View allAll Photos Tagged Manufacturing_process
One of the problems with my old MacBook Pro was the unresponsive keyboard/trackpad due to the improper installation of the flex cable in the manufacturing process. This is a common problem with old MacBook Pros.
Apple Store quoted me $400-1,000 for the fix, so I decided to fix this by myself. The replacement cable was just $20.
After the fix, my old MacBook Pro runs flawlessly :-)
Argonne’s Materials Engineering Research Facility (MERF) is an integral part of the laboratory’s Manufacturing Science and Engineering program. The MERF’s capabilities include:
- Development of analytical methods and quality control procedures for new material specifications
- Scale-up of newly discovered materials.
- Analysis and and refinement of processes for materials synthesis.
- Providing kilogram quantities of available material to industry for testing.
- Evaluation of emerging manufacturing technologies.
The MERF also serves as a user facility that is open to outside organizations, including other national laboratories, universities and industry for process R&D and scale-up of new materials and validation of emerging manufacturing processes.
By bridging the gap between small-scale laboratory research and high-volume manufacturing, research at the MERF promotes the development, validation and ultimate commercialization of advanced material chemistries.
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
THE ACCIDENTAL TAFFY
Legend has it that Salt Water Taffy received its name by accident. A young candy merchant, opened a taffy stand on the first Atlantic City Boardwalk - then just two steps above sea level. One night a generous tide brought in a lively surf which sprayed sea foam over his establishment and dampened his stock of candy. The next morning, the merchant was dismayed to find his merchandise wet and responded to a girl's request for taffy with a sarcastic but witty, "you mean Salt Water Taffy." The name, stuck!
FROM FISH MERCHANT TO CANDY MAKER
At the same time Joseph Fralinger, a former glassblower and fish merchant, opened a retail store on the Boardwalk. Within a year, Fralinger had added a taffy concession and spent the winter perfecting the Salt Water Taffy formula, first using molasses, then chocolate and vanilla, eventually reaching 25 flavors
As Fralinger's grew to six locations, he decided that Salt Water Taffy should return home with resort visitors. Using experience from his fish merchant days, he packed one pound oyster boxes with Salt Water Taffy, making it the first "Atlantic City Souvenir." The one pound box still remains the most popular souvenir almost 125 years later. By 1899 Salt Water Taffy had become a household word across America!
PULLING THE HISTORY TOGETHER
Meanwhile, confectioner Enoch James and his sons claim to have been making Salt Water Taffy before they introduced it on the Atlantic City Boardwalk in the 1880's. After many years of working for large candy companies throughout the country, Mr. James brought his family to Atlantic City to sell their "original" Salt Water Taffy.
Enoch James developed a high quality recipe that would not pull out one's teeth. He also eliminated the stickiness that made the taffy and its wrapper inseparable. The result was a smooth, rich, wholesome taffy available in a variety of flavors and a new "Cut-to-fit-the-mouth" shape. The James' product line soon extended to chocolate dipped Salt Water Taffy, filled centers, chocolate taffy pops, macaroons and boardwalk fudge. Enoch James' packaged his confections in seashore novelties such as the "barrel" and "satchel" that are still popular today.
COOK, PULL, CUT AND WRAP -
MAKING SALT WATER TAFFY!
In the 1880's, Salt Water Taffy was cooked in copper kettles over open coal fires, cooled on marble slabs, and pulled on a large hook on the wall. Pulling the taffy was designed to add air to the corn syrup and sugar confection. By draping 10 to 25 pounds of cooled taffy over the hook and then pulling it away from the hook, the taffy stretched. When the taffy reached five or six feet in length, the puller looped the taffy back over the hook, folding it onto itself and trapping air between the two lengths.
An accomplished taffy puller would work quickly and listen for the familiar swish sound, then the smack or slap sound of the two lengths as they joined as one. This process of aeration helped to keep the taffy soft and prevented stickiness. The pulled taffy was then shaped by hand rolling it on a marble or wooden table into ¼ inch diameter snake. It was then cut to the proper length with scissors. And finally, the taffy was wrapped in a pre-cut piece of paper with a twist at both ends. All of this was done by hand and usually within the sight of Boardwalk strollers who were eager for entertainment.
By 1907, the James' family had updated the manufacturing process to include taffy wrapping machines, the first candy pulling machines, electric tempering ovens, and vacuum cooking kettles. These machines made great strides for the taffy manufacturing process and are the basis of how taffy is still made today.
THE MOST FAMOUS NAMES IN SALT WATER TAFFY
Whoever was the originator of Salt Water Taffy, Enoch James' and Joseph Fralinger's original recipes and excellence in candy making have been preserved through the sands of time. Although Salt Water Taffy may have gotten its name by "accident," the millions who enjoy Salt Water Taffy from James' and Fralinger's, can attest that our quality is no accident!
We still make all of our candy the old-fashioned way using the original recipes and finest ingredients. As a fifth generation family-owned business, we're proud to continue the candy making tradition began by James' and Fralinger's.
