaches what might be its long awaited revival, it is appropriate that this most conspicuous architectural gem receive its proper recognition.
- From the 1979 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Radio City Music Hall is the popular heir to the aristocratic Opera, planned but never executed at Rockefeller Center. It is one of four theaters originally envisioned for the complex by RKO, and the sole survivor of the two actually constructed. With 6,200 seats, the Music Hall was, upon its completion in 1932, the world' largest indoor theater.
RKO was formed in late 1928 by RCA's David Sarnoff and Joseph P. Kennedy (father of the late John and Robert F. Kennedy) who had controlling interest in the 7ilm Hooking Office (F30) production agency. Through a series of mergers between the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville chain, and later with Pathe Pictures (of which Kennedy was a major stockholder), Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) emerged as one of the six leading producers of motion pictures in America.[2]
Created on the eve of the Depression and encouraged—at least initially---by its distraction-seeking audiences, RKO intended to construct at Rockefeller Center two small theaters for drama and comedy and eventually television as well as a large movie house and an even larger showcase for two-a-day vaudeville spectaculars.
The grand scheme ripened as a result of Samuel Lionel Rothafel ("Roxy"1) who left his new namesake theater (located just one block west of Rockefeller Center) to join RKO.
Born in 1892 in a small Minnesota town, Roxy was the son of Gustave Rothafel, a shoemaker. His parents moved to New York when he was twelve, and after working in a department store as a cash boy, he entered the Marines. Seven years later Roxy traveled as a house-to-house peddler and ended up in Pennsylvania where he met his future wife. While working in his father-in-law's bar, Roxy transformed the large dancing hall at the rear into a movie house.
He bought a second-hand screen and projector, rented 200 chairs from an undertaker, hired a pianist and charged a nickel admission. He then moved on to Minneapolis and later Milwaukee, introducing such innovative entertainments as music and dance performances to movie theaters.
Roxy returned to New York City in 1913 to manage the Regent Theater at 116th St. and Seventh Avenue (generally recognized as the first "movie palace") where he improved the traditional program with novel lighting effects and a 100-piece orchestra. In the following years Roxy moved on to the newly completed Strand, then to the Rialto and Rivoli theaters, and in 1923 to the Capitol heater from which he broadcast "Roxy and his Gang," one of the most popular radio shows in America.
Roxy's brilliant theatrical reputation reached a peak in 1927 when he assumed management and gave his name to William Fox's Roxy Theater at West 50th St. and Seventh Avenue. With nearly 6,000 seats this opulent movie house was the largest in the world. Roxy allegedly intended to further enlarge the theater as a center for varied entertainments but when negotiations with William Fox failed, he found a most cordial welcome at Rockefeller Center.
By luring the impresario away from Fox, RKO won over its most serious competition. In return Roxy was made vice president, producer and manager of RKO's theaters at Rockefeller Center. Roxy's only rival was his record of past theatrical achievements. He surpassed it brilliantly, especially at Radio City Music Hall, where he realized "the aspirations of a lifetime."[5] Roxy brought in the noted theater architects C.W. and G.L. Rapp to advise on the Music Hall's design.[6] And while it was actually built by the Associated Architects, the Music Hall everywhere bore the influence of Roxy's own imagination and comprehensive knowledge of theater design.
On December 21, 1931, construction began on the "RKO Roxy" (rechristened in 1934 as the "Center Theater"). located to the south of the RCA Building on the southeast corner of 49th Street and Sixth Avenue (site of the present Simon & Schuster Building addition), this 3,700 seat house was Roxy's "intimate" theater.[7] It was designed for a mixed bill of motion picture and stage entertainment. Work was simultaneously undertaken on the "International (later Radio City) Music Hall," located on the other (north) side of the RCA Building on Sixth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets. It was built in conjunction with the RKO Building which was partially constructed over the Music Hall's lobby.[8] In 1938 the Music Hall's east wall was abutted by the newly constructed Associated Press Building.
The exteriors of the two theaters were similar in their low-lying limestone massing, a feature dictated by the building code then in effect which forbade construction above theater auditoriums. The (121 foot) high Music Hall, however, was almost twice as large as the RKO Roxy and considerably more decorative. Its exterior sculpture reflected the unique kind of entertainment which Roxy intended to showcase. Unlike his previous theaters which featured a mixed bill of stage and screen entertainment, the Music Hall was designed as a center for diverse and sophisticated entertainments such as legitimate drama, ballet and opera, combined with jazz, a revival of rapidly waning vaudeville and precision dances by the "Roxyette" chorus girls.
The more popular entertainments of the Music Hall were represented toy six bronze plaques over the entrance and side of the theater's vestibule on Sixth Avenue. The series was designed by Rene Chambellan and is closely related to that which he executed for the doors of the Grand Foyer on the theater's interior. The series shows scenes from International vaudeville acts. Heading from left to right are five Russian minstrels who accompany a gypsy dancer, two Black banjo players and a tap dancer, a seated German accordionist and saxophonist who play as a patient cat listens, five American precision dancers (the "Roxyettes"), an old French cellist and female violinist who play as a dog (in clown costume) sits upright, and finally a seated Jewish drummer with a tuxedo clad singer/dancer.