Wotancraft's Traveler's Notebook and City Explorer Camera Bag Review - Part 1
Our job to find great stuffs from all over the world doesn't stop at product level, I believe understanding the concept and stories behind is far more important than product features. Only through digging deeper will I be able to bring true benefits to end users, in the process of doing this I learned a lot and makes my job an adventurous one. It is exactly this practice which sets us apart from a typical retail chain store.
This review is separated into two parts. Part 1 is a story in this post, Part 2 is a product review in the next post.
I first found Wotancraft from random searching on the net a year or so before, then I popped into a great store in Hong Kong called Annie Barton and found their products there. Admiring the quality and aesthetics I grew interest in the brand, I was scared away by the price though. So despite having the feeling that those bags suit my needs and in styles I adore, I found myself staring at them repeatedly on the net and never got myself one. What stopped me from getting one? The price tag and lack of knowledge about Wotancraft's true attention to details. Annie Barton told me each one of the bags were made by hand by those artisans in Taiwan, I couldn't believe it, no way, the bags are so well made I thought they were produced by professional mass producing bag maker. Judging from the details, each model requires literally hundreds of manufacturing processes and it was not possible to be made by just a few persons by hands. The story turned out entirely true when I got a chance to visit Taipei 20 days ago.
On the day I arrived Taipei, before other business engagements I shot right away to the Wotancraft showroom/shop. It was a huge disparity between what's inside the place and everything else surrounding it! Inside a dim florescent lit office building full of local trading businesses with zero taste and style decorations, I was still assuming Wotancraft a corporation you know, but once I entered the showroom, everything changed.
Surrounded by cozy fixtures made from aged wood and pig iron, products made from leather and canvas, I immediately felt homey. One side of the store was an open shelf displaying full product range and prototypes, while the other side is a service counter full of custom made leather straps for Panerai watches. I picked up the City Explorer series of bags and started examining each one of them until a friendly staff came out of the backyard and explained to me product details.
Soon I was unpacking my camera bag and started trying out almost every model possible. I guess camera bag to a guy is like fashion to a girl, you can spend hours enjoying the selection process in a setting like that. The staff noticed my Traveler's Notebook and some of my leather craft stuffs like camera case and straps. "James have the same notebook! He made crazy customization of it." That's when real conversation began.
By then I realized that each one of their bags were literally made by their own hands. Four artisans made up the entire Wotancraft company, the two I met in store were among them. It was not a corporation I presumed before, just a small bunch of people doing everything by themselves. Time to leave for a business engagement, hungered for more stories, I used Paypal to pay for the City Explorer 002 Ranger bag, left the showroom and determined to contact James about his Traveler's Notebook and come back a few days later. During my initial stay at the showroom, there were constant influx of Panerai fans looking for unique leather straps, but I'm not gonna cover that part of the story here.
3 days later, after a few email exchanges I finally met James, the soul behind Wotancraft. The company was created out of his pure passion in photography and watches, despite working as a bio-chemist after his graduation, he started to make his first prototype camera bag 5 years ago. Not satisfied with camera bags with trivial features and ugly looks, he explored different forms and materials and came up with a bag he would use. He was kind enough to show me all the thoughts he put into this City Explorer 002 Ranger bag, comparing it to his first prototype. I will cover the details in Part 2 in the next post.
Let's talk about James' Traveler's Notebook. In a typical Traveler's Notebook show me yours and I'll show you mine fashion, we exchanged our usage patterns. His cover is not the original but one made by himself, a very thoughtful implementation. There are two layers of leathers, a thicker one forms the shape while the outer thinner one gives its distinct Wotancraft look.
The thin leather on the cover is the same material James uses in his City Explorer series of camera bags. Stitched together on 3 sides, the notebook cover has an opening on one side doubling the cover as a pocket by itself. To increase the pocket size, James relocated the elastic string attachment point from the middle of the back to the edge, creating an inner space large enough for his stationery stuffs.
As a master of customization, he of course couldn't settle with a bookmark without his very own Wotancraft branded charm and leather tag. On typical day, James would use two types of notebooks inside - Traveler's Notebook lightweight paper for note taking, sketch paper for sketching. Inspecting his TN, I found inspirations common to creative people, not only would he take notes in meticulous details, he sketches out architectural structures purely out of his head, perhaps this keen practice is his way of precipitating his creativity into reality.
James' TN is so far the best Traveler's Notebook mod I've ever seen, functional and pleasing. I've got to make one myself someday :) Stay tuned for Part 2.
More on Scription blog: scription.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/wotancrafts-travelers-...
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
In the grand scope of World War 2 fighter aircraft there is a little-remembered French design designated the Arsenal "VG-33". The aircraft was born from a rather lengthy line of prototype developments put forth by the company in the years leading up to World War 2 and the VG-33 and its derivatives represented the culmination of this work before the German invasion rendered all further work moot.
The Arsenal de l'Aeronautique company was formed by the French government in 1936 ahead of World War 2. It began operations with dedicated design and development of a fast fighter type until the German conquer of France in 1940 after which the company then focused on engine production after 1945. Then followed a period of design and construction of gliders and missiles before being privatized in 1952 (as SFECMAS). The company then fell under the SNCAN brand label and became "Nord Aviation" in 1955.
The VG-33 was the result of the company's research. Work on a new fast fighter began by Arsenal engineers in 1936 and the line began with the original VG-30 prototype achieving first flight on October 1st, 1938. Named for engineer Vernisse (V) and designer Jean Gaultier (G), the VG-30 showcased a sound design with good performance and speed during the tests, certainly suitable for progression as a military fighter and with future potential.
Development continued into what became the VG-31 which incorporated smaller wings. The VG-32 then followed which returned to the full-sized wings and installed the American Allison V-1710-C15 inline supercharged engine of 1,054 horsepower. The VG-32 then formed the basis of the VG-33 which reverted to a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 engine and first flight was in early 1939, months ahead of the German invasion of Poland. Flight testing then spanned into August and serial production of this model was ordered.
The VG-33 was one of the more impressive prewar fighter ventures by the French that included the Dewoitine D.520, understood to be on par with the lead German fighter aircraft of the period - the famous Messerschmitt Bf 109.
Only about forty or so French Arsenal VG-33 fighters were completed before the Fall of France in 1940, with 160 more on order and in different states of completion. Despite the production contract, Arsenal' engineers continued work on the basic design for improved and specialized sub-types. The VG-34 appeared in early 1940 outfitted with the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-45 engine of 935 horsepower, which improved performance at altitude. An uprated engine was installed in VG-35 and VG-36, too. They utilized a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 engine of 1,000 horsepower with a revised undercarriage and radiator system.
VG-37 was a long-range version that was not furthered beyond the drawing board, but the VG-38 with a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-77 engine that featured two exhaust turbochargers for improved performance at high altitude, achived pre-production status with a series of about 10 aircraft. These were transferred to GC 1/3 for field trials in early 1940 and actively used in the defence against the German invasion.
The VG-39 ended the line as the last viable prototype model with its drive emerging from a Hispano-Suiza 12Z engine of 1,280 horsepower. A new three-machine-gun wing was installed for a formidable six-gun armament array. This model was also ordered into production as the VG-39bis and was to carry a 1,600 horsepower Hispano-Suiza 12Z-17 engine into service. However, the German invasion eliminated any further progress, and eventually any work on the Arsenal VG fighter family was abandoned, even though more designs were planned, e .g. the VG-40, which mounted a Rolls-Royce Merlin III, and the VG-50, featuring the newer Allison V-1710-39. Neither was built.
Anyway, the finalized VG-38 was an all-modern looking fighter design with elegant lines and a streamlined appearance. Its power came from an inline engine fitted to the front of the fuselage and headed by a large propeller spinner at the center of a three-bladed unit. The cockpit was held over midships with the fuselage tapering to become the tail unit.
The tail featured a rounded vertical tail fin and low-set horizontal planes in a traditional arrangement - all surfaces enlarged for improved high altitude performance.
The monoplane wing assemblies were at the center of the design in the usual way. The pilot's field of view was hampered by the long nose ahead, the wings below and the raised fuselage spine aft, even though the pilot sat under a largely unobstructed canopy utilizing light framing. The canopy opened to starboard.
A large air scoop for the radiator and air intercooler was mounted under the fuselage. As an unusual feature its outlet was located in a dorsal position, behind the cockpit. The undercarriage was of the typical tail-dragger arrangement of the period, retracting inwards. The tail wheel was retractable, too.
Construction was largely of wood which led to a very lightweight design that aided performance and the manufacture process. Unlike other fighters of the 1930s, the VG-38 was well-armed with a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon, firing through the propeller hub, complemented by 4 x 7.5mm MAC 1934 series machine guns in the wings, just like the VG-33.
The aircraft never saw combat action in the Battle of France. Its arrival was simply too late to have any effect on the outcome of the German plans. Therefore, with limited production and very limited combat service during the defence of Paris in May 1940, it largely fell into the pages of history with all completed models lost.
Specifications:
Crew: 1
Length: 28.05 ft (8.55 m)
Width: 35.43 ft (10.80 m)
Height: 10.83ft (3.30 m)
Weight: Empty 4,519 lb (2,050 kg), MTOW 5,853 lb (2,655 kg)
Maximum Speed: 398 mph (641 kmh at 10.000m)
Maximum Range: 746 miles (1,200 km)
Service Ceiling: 39,305 ft (12.000 m; 7.458 miles)
Powerplant:
1x Hispano-Suiza 12Y-77 V-12 liquid-cooled inline piston engine
with two Brown-Boveri exhaust turbochargers, developing 1,100 hp (820 kW).
Armament:
1x 20mm Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
4x 7.5mm MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
I found the VG-33 fascinating - an obscure and sleek fighter with lots of potential that suffered mainly from bad timing. There are actually VG-33 kits from Azur and Pegasus, but how much more fun is it to create your own interpretation of the historic events, esp. as a submission to a Battle of Britain Group Build at whatifmodelers.com?
I had this project on the whif agenda for a long time, and kept my eyes open for potential models. One day I encountered Amodel's Su-1 and Su-3 kits and was stunned by this aircraft's overall similarity to the VG-33. When I found the real VG-38 description I decided to convert the Su-3 into this elusive French fighter!