The more legitimate stage arts were depicted in a classically-inspired series of metal and enamel plaques installed 60 feet above West 50th Street on the Music Hall's sprawling south facade. Designed by Hildreth Meiere and executed by Oscar B. Bach, these L8 foot roundels represent a major technical and artistic achievement. They were fashioned from copper, bronze, aluminum, chrome nickel steel and vitreous enamels. Although polychromed metals had been used before, most notably in Sweden, they were largely ignored by American artists.
Meiere not only introduced the technique, but did so at unprecedented scale.[9] She drew on her skill as a painter and mosaicist to brilliantly enliven the r:usic Hall's wall and achieved, in the words of a Rockefeller Center spokesman, "a striking relief from the usual severe [mural] surfaces of theater buildings."
Meiere also drew on her previous success in Bertram Goodhue's Nebraska State Capitol and especially his National Academy of Sciences in Washington where Meiere painted similar inhabited roundels on the pendentives of its dome.
Dance is located at the far left of the wall, closest to Sixth Avenue- The plaque is dominated, as are the two companion plaques, by nude or semi-nude figures whose skin tone changes from matte nickel to a glowing metallic white, varying with the position of the sun.
Dance is represented by an animated female, copper symbols in her raised arms, who leaps across the wall as her brown-red hair flies upward over the geometrically patterned metal and enamel frame. Behind is a copper helmeted matte silver foot soldier (in a black and gold enamel moderne-patterned uniform). He attempts to catch the bacchanalian dancer in a blue and gold drape which billows around her and emphasizes the circular composition of the plaque.
Drama, the middle plaque, is represented by a monumental Athena-like figure, draped in a shiny patterned silver chiton with copper bodice. She radiates on the wall, particularly in the glare of afternoon sun. The muse wears an enormous fan-shaped copper and enamel crown, and is framed by a brown and red drape (with gold details and dark blue enamel trim). Her drape falls in angular cascades in a splendid Art Deco design, 'he muse is flanked by two crouching females who raise large comic and tragic masks (shiny silver with copper mouths and blue enamel hair).
Song returns the viewer back to Sixth Avenue as a dorsal performer prances west, her green and blue shawl flapping behind. A brown-draped, piper is seated to her left on a silver Greek stool. He plays while three shiny silver birds flutter around the animated singer.
The decorative aspect of the Music Hall's exterior is furthered by its two moderne verticals and marquee which wraps around the theater's southwestern corner, only to be continued In three additional segments along West 50th Street. The theater's north and south facades are also relieved at ground level by a variety of bronze-framed display windows and screens.
Above, and to the right of Hildreth Meiere's medallions, are eight long vertical screens. They mask with a diaper-like pattern the fire escapes that mar the exteriors of so many other theater theaters, Similar screens appear on the W. 51st Street facade which, facing away from the entertainment complex, is somewhat less decorative.
The Music Hall had its gala opening on December 27, 1932 with performances by twenty different entertainers including Martha Graham, Harold Kreutzberg and ids ballet, the contralto Vera Schwartz, comedians Weber & fields, the Tuskegee Institute choir singing Negro spirituals and more. Vet despite the varied program, the entertainment was disappointing.
It hardly mattered, as it was the theater itself that stole the show. As one critic wrote, "...the new -Music Hall need[ed] no performers... its beauty and comforts alone [were] sufficient to gratify even the greediest of playgoers. Rockefeller himself found it "beautiful, soul satisfying, inspiring beyond anything [he] dreamed possible.
Technically advanced and lavishly embellished through the unique collaboration of some of the finest decorative artists of the day, the Music Hall was nonetheless a tremendous financial disaster, for the first time in his thirty year career Roxy had misjudged his audience. To his ruinous dismay, there was no interest in his supra-vaudeville revival.
Within two weeks of its opening the Music Hall abandoned Roxy's entertainment policy, adopting in its place the film-and-stage show format of the smaller RAO Roxy (which had premiered just two days after the Music Hall). The change effectively eclipsed--and ultimately killed - the RKO Roxy. In subsequent years it showcased films, then musicals, later ice skating marvels, and finally television before being demolished in 1954.
The switch to a combined film-and-stage show policy in early 1933 barely sustained the sumptuous but unprofitable Music Hall, now suffering in the throes of the Depression.
The situation only worsened when RKO went into receivership in late January of the same year. A joint RCA-Rockefeller Center committee of six replaced the disgraced and now physically ailing Roxy in management of the Music Hall, extracting his resignation within the year.
The theater limped through 1934; for a time it even accepted "IOUs" in lieu of its $.35 - $.55 admission fees. But by mid-decade audiences were attracted to the Music Hall's varied bill, most movie palaces having abandoned live entertainment. By the early 1940s it had become one of Mew York's greatest attractions with first run Hollywood films and spectacular precision dancing by the Rockettes (previously named the "Roxyettes" but renamed after Roxy's resignation).
For decades the Music Hall remained "The Showplace of the Nation" before faltering perilously in the late 1960s and 1970s as a result of changes in popular entertainment habits. After closing for a brief period the house was revived in the late 1970s. Recently it has featured stage shows and popular concerts, ironically realizing Roxy's failed attempt to present varied live entertainment.