The Su-3 was built mainly OOB, it is a nice kit with much detail, even though it needs some work as a short run offering. I kept the odd radiator installation of the Suchoj aircraft, but changed the landing gear from a P-40 style design (retracting backwards and rotating 90°) into a conservative, inward retracting system. I even found forked gear struts in the spares box, from a Fiat G.50. The covers come from a Hawker Hurricane, and the wells were cut out from this pattern, while the rest of the old wells was filled with putty.
Further mods include the cleaned cowling (the Su-3's fuselage-mounted machine guns had to go), while machine guns in the wings were added. The flaps were lowered, too, and the small cockpit canopy cut in two pieces in, for an opened position - a shame you can hardly see anything from the neat interior. Two large antenna masts complete the French style.
Painting and markings:
Again, a rather conservative choice: typical French Air Force colors, in Khaki/Dark Brown/Blue Gray with light blue-gray undersides.
One very inspiring fact about the French tricolor-paint scheme is that no aircraft looked like the other – except for a few types, every aircraft had an individual scheme with more or less complexity or even artistic approach. Even the colors were only vaguely unified: Field mixes were common, as well as mods with other colors that were mixed into the basic three tones!
I settled for a scheme I found on a 1940 Curtiss 75, with clearly defined edges between the paint fields. Anything goes! I used French Khaki, Dark Blue Grey and Light Blue Grey (for the undersides) from Modelmaster's Authentic Enamels range, and Humbrol 170 (Brown Bess) for the Chestnut Brown. Interior surfaces were painted in dark grey (Humbrol 32) while the landing gear well parts of the wings were painted in Aluminum Dope (Humbrol 56).
The decals mainly come from a Hobby Boss Dewoitine D.520, but also from a PrintScale aftermarket sheet and the scrap box.
The kit was slightly weathered with a black ink wash and some dry-painting, more for a dramatic effect than simulating wear and tear, since any aircraft from the VG-33 family would only have had a very short service career.
Well, a travesty whif - and who would expect an obscure Soviet experimental fighter to perform as a lookalike for an even more obscure French experimental fighter? IMHO, it works pretty fine - conservative sould might fair over the spinal radiator outlet and open the dorsal installation, overall both aircraft are very similar in shape, size and layout. :D
FIRESTONE BUILDS TODAY, THE TIRE OF TOMORROW -- PRODUCTION LINE,
FIRESTONE FACTORY AND EXHIBITION BUILDING, NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR
MIXING - GUM-DIPPING - CALENDARING - PLY CUTTING
Date: 1939
Source Type: Postcard
Printer, Publisher, Photographer: Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (#M113-4-39)
Postmark: None
Collection: Steven R. Shook
Remark: World's Most Modern Tire-Production Line
Here, the world's most modern tire is built with the world's most modern and most efficient tire machinery. Each step in the manufacturing process unfolds before your eyes - from the mixing of the raw rubber and chemicals and the Gum-Dipping of the Safety-Lock cords to application of the Gear Grip tread and the wrapping of the finished tire. You actually see how greater Strength and Safety is LOCKED into Firestone Champion Tires.
Copyright 2010. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
In the grand scope of World War 2 fighter aircraft there is a little-remembered French design designated the Arsenal "VG-33". The aircraft was born from a rather lengthy line of prototype developments put forth by the company in the years leading up to World War 2 and the VG-33 and its derivatives represented the culmination of this work before the German invasion rendered all further work moot.
The Arsenal de l'Aeronautique company was formed by the French government in 1936 ahead of World War 2. It began operations with dedicated design and development of a fast fighter type until the German conquer of France in 1940 after which the company then focused on engine production after 1945. Then followed a period of design and construction of gliders and missiles before being privatized in 1952 (as SFECMAS). The company then fell under the SNCAN brand label and became "Nord Aviation" in 1955.
The VG-33 was the result of the company's research. Work on a new fast fighter began by Arsenal engineers in 1936 and the line began with the original VG-30 prototype achieving first flight on October 1st, 1938. Named for engineer Vernisse (V) and designer Jean Gaultier (G), the VG-30 showcased a sound design with good performance and speed during the tests, certainly suitable for progression as a military fighter and with future potential.
Development continued into what became the VG-31 which incorporated smaller wings. The VG-32 then followed which returned to the full-sized wings and installed the American Allison V-1710-C15 inline supercharged engine of 1,054 horsepower. The VG-32 then formed the basis of the VG-33 which reverted to a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 engine and first flight was in early 1939, months ahead of the German invasion of Poland. Flight testing then spanned into August and serial production of this model was ordered.
The VG-33 was one of the more impressive prewar fighter ventures by the French that included the Dewoitine D.520, understood to be on par with the lead German fighter aircraft of the period - the famous Messerschmitt Bf 109.
Only about forty or so French Arsenal VG-33 fighters were completed before the Fall of France in 1940, with 160 more on order and in different states of completion. Despite the production contract, Arsenal' engineers continued work on the basic design for improved and specialized sub-types. The VG-34 appeared in early 1940 outfitted with the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-45 engine of 935 horsepower, which improved performance at altitude. An uprated engine was installed in VG-35 and VG-36, too. They utilized a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 engine of 1,000 horsepower with a revised undercarriage and radiator system.
VG-37 was a long-range version that was not furthered beyond the drawing board, but the VG-38 with a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-77 engine that featured two exhaust turbochargers for improved performance at high altitude, achived pre-production status with a series of about 10 aircraft. These were transferred to GC 1/3 for field trials in early 1940 and actively used in the defence against the German invasion.
The VG-39 ended the line as the last viable prototype model with its drive emerging from a Hispano-Suiza 12Z engine of 1,280 horsepower. A new three-machine-gun wing was installed for a formidable six-gun armament array. This model was also ordered into production as the VG-39bis and was to carry a 1,600 horsepower Hispano-Suiza 12Z-17 engine into service. However, the German invasion eliminated any further progress, and eventually any work on the Arsenal VG fighter family was abandoned, even though more designs were planned, e .g. the VG-40, which mounted a Rolls-Royce Merlin III, and the VG-50, featuring the newer Allison V-1710-39. Neither was built.
Anyway, the finalized VG-38 was an all-modern looking fighter design with elegant lines and a streamlined appearance. Its power came from an inline engine fitted to the front of the fuselage and headed by a large propeller spinner at the center of a three-bladed unit. The cockpit was held over midships with the fuselage tapering to become the tail unit.
The tail featured a rounded vertical tail fin and low-set horizontal planes in a traditional arrangement - all surfaces enlarged for improved high altitude performance.
The monoplane wing assemblies were at the center of the design in the usual way. The pilot's field of view was hampered by the long nose ahead, the wings below and the raised fuselage spine aft, even though the pilot sat under a largely unobstructed canopy utilizing light framing. The canopy opened to starboard.
A large air scoop for the radiator and air intercooler was mounted under the fuselage. As an unusual feature its outlet was located in a dorsal position, behind the cockpit. The undercarriage was of the typical tail-dragger arrangement of the period, retracting inwards. The tail wheel was retractable, too.
Construction was largely of wood which led to a very lightweight design that aided performance and the manufacture process. Unlike other fighters of the 1930s, the VG-38 was well-armed with a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon, firing through the propeller hub, complemented by 4 x 7.5mm MAC 1934 series machine guns in the wings, just like the VG-33.
The aircraft never saw combat action in the Battle of France. Its arrival was simply too late to have any effect on the outcome of the German plans. Therefore, with limited production and very limited combat service during the defence of Paris in May 1940, it largely fell into the pages of history with all completed models lost.
Specifications:
Crew: 1
Length: 28.05 ft (8.55 m)
Width: 35.43 ft (10.80 m)
Height: 10.83ft (3.30 m)
Weight: Empty 4,519 lb (2,050 kg), MTOW 5,853 lb (2,655 kg)
Maximum Speed: 398 mph (641 kmh at 10.000m)
Maximum Range: 746 miles (1,200 km)
Service Ceiling: 39,305 ft (12.000 m; 7.458 miles)
Powerplant:
1x Hispano-Suiza 12Y-77 V-12 liquid-cooled inline piston engine
with two Brown-Boveri exhaust turbochargers, developing 1,100 hp (820 kW).
Armament:
1x 20mm Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
4x 7.5mm MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
I found the VG-33 fascinating - an obscure and sleek fighter with lots of potential that suffered mainly from bad timing. There are actually VG-33 kits from Azur and Pegasus, but how much more fun is it to create your own interpretation of the historic events, esp. as a submission to a Battle of Britain Group Build at whatifmodelers.com?
I had this project on the whif agenda for a long time, and kept my eyes open for potential models. One day I encountered Amodel's Su-1 and Su-3 kits and was stunned by this aircraft's overall similarity to the VG-33. When I found the real VG-38 description I decided to convert the Su-3 into this elusive French fighter!
The Su-3 was built mainly OOB, it is a nice kit with much detail, even though it needs some work as a short run offering. I kept the odd radiator installation of the Suchoj aircraft, but changed the landing gear from a P-40 style design (retracting backwards and rotating 90°) into a conservative, inward retracting system. I even found forked gear struts in the spares box, from a Fiat G.50. The covers come from a Hawker Hurricane, and the wells were cut out from this pattern, while the rest of the old wells was filled with putty.
Further mods include the cleaned cowling (the Su-3's fuselage-mounted machine guns had to go), while machine guns in the wings were added. The flaps were lowered, too, and the small cockpit canopy cut in two pieces in, for an opened position - a shame you can hardly see anything from the neat interior. Two large antenna masts complete the French style.
Painting and markings:
Again, a rather conservative choice: typical French Air Force colors, in Khaki/Dark Brown/Blue Gray with light blue-gray undersides.
One very inspiring fact about the French tricolor-paint scheme is that no aircraft looked like the other – except for a few types, every aircraft had an individual scheme with more or less complexity or even artistic approach. Even the colors were only vaguely unified: Field mixes were common, as well as mods with other colors that were mixed into the basic three tones!