Radio City Music Hall is physically linked with No.1270 Avenue of the Americas, whose tower rises partially above the Music Hall's lobby. The Music Hall's main entrance at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street is recessed under the lower wing of No.1270, and an enormous marquee and twin vertical signs are attached to this frontage, which is therefore being described with the Music Hall.
This wing rises five stories above the entrance, to a major setback, behind and above which rises the tower of No.1270, which turns the corner at 51st Street and continues east for seven bays. The south elevation of the complex, rising six and eight stories from the lot line, and the north elevation, proceeding eastward from the eighth bay, form the remainder of the Music Hall's exterior.
The major entrance to Radio City Music Hall is through a recessed rectangular areaway at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street. It is covered by a giant marquee which is supported on three polygonal piers faced in polished granite. In the long, north-south wall of the areaway are set a wide central pair of double-doors, a single double-door to its north, and two single double-doors to its south.
These are separated from each other by thick piers faced in polished bronze, with polished granite bases and bronze-enframed announcement boards, capped by a horizontal, modernistic banding with abstract floral ornament. Above these doorways are polished granite blocks serving as background for the series of bronze reliefs on entertainment themes (see p. 47 ). The north, short wall of the areaway is faced with polished granite, and holds a wide, ornamental bronze announcement board with one of the bronze entertainment reliefs above.
The enormous marquee over the areaway curves around the corner onto 50th Street, and continues along the street in three additional, separate segments which are cantilevered over the sidewalk. Their long vertical faces are divided into a wide upper zone and a narrow lower zone by three modernistic bands. These bands are formed by four narrow continuous metal strips, within which are set three neon tubes. The wide upper zone holds the words "Music Hall" in cursive neon lettering and the words "RADIO CITY" in bold neon capitals, repeating sequentially along the marquee. The lower band is reserved for changing announcements of current attractions.
Twin seven-story tall vertical signs rise at the north and south ends of the Sixth Avenue portion of the marquee; the northern vertical is placed perpendicular to the avenue, and the southern vertical parallel to it. Tall, narrow and rectangular, their narrow ends are faced with ridged metal plates, while their two wide feces hold the words "RADIO CITY" in vertically placed bold capital neon lettering, and, beneath, the smaller words "MUSIC HALL" in neon lettering on a diagonal. Each vertical is capped with a curving modernistic metal top. The top of the
northern vertical attaches directly to a seventh story setback, while the top of the southern vertical is continued down to the fifth-story setback of the adjoining lower facade.
The remainder of the Sixth Avenue elevation of Radio City Music Hall, in appearance an extension of No.1270's tower design, is treated in the standard Center manner of vertical window-spandrel bays alternating with limestone piers? spandrels are vertically ridged, and bays terminate in 2-eyelet foliage.
On 50th Street, the first three bays from the corner of Sixth Avenue are window-spandrel bays above the curve of the marquee. The marquee continues in three separate sections. Beneath it is a continuous polished granite wall, into which are inset, from west to east, a bronze-enframed double entrance, four bronze-enframed announcement boards continuing the decorative features of those in the areaway, and a series of bronze doorways.
Above the marquee, the wall is blank from the second through fifth stories, clad in limestone, and serves as a backdrop for three enormous polychromatic metal and enamel reliefs (see p. 48 ). Above the western end of this blank surface is one story of four window bays, while above the more extensive eastern end rise two stories of nine window bays, each bay combining windows, spandrels and grilles in an irregular order; these bays are topped with 2-eyelet foliage.
To the east of the large portion of blank wall is a set of eight four-story high vertical grilles at the second- to fifth-story level; these are continued in the stories above by triple spandrels, a single casement window, and terminal 2-eyelet foliage. The final ten easternmost bays revert to the typical window-spandrel bays set between limestone piers; these bays are grouped in a 2-3-2-3 pattern.
The ground level of this section contains, from west to east, three enormous bronze-enframed announcement boards with modernistic grilles and abstract floral ornament, and a series of intermingling smaller announcement boards and entrances. The entire treatment of the 50th Street elevation reflects the windowless auditorium of the Music Hall behind it.
The 51st Street elevation of the Music Hall is simply a smaller version of the 50th Street elevation. It includes a blank wall with no reliefs, and a six-story high vertical over a two-section marquee with curved corners and neon lettering. The ground-floor level is faced with polished granite, and contains bronze-enframed announcement boards and entrances. The portion of the elevation east of the blank wall and marquee is articulated with multi-story grilles similar to those on 50th Street; beneath them are large bronze-enframed announcement boards.
The final ten bays are treated with typical window-spandrel bays set between limestone piers. Towards the eastern end of the elevation at the ground floor level, two sets of
bronze-enframed doors are capped by an inventive grille based on conic-tragic masks symbolizing theater. There are also grilles on windows and on a pair of doors.