I settled for a scheme I found on a 1940 Curtiss 75, with clearly defined edges between the paint fields. Anything goes! I used French Khaki, Dark Blue Grey and Light Blue Grey (for the undersides) from Modelmaster's Authentic Enamels range, and Humbrol 170 (Brown Bess) for the Chestnut Brown. Interior surfaces were painted in dark grey (Humbrol 32) while the landing gear well parts of the wings were painted in Aluminum Dope (Humbrol 56).
The decals mainly come from a Hobby Boss Dewoitine D.520, but also from a PrintScale aftermarket sheet and the scrap box.
The kit was slightly weathered with a black ink wash and some dry-painting, more for a dramatic effect than simulating wear and tear, since any aircraft from the VG-33 family would only have had a very short service career.
Well, a travesty whif - and who would expect an obscure Soviet experimental fighter to perform as a lookalike for an even more obscure French experimental fighter? IMHO, it works pretty fine - conservative sould might fair over the spinal radiator outlet and open the dorsal installation, overall both aircraft are very similar in shape, size and layout. :D
Discovery STO - 70 Ton, Single Stage to Orbit Fixed Wing Aircraft - Space Plane - Hypersonic Plane, U-TBCC / Unified Turbine Based Combined Cycle & Aerospike
Iteration 1, Mach 8-10 in amtmosphere, 195ft long, Heavy Lift Single Stage To Orbit Fixed Wing Aircraft. 70 TONS, ie 140,000 LBS, 60 ft X 15ft X 15ft payload bay. Up in the Falcon Heavy and Delta IV class, except not $400 million to launch giant payloads into orbit, but below $250 per lbs, or about $28 million to launch giant payloads, and normalized orbital flight, as normal as a 737 commercial flight. Load up, refuel, take off in an afternoon. I estimate this aircraft would cost about $750 million each for space capable. In atmosphere commercial, roughly $300 million each for a 200 passenger M8-10 (not designed yet)
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www.ioaircraft.com/hypersonic/ranger.php
Drew Blair
www.linkedin.com/in/drew-b-25485312/
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Unified Turbine Based Combined Cycle. Current technologies and what Lockheed is trying to force on the Dept of Defense, for that low speed Mach 5 plane DOD gave them $1 billion to build and would disintegrate above Mach 5, is TBCC. 2 separate propulsion systems in the same airframe, which requires TWICE the airframe space to use.
Unified Turbine Based Combined Cycle is 1 propulsion system cutting that airframe deficit in half, and also able to operate above Mach 10 up to Mach 15 in atmosphere, and a simple nozzle modification allows for outside atmosphere rocket mode, ie orbital capable.
Additionally, Reaction Engines maximum air breather mode is Mach 4.5, above that it will explode in flight from internal pressures are too high to operate. Thus, must switch to non air breather rocket mode to operate in atmosphere in hypersonic velocities. Which as a result, makes it not feasible for anything practical. It also takes an immense amount of fuel to function.
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tbcc, glide breaker, fighter plane, hyperonic fighter, stealth fighter, boeing phantom express, phantom works, boeing phantom works, lockheed skunk works, hypersonic weapon, hypersonic missile, scramjet missile, scramjet engineering, scramjet physics, boost glide, tactical glide vehicle, Boeing XS-1, htv, Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon, (ARRW), hypersonic tactical vehicle, hypersonic plane, hypersonic aircraft, space plane, scramjet, turbine based combined cycle, ramjet, dual mode ramjet, darpa, onr, navair, afrl, air force research lab, office of naval research, defense advanced research project agency, defense science, missile defense agency, aerospike, vtol, vertical take off, air taxi, personal air vehicle, boeing go fly prize, go fly prize,
Advanced Additive Manufacturing for Hypersonic Aircraft
Utilizing new methods of fabrication and construction, make it possible to use additive manufacturing, dramatically reducing the time and costs of producing hypersonic platforms from missiles, aircraft, and space capable craft. Instead of aircraft being produced in piece, then bolted together; small platforms can be produced as a single unit and large platforms can be produces in large section and mated without bolting. These techniques include using exotic materials and advanced assembly processes, with an end result of streamlining the production costs and time for hypersonic aircraft; reducing months of assembly to weeks. Overall, this process greatly reduced the cost for producing hypersonic platforms. Even to such an extent that a Hellfire missile costs apx $100,000 but by utilizing our technologies, replacing it with a Mach 8-10 hypersonic missile of our physics/engineering and that missile would cost roughly $75,000 each delivered.
Materials used for these manufacturing processes are not disclosed, but overall, provides a foundation for extremely high stresses and thermodynamics, ideal for hypersonic platforms. This specific methodology and materials applications is many decades ahead of all known programs. Even to the extend of normalized space flight and re-entry, without concern of thermodynamic failure.
*Note, most entities that are experimenting with additive manufacturing for hypersonic aircraft, this makes it mainstream and standardized processes, which also applies for mass production.
What would normally be measured in years and perhaps a decade to go from drawing board to test flights, is reduced to singular months and ready for production within a year maximum.