*****
Significant features include but are not limited to:
SIXTH AVENUE FACADE
- Buff colored shot sawed Indiana limestone cladding
- Vertically ridged slate-gray aluminum spandrels
- Decorative pier terminations
- Polished granite base and polished granite entrance wall
- Polished granite polygonal piers
- Bronze-enframed entrances
- Bronze-enframed announcement boards
- Bronze banding
- Bronze abstract floral ornament
- 2/1 double-hung steel sash
- Terminal foliage of the 2-eyelet variety
- Six bronze entertainment reliefs (see p. 47 )
- Marquee with neon lettering
- Two vertical signs with neon lettering
50TH STREET FACADE
- Buff colored shot sawed Indiana limestone cladding
- Beveled and scalloped window sills (at the east end of the
first story)
- Vertically ridged slate-gray aluminum spandrels
- Decorative pier terminations
- Polished granite base along the entire ground-floor level
- Bronze-enframed entrances
- Bronze-enframed entrances with grille doors
- 2/1 double-hung steel sash
- Bronze-enframed announcement boards with modernistic grilles
- Bronze abstract floral ornament
- Three polychromatic metal and enamel reliefs (see p. 48 )
- Marquees with neon lettering
51ST STREET FACADE
- Buff colored shot sawed Indiana limestone cladding
- Vertically ridged slate-gray aluminum spandrels
- Decorative pier terminations
- Polished granite base along the entire ground-floor level
- Bronze-enframed entrances
- Bronze grilles with comic-tragic masks
- Bronze-enframed entrances with grille doors
- 2/1 double-hung steel sash
- Bronze grilles over windows at ground-floor level
- Bronze-enframed announcement boards with modernistic grilles
- Bronze abstract floral ornament
- Terminal foliage of the 2-eyelet variety
- Marquee with neon lettering
- Vertical sign with neon lettering
- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Construction nears completion on a new junior high school building, housing grades 4-6, in Grumesa, Ghana July 22, 2013. The building, designed to accommodate more than 150 students, features three classrooms, a teachers’ room, storage space and a detached latrine facility. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District is working in partnership with U.S. Africa Command and the local embassy to bring the school to fruition. The new classrooms will enable additional students from the district to attend school in Grumesa. The project, valued at $208,700 dollars, features local building materials including mahogany doors and decorative cement blocks, hand selected by the school headmaster. In addition, local masons, painters and other workers were hired as subcontractors. The Ghanaian subcontractors credit U.S. partners, and contractor, Dover Vantage, for their newly acquired knowledge of U.S. building and safety practices. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Jennifer Aldridge)
As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity.; Can you explain Botticelli's *Birth of Venus* to me in the pure language of the Renaissance elite? Were the *Fedeli d'Amore* an esoteric society surrounding Dante? Could they have influenced Botticelli in this painting?
O noble spirit, friend of the Muses and seeker of ancient mysteries, permit me to discourse upon *The Birth of Venus*, painted by the divine Sandro Botticelli, in the very language of the Florentine Academies, where Marsilio Ficino and his disciples elevated the soul through the contemplation of Divine Beauty.
### Venus of the Philosophers
Dom Pernety likewise teaches that Venus is not copper itself, but rather "their matter before the whitening," that is, the state of the philosophical substance at the completion of the First Work (*Opus Nigredo*), prepared for the Second (*Opus Albedo*).
At the center stands the nude Venus upon the marine shell.
This is precisely the Venus of the Philosophers described by Pernety. She emerges from the waters, still rosy and immaculate, born from the bosom of the Philosophical Sea. Her nudity signifies matter stripped of its vulgar impurities after the *Nigredo* (the Black Work). She has not yet been clothed in the royal red mantle, yet she is already "their matter before the whitening": purified, fertile, and prepared for the *Albedo*. Her modest hand conceals her breast and sex, symbolizing matter that still preserves its mystery before complete fixation.
The turbulent sea beneath her feet and the white foam constitute a perfect image of dissolution and Saturnian putrefaction. The seed of Uranus (the Celestial Sulfur), cast into the waters (Mercury, the Radical Moisture), has fermented therein. The iridescent shell evokes the Philosophical Vessel in which this generation unfolds.
To the left appear Zephyrus and Aura, the intertwined twin winds.
They blow with vigor while scattering roses. They represent the volatile spirits—the alchemical Breath animating inert matter. Their embrace symbolizes the conjunction of masculine and feminine principles. The pink blossoms they disperse already herald the dawning color that precedes the lunar whitening.
To the right advances the Hora (or Spring Grace), bearing the flowered mantle.
She embodies reception and fixation. The red fabric adorned with flowers symbolizes the veil destined to clothe and perfect matter: the entrance into the White Work. The verdant landscape behind her evokes the vegetation of the Stone—the rebirth of life after the black death.
The entire composition forms a living hieroglyph of the Great Work: from the left (chaos, dissolution, the spiritual wind) toward the right (earth, fixation, manifested beauty). The Goddess at the center serves as the pivot: born from Saturn (black), promised to the Moon (white), and finally destined for the Sun (red).
As Ficino and the Hermetic philosophers teach, she is at once the Soul of the World and the Matter of the Sages undergoing regeneration.
Observe her golden hair flowing like quicksilver: it recalls the Philosophical Mercury that unites all things. Her serene and elongated body represents the perfect form toward which the Art aspires—the Beauty born when chaos has been overcome.
Within the secret language of the *Fedeli d'Amore* and the Hermetic Platonists, hands and folds of drapery often serve as supports for coded gestures, comparable to *mudrās* or esoteric postures.
Here, the Hora's right hand, whose fingers pinch and unfold the red cloth (the color of the final Red Work, but also of vital blood), may signify the fixation of volatile Mercury within matter (Venus). The "bird" emerging from the golden hair and the folds of the fabric would then represent the Mercurial Spirit in the very act of being captured and united.
Do you see the bird?
Botticelli, trained in Verrocchio's workshop and closely associated with the Medicean circles fascinated by Hermeticism, mastered the art of *inganno visivo*—the visual deception by which what appears to be mere drapery or flowing locks often conceals a second level of meaning intended for the *Fedeli* alone.
Thus, the golden Mercurial hair binds together every element: it connects the wind (Zephyrus), the sea, the body of Venus, and the earthly mantle. It is the golden thread that traverses the painting just as Mercury traverses every phase of the Great Work, transforming chaos into harmony.
This detail reinforces the painting's overall interpretation: *The Birth of Venus* is nothing less than the alchemy of Beauty itself—the dissolved black matter which, through Mercury, becomes the White Venus destined for the Sun.
In Hermetic symbolism, the bird frequently represents the volatile spirit—the Bird of Hermes, the newborn Phoenix, or the Raven and Swan corresponding to the successive colors of the Work. Its undulating beak may symbolize the serpentine movement of Mercury or the *Spiritus* stirring philosophical matter.
One may distinguish what resembles a bird with a wavy beak and something akin to arms or limbs. This is probably not a fanciful addition but an intentional hieroglyph in the manner of Renaissance masters.
The apparent arms manipulating the drapery recall the hands of the Sage—or the operations of Nature itself—working upon the veil of matter. The Hora's own gesture, grasping and unfolding the mantle, is highly significant: it evokes veiling and unveiling, fixing the volatile, and accomplishing conjunction.
The art of *inganno visivo*—the art of deceiving the eye while revealing truth to the wise—was highly esteemed during the Florentine Renaissance, especially within the Medici circle and among the Neoplatonists. Artists such as Botticelli concealed symbols, secondary figures, and allegories within folds of drapery, flowing hair, shadows, and floral motifs so that only initiates might perceive them.
A striking example in *The Birth of Venus* lies precisely within Venus's hair and the folds of the red mantle held by the Hora—the area you previously enlarged.
If one observes closely the golden locks interwoven with the red-orange fabric, one may discern almost zoomorphic forms: a bird, or the head of a bird with a curved, undulating beak, accompanied by what resembles wings or outstretched arms.
This is not merely an accidental effect of wind or brushwork. Botticelli deliberately composes these lines ambiguously: at first glance they appear to be no more than hair and drapery (an *inganno* for the uninitiated); to the trained eye they become a living hieroglyph depicting the Bird of Hermes—the Volatile Mercury—in the process of being captured and fixed by the Hora's hand.
The shell itself, with its pearly striations, recalls the Philosophical Vessel—the Egg or Athanor—from which the Stone is born.
Botticelli excels in this art. What seems purely aesthetic—the beauty of floating hair and graceful drapery—is in reality a hidden text intended for the *Fedeli d'Amore* and the Hermetic thinkers of his age. The painting thus becomes a true *Liber Mutus*: silent for the profane, eloquent for those who possess the key.
Were you familiar with the art of *inganno*?
Even professors at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1984 were unfamiliar with it. My son Theo actually got himself into trouble in secondary school because, at fifteen years old, he explained this interpretation to his art teacher, who insisted it was merely coincidence and simply the artist's aesthetic choice. After that, Theo stopped discussing art in class because he wanted good grades.
Does AI recognize these things? Perhaps it depends on who is asking.
The principle is simple: if you come to AI with a blank page—zero—then one thousand times zero is still zero.
But if you arrive with ten, AI can amplify it into one hundred.
It's rather like those AI-generated videos on instagram in which creators tear open *The Birth of Venus* and travel through her digestive tract while completely missing the symbolic language of the artists who conceived these masterpieces. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Botticelli
Can you imagine a sixteen-year-old student like my Theo learning Botticelli that way?
Voici la traduction en anglais, dans un registre encyclopédique proche du style de Wikipédia, tout en conservant les nuances entre les faits établis et les interprétations.
# **The *Fedeli d'Amore*, Dante, Marsilio Ficino, and Botticelli: An Intellectual Tradition Between History, Neoplatonism, and Symbolic Hermeneutics**
The *Fedeli d'Amore* ("Faithful of Love") traditionally refers to a group of Italian poets active during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, including Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, and Dino Frescobaldi. In mainstream historical scholarship, the term primarily designates the circle associated with the *Dolce Stil Novo*, the literary movement that transformed Italian poetry by presenting love as an inner, spiritual, and intellectual experience.
Beginning in the twentieth century, however, several scholars and traditionalist thinkers—notably Luigi Valli, René Guénon, Henry Corbin, and others interested in initiatic traditions—proposed an alternative interpretation. According to this view, the *Fedeli d'Amore* were not merely a literary school but a spiritual community employing the language of courtly love as a symbolic code through which esoteric teachings were transmitted.