Unified Turbine Based Combined Cycle (U-TBCC)
To date, the closest that NASA and industry have achieved for turbine based aircraft to fly at hypersonic velocities is by mounting a turbine into an aircraft and sharing the inlet with a scramjet or rocket based motor. Reaction Engines Sabre is not able to achieve hypersonic velocities and can only transition into a non air breathing rocket for beyond Mach 4.5
However, utilizing Unified Turbine Based Combine Cycle also known as U-TBCC, the two separate platforms are able to share a common inlet and the dual mode ramjet/scramjet is contained within the engine itself, which allows for a much smaller airframe footprint, thus engingeers are able to then design much higher performance aerial platforms for hypersonic flight, including the ability for constructing true single stage to orbit aircraft by utilizing a modification/version that allows for transition to outside atmosphere propulsion without any other propulsion platforms within the aircraft. By transitioning and developing aircraft to use Unified Turbine Based Combined Cycle, this propulsion system opens up new options to replace that airframe deficit for increased fuel capacity and/or payload.
Enhanced Dynamic Cavitation
Dramatically Increasing the efficiency of fuel air mixture for combustion processes at hypersonic velocities within scramjet propulsion platforms. The aspects of these processes are non disclosable.
Dynamic Scramjet Ignition Processes
For optimal scramjet ignition, a process known as Self Start is sought after, but in many cases if the platform becomes out of attitude, the scramjet will ignite. We have already solved this problem which as a result, a scramjet propulsion system can ignite at lower velocities, high velocities, at optimal attitude or not optimal attitude. It doesn't matter, it will ignite anyways at the proper point for maximum thrust capabilities at hypersonic velocities.
Hydrogen vs Kerosene Fuel Sources
Kerosene is an easy fuel to work with, and most western nations developing scramjet platforms use Kerosene for that fact. However, while kerosene has better thermal properties then Hydrogen, Hydrogen is a far superior fuel source in scramjet propulsion flight, do it having a much higher efficiency capability. Because of this aspect, in conjunction with our developments, it allows for a MUCH increased fuel to air mixture, combustion, thrust; and ability for higher speeds; instead of very low hypersonic velocities in the Mach 5-6 range. Instead, Mach 8-10 range, while we have begun developing hypersonic capabilities to exceed 15 in atmosphere within less then 5 years.
Conforming High Pressure Tank Technology for CNG and H2.
As most know in hypersonics, Hydrogen is a superior fuel source, but due to the storage abilities, can only be stored in cylinders thus much less fuel supply. Not anymore, we developed conforming high pressure storage technology for use in aerospace, automotive sectors, maritime, etc; which means any overall shape required for 8,000+ PSI CNG or Hydrogen. For hypersonic platforms, this means the ability to store a much larger volume of hydrogen vs cylinders.
As an example, X-43 flown by Nasa which flew at Mach 9.97. The fuel source was Hydrogen, which is extremely more volatile and combustible then kerosene (JP-7), via a cylinder in the main body. If it had used our technology, that entire section of the airframe would had been an 8,000 PSI H2 tank, which would had yielded 5-6 times the capacity. While the X-43 flew 11 seconds under power at Mach 9.97, at 6 times the fuel capacity would had yielded apx 66 seconds of fuel under power at Mach 9.97. If it had flew slower, around Mach 6, same principles applied would had yielded apx 500 seconds of fuel supply under power (slower speeds required less energy to maintain).
Enhanced Fuel Mixture During Shock Train Interaction
Normally, fuel injection is conducted at the correct insertion point within the shock train for maximum burn/combustion. Our methodologies differ, since almost half the fuel injection is conducted PRE shock train within the isolator, so at the point of isolator injection the fuel enhances the combustion process, which then requires less fuel injection to reach the same level of thrust capabilities.
Improved Bow Shock Interaction
Smoother interaction at hypersonic velocities and mitigating heat/stresses for beyond Mach 6 thermodynamics, which extraordinarily improves Type 3, 4, and 5 shock interaction.
6,000+ Fahrenheit Thermal Resistance
To date, the maximum thermal resistance was tested at AFRL in the spring of 2018, which resulted in a 3,200F thermal resistance for a short duration. This technology, allows for normalized hypersonic thermal resistance of 3,000-3,500F sustained, and up to 6,500F resistance for short endurance, ie 90 seconds or less. 10-20 minute resistance estimate approximately 4,500F +/- 200F.
*** This technology advancement also applies to Aerospike rocket engines, in which it is common for Aerospike's to exceed 4,500-5,000F temperatures, which results in the melting of the reversed bell housing. That melting no longer ocurrs, providing for stable combustion to ocurr for the entire flight envelope
Scramjet Propulsion Side Wall Cooling
With old technologies, side wall cooling is required for hypersonic flight and scramjet propulsion systems, otherwise the isolator and combustion regions of a scramjet would melt, even using advanced ablatives and ceramics, due to their inability to cope with very high temperatures. Using technology we have developed for very high thermodynamics and high stresses, side wall cooling is no longer required, thus removing that variable from the design process and focusing on improved ignition processes and increasing net thrust values.