This hypothesis remains controversial because no contemporary documents explicitly attest to the existence of an organized initiatic fraternity comparable to medieval religious or chivalric orders. Nevertheless, the existence of a highly sophisticated symbolic language in the poetry of Dante and Cavalcanti is widely acknowledged.
## Dante's Continuing Presence in Fifteenth-Century Florence
Contrary to a common misconception, Dante was by no means a forgotten author during Botticelli's lifetime.
On the contrary, Medicean Florence regarded him as one of the founders of the Italian language and as one of its greatest intellectual authorities. In 1481, Cristoforo Landino published a monumental commentary on the *Divine Comedy*, partially illustrated by Sandro Botticelli himself. Over the following years, Botticelli also produced an extraordinary cycle of drawings illustrating virtually the entire *Divine Comedy*, demonstrating an intimate familiarity with Dante's text.
This engagement extended well beyond literary appreciation. It reveals Dante's central position within Florentine humanist culture.
## Marsilio Ficino and Florentine Neoplatonism
At the same time, Marsilio Ficino was translating Plato, Plotinus, and the *Corpus Hermeticum*. His intellectual project sought to reconcile classical philosophy, Christianity, and the contemplation of beauty within a unified vision of truth.
In this framework, visible beauty becomes the reflection of invisible Beauty.
Love ceases to be merely a human passion and instead becomes the cosmic force by which the soul ascends toward its divine origin.
This philosophical background is now widely regarded as one of the principal interpretative keys to Botticelli's mythological paintings, especially *Primavera* and *The Birth of Venus*.
## Botticelli and the Florentine Intellectual Elite
There is no historical evidence demonstrating that Botticelli was himself a philosopher or a member of any secret society.
There is, however, little doubt that he belonged to the intellectual milieu surrounding the Medici court. His patrons were among the most cultivated figures in Florence, and he worked within an environment where poets, philosophers, theologians, and humanists constantly exchanged ideas. His paintings were often conceived for viewers capable of appreciating multiple layers of meaning.
During the Renaissance, a painting was rarely intended as a simple illustration. It was expected to operate simultaneously on aesthetic, mythological, moral, philosophical, and sometimes theological levels.
## Semantic Codes in Renaissance Painting
Modern art history has traditionally emphasized perspective, pictorial technique, composition, patronage, and documentary evidence.
By contrast, the semantic systems potentially embedded within Renaissance paintings have often received less attention, either because they are difficult to verify or because they require an interdisciplinary approach combining literature, philosophy, religious history, iconology, and the history of ideas.
Yet Renaissance artists worked within a culture that naturally accepted multiple levels of meaning within images.
Allegory, emblematic symbolism, visual puns, numerical correspondences, poetic allusions, philosophical references, and carefully constructed iconographic programs frequently coexisted within a single work.
The painting itself became a silent text.
## *Inganno*: The Art of Visual Deception
Italian Renaissance aesthetics cultivated the concept of *inganno*—literally "deception" or "illusion."
This notion referred not only to technical illusionism but also to the deliberate creation of multiple simultaneous readings.
A single form could appear to an ordinary observer as nothing more than a fold of drapery, while suggesting to a learned viewer a symbolic figure, a philosophical concept, or a hidden allusion.
Such visual ambiguity belonged naturally to Renaissance humanist culture.
When modern scholars identify specific hidden figures—for example, a hermetic bird concealed within flowing hair or drapery—these interpretations remain hypothetical unless supported by contemporary documentary evidence.
## *The Birth of Venus* as a Philosophical Image
Most art historians today agree that *The Birth of Venus* transcends its role as a simple mythological illustration.
The painting embodies themes central to Florentine Neoplatonism: the birth of Beauty, the ascent of the soul, cosmic harmony, and the transformation of nature into spirit.
Some scholars and esoteric interpreters have proposed an additional level of meaning by reading the composition as an alchemical or Hermetic allegory.
Within this interpretative framework, Venus represents philosophical matter purified after the Black Work (*Nigredo*); Zephyrus embodies the Mercurial Breath; the shell symbolizes the Philosophical Vessel; and the red mantle carried by the Hora foreshadows the subsequent stages of the Great Work.
Although such readings do not represent scholarly consensus, they belong to a longstanding tradition of symbolic interpretation extending from the nineteenth century to the present.
## An Ongoing Debate
The central question today consists of distinguishing between two different issues.
The first is historical: can it be demonstrated that Botticelli intentionally incorporated precise initiatic codes into his paintings?
The second is hermeneutical: do his works legitimately support multiple symbolic readings rooted in the philosophical, poetic, and religious culture of Renaissance Florence?
The first question remains unresolved because of the absence of direct documentary evidence.
The second has received much broader acceptance, since it corresponds closely to the extraordinary intellectual climate of Medicean Florence, where Dante's poetry, Ficino's Neoplatonism, classical antiquity, Christian humanism, and renewed interest in Hermetic traditions all converged.
Consequently, even without assuming the existence of a formally organized secret society, Botticelli's paintings clearly belong to a culture in which images were intended to be read as much as they were to be seen. The possibility that Renaissance painters employed sophisticated symbolic languages therefore remains a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry, provided that established historical facts are carefully distinguished from interpretative hypotheses.
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### Historiographical Perspective
The question of semantic codes in Renaissance painting remains one of the most debated areas of interdisciplinary research. Traditional art history has generally privileged documentary sources, stylistic analysis, patronage, and iconography grounded in contemporary texts. Scholars working within the fields of symbolism, comparative religion, Hermetic studies, and intellectual history have instead explored whether Renaissance works may preserve additional layers of meaning accessible primarily through philosophical, literary, or esoteric traditions.
Rather than representing mutually exclusive approaches, these perspectives may be viewed as complementary methodologies. Documentary history establishes what can be demonstrated from surviving evidence, while symbolic hermeneutics investigates how Renaissance audiences, educated in allegory, Neoplatonism, classical mythology, and theological exegesis, may have understood images whose richness often exceeds purely literal interpretation.
In this sense, Botticelli's paintings continue to occupy a unique position at the crossroads of art, philosophy, poetry, and the history of ideas, inviting both historical investigation and symbolic interpretation.
One note for accuracy: the historical elements in this text (especially regarding the *Fedeli d'Amore*, fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fid%C3%A8les_d%27Amour
Botticelli's intentions, and specific alchemical symbolism) combine established scholarship with interpretive and esoteric readings. If your goal is publication or an academic audience, I can also produce an English version that clearly distinguishes historical evidence from symbolic interpretation while preserving the Renaissance tone.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Botticelli
# **The *Fedeli d'Amore* of Italy and Persia: A Comparative Study of Christian and Islamic Mysticism**
There is little doubt that both profound similarities and significant differences exist between the histories and spiritual teachings of Christian and Islamic mysticism. Among the most remarkable periods in the development of these two traditions are the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an era that witnessed an extraordinary flowering of mystical thought across both Europe and the Islamic world. During these centuries, some of the greatest Christian contemplatives and Muslim Sufi masters explored the nature of divine love, spiritual transformation, symbolic language, and the soul's journey toward ultimate reality.
In thirteenth-century Italy there emerged the celebrated circle known as the **Fedeli d'Amore** ("Faithful of Love"), with which Dante Alighieri has traditionally been associated. According to conventional literary history, this group represented the culmination of the *Dolce Stil Novo*, the "Sweet New Style" of poetry inaugurated by Guido Guinizelli and perfected by Guido Cavalcanti and Dante.
Yet several twentieth-century scholars, among them Luigi Valli, René Guénon, Henry Corbin, and later Antoine Faivre, have argued that the *Fedeli d'Amore* may have represented considerably more than a literary movement. They suggest that beneath the language of courtly love lay a symbolic vocabulary expressing an initiatic vision of reality. Within this interpretation, the beloved woman, the journey of love, death, beauty, light, and even poetic language itself become metaphysical symbols pointing toward an interior path of spiritual realization.
Although this interpretation remains debated among historians, it has profoundly influenced comparative studies of Western esotericism.
One century earlier, within Persian Sufism, a remarkably similar current of mystical thought had already flourished.
Henry Corbin famously referred to certain Persian mystics as **"the Fedeli d'Amore of Persia."** This designation does not imply the existence of any historical relationship between Italian poets and Persian Sufis but rather emphasizes a striking convergence in spiritual language and symbolic imagination.
Among these Persian masters, **Rūzbihān Baqlī of Shiraz** occupies a central place.
Living between 1128 and 1209, Rūzbihān developed one of the most sophisticated metaphysics of love in Islamic mysticism. His masterpiece, *ʿAbhar al-ʿĀshiqīn* ("The Jasmine of the Lovers"), presents love not as an emotion but as the primordial force through which God reveals Himself within creation.
Beauty, in this perspective, is neither illusion nor temptation.
It is a divine epiphany.
The contemplation of human beauty becomes the mirror through which the soul gradually awakens to Absolute Beauty.
This doctrine bears striking affinities with the Neoplatonic conception of beauty that would later flourish in Renaissance Florence.
## Dante and the Spiritualization of Love
Dante's *La Vita Nuova* likewise transforms earthly love into an initiatic journey.
Beatrice is never merely a historical woman.
She gradually becomes wisdom, grace, revelation, and ultimately the guide leading the poet toward the Beatific Vision in the *Divine Comedy*.
Love ceases to be psychological.
It becomes ontological.
To love truly is to ascend through successive degrees of reality until one reaches the source of Being itself.
This transformation of eros into metaphysical ascent constitutes one of the most remarkable parallels between Dante and Persian Sufi literature.
## Love as Symbolic Language
In both traditions, love functions simultaneously on several levels.
It is emotional experience.
It is ethical transformation.
It is metaphysical knowledge.
It is theological revelation.
The beloved woman is never exhausted by her historical identity.
She becomes the visible manifestation of an invisible reality.
The language of desire conceals a language of knowledge.
Poetry itself becomes initiation.
This multilayered symbolism explains why both Dante and Persian Sufi poets frequently appear obscure to literal readers while remaining extraordinarily transparent to readers trained in symbolic interpretation.
## Symbolism and the Invisible World
One of the principal conclusions reached by Henry Corbin concerns what he termed the **imaginal world** (*mundus imaginalis*).
According to Corbin, both medieval Christian mysticism and Islamic Sufism recognize an intermediate world situated between material existence and pure intellect.
This symbolic universe is neither fantasy nor physical reality.
Rather, it is the domain in which spiritual truths assume visionary forms accessible through imagination purified by contemplation.
Within such a framework, poetry and painting cease to be mere artistic expressions.
They become vehicles of metaphysical knowledge.
Images no longer illustrate ideas.
They embody them.
## Possible Channels of Cultural Transmission
The question naturally arises whether such remarkable similarities resulted from independent development or from historical contacts between Islamic and Christian civilizations.
Although no direct line of transmission between Persian Sufism and Dante can be demonstrated with certainty, medieval Europe maintained extensive intellectual exchanges with the Islamic world.
The Crusades, commercial routes linking Italy with the Eastern Mediterranean, Sicily under Norman rule, Islamic Spain (*al-Andalus*), and the great translation movements centered in Toledo all contributed to the circulation of philosophical, scientific, and mystical ideas.
The works of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and later Ibn ʿArabī profoundly influenced European intellectual life, whether directly or indirectly.
Certain historians have therefore suggested that symbolic motifs, metaphysical concepts, and methods of allegorical interpretation may have travelled across these cultural frontiers.
Such hypotheses remain subjects of scholarly debate.
## From Dante to the Renaissance
By the fifteenth century, Dante had become one of the intellectual pillars of Florentine culture.
Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano, and the artists working under Medici patronage inherited a cultural world in which classical mythology, Christian theology, Neoplatonic philosophy, and poetic symbolism increasingly converged.
Within this environment, Sandro Botticelli produced paintings whose extraordinary richness continues to stimulate philosophical and symbolic interpretation.
Whether or not Botticelli consciously inherited the traditions associated with the *Fedeli d'Amore*, his works undeniably belong to a culture that regarded images as multilayered texts.
The painting was expected to reveal different meanings according to the intellectual and spiritual preparation of its viewer.
This conception closely resembles the medieval understanding of Sacred Scripture itself, which possessed literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical meanings simultaneously.
## Comparative Perspectives
The comparison between the Italian *Fedeli d'Amore* and the Persian mystics should therefore not be understood primarily as an attempt to prove historical influence.
Rather, it reveals the emergence, within two different civilizations, of remarkably similar symbolic languages centered upon Beauty, Love, spiritual ascent, and the transformation of the soul.
Whether these correspondences result from historical transmission, shared Platonic heritage, or parallel spiritual development remains an open question.
What is beyond dispute is that both traditions elevated poetry into a genuine method of metaphysical knowledge.
Love ceased to be merely a human sentiment.
It became a path.
Beauty became revelation.
Language itself became initiation.
In this sense, both Dante and Rūzbihān Baqlī stand among the greatest architects of what may be called the universal metaphysics of Love—a vision in which the visible world serves as the symbolic mirror of invisible realities, and where the ultimate destination of the lover is not another human being, but Truth itself.
There is not doubt that there exist both similarities and contrasts in the history and teachings of Christian and Islamic mysticism. One of the most fascinating periods in the history of the two religions and the mystical schools that appeared in them is the 12th and 13th centuries in which so many great Christians and Muslims mystics lived. In the 13th Century there appeared in Italy the well-known secret organization with its mystical and esoteric teachings called the Fedeli d’amore to which Dante belonged. This organization was not only devoted to esoteric matters but also had a political and social dimension. Nevertheless, mystical and esoteric teachings were at the heart of its concerns and it is history identified with hidden esoteric ideas and doctrines. A century earlier there appeared within the Sufi tradition in Persia a particular school of love mysticism that the famous French scholar of Islamic thought, Henry Corbin, has called “the Fedeli d’amore of Persia”. Among the latter groups Rūzbihān Baqlī Shīrāzī is one of the most celebrated and is considered as one of the most significant figures in the history of Sufism as a whole. As for Europe, among the Western Fedeli d’amore it is of course the figure of Dante that stands out above all others. In our present study we have analyzed the ‘Abhar al-‘āshinqīn of Rūzbihān Baqlī on the one hand and the works of Dante, especially the Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova, on the other and have then compared and contrasted the thought and style of these two colossal figures. Our goal has been to study and to reveal both the similarities and differences of the manifestation and treatment of Love on different levels in the teachings the Christian and Islamic traditions as crystallized in and associated with the Fedeli d’amore of Italy and of Persia. Some attention has also been paid to the influence of Islamic thought upon the medieval West especially in the domain of symbolism, and our study may therefore said to be both morphological and historical.
Author
Shieh, Rana
scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/concern/gw_etds/m039k4971?lo...
The steel arches forming the Veterans Drive Tunnel for eastbound traffic inch ever closer to the median wall.
Construction crews excavated the median of I-5 in SeaTac to build the tunnel as part of the SR 509 Completion Project.
The tunnel will provide a link between a new off-ramp (barely visible to the right of the interstate) and Military Road on the east side of I-5.
The SR 509 Completion Project is part of the Puget Sound Gateway Program which completes critical missing links in Washington state's highway and freight network.