Lower Threshold for Hypersonic Ignition
Active and adaptive flight dynamics, resulting in the ability for scramjet ignition at a much lower velocity, ie within ramjet envelope, between Mach 2-4, and seamless transition from supersonic to hypersonic flight, ie supersonic ramjet (scramjet). This active and dynamic aspect, has a wide variety of parameters for many flight dynamics, velocities, and altitudes; which means platforms no longer need to be engineered for specific altitude ranges or preset velocities, but those parameters can then be selected during launch configuration and are able to adapt actively in flight.
Dramatically Improved Maneuvering Capabilities at Hypersonic Velocities
Hypersonic vehicles, like their less technologically advanced brethren, use large actuator and the developers hope those controls surfaces do not disintegrate in flight. In reality, it is like rolling the dice, they may or may not survive, hence another reason why the attempt to keep velocities to Mach 6 or below. We have shrunken down control actuators while almost doubling torque and response capabilities specifically for hypersonic dynamics and extreme stresses involved, which makes it possible for maximum input authority for Mach 10 and beyond.
Paradigm Shift in Control Surface Methodologies, Increasing Control Authority (Internal Mechanical Applications)
To date, most control surfaces for hypersonic missile platforms still use fins, similar to lower speed conventional missiles, and some using ducted fins. This is mostly due to lack of comprehension of hypersonic velocities in their own favor. Instead, the body itself incorporates those control surfaces, greatly enhancing the airframe strength, opening up more space for hardware and fuel capacity; while simultaneously enhancing the platforms maneuvering capabilities.
A scramjet missile can then fly like conventional missile platforms, and not straight and level at high altitudes, losing velocity on it's decent trajectory to target. Another added benefit to this aspect, is the ability to extend range greatly, so if anyone elses hypersonic missile platform were developed for 400 mile range, falling out of the sky due to lack of glide capabilities; our platforms can easily reach 600+ miles, with minimal glide deceleration.
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
If you want to know more about my walks and photos, check out my blog.
Summary
Designed by the preeminent architect Cass Gilbert, and constructed in 1927-28, the 130 West 30th Street Building was built to accommodate offices, showrooms and manufacturing space. The 18-story structure was a speculative project for the real estate firm of M. & L. Hess, Inc. and of particular interest to its president, John W. Hahner.
Gilbert's work includes a wide variety of types of buildings that illustrate his ability to create designs to meet the individual needs of each client: large-scale monumental structures in classical revival styles for official government purposes, distinctive skyscrapers for corporate clients, and highly functional industrial buildings, each combining modern building techniques with a unique appearance.
In this loft building on narrow West 30th Street in New York's fur district, the architect displays his ability to use the style most appropriate to the job. Here modern skyscraper style setbacks reflect the zoning rules required by the 1916 Building Zone Resolution to admit more light and air onto the streets. The bold, abstracted terra-cotta designs on the entryway panels and cornices, based on traditional Assyrian hunting scenes and mythical guardian figures help distinguish this building from its neighbors and are truly unusual motifs.
The Assyrian Revival style, one of numerous historically-inspired styles used during this period, was seen on only two other buildings in New York City. Fabricated by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, these terra cotta bands and elaborate geometrically-ornamented spandrel panels add an unexpected and exotic element to this industrial building, which was considered an asset for attracting tenants.
The Neighborhood'
This block of 30th Street from Sixth to Seventh Avenues was, in the late nineteenth century, part of the notorious Tenderloin section of New York. This area, infamous for its extensive criminal activity, stretched roughly from 23rd to 42nd Streets and from Fifth to Seventh Avenues.
These endeavors co-existed with (and were inspired by) New York's entertainment district which was centered on Broadway, between 23rd and 34th Streets, during the period from about 1860 through 1910. In 1907-08, in response to neighborhood conditions. New York City constructed a new police station just to the west of where 130 West 30th Street would be built.
During the early years of the twentieth century, as New York's theaters, restaurants and hotels moved north to Times Square, the Tenderloin followed, encompassing the streets between 42nd and 62nd Streets. The area around Madison Square became home to growing numbers of small garment manufacturers who moved into lofts and showrooms from their previous cramped locations in the tenements of the Lower East Side.
These companies were soon pushed north and west by the Fifth Avenue Association, a group of merchants who banded together to foster retail trade in the Madison Square area. As the number of people employed in the manufacturing of ready-to-wear garments increased dramatically, an association of garment manufacturers joined together to develop two large sites near Seventh Avenue and 37th Street.
By 1920, this became the locus for the garment district, with its manufacturing and designing lofts, showrooms and offices, that eventually took over the area from Sixth to Ninth Avenues, from 30Ul to 42nd Streets.3 During the years between the wars, garment manufacturing and selling and its related trades became New York's largest industry "in terms of both work force and commercial output."
A subset of this industry was the fur trade, with a somewhat more specialized production, which located in the adjoining neighborhood to the south, between 25"1 and 31st Streets, between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. This area became the fur district, the center of this labor-intensive industry which employed highly-skilled fur designers and production workers, and their sales and design staff, as well as their suppliers.
130 West 30 Street Building
West 30th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, was organized into lots beginning in the 1830s. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, lots 75 through 81 (on which this building is located) were combined into one parcel. Early in the twentieth century, development activity in the area increased, as demonstrated by the heightened investment level of realty companies.
The United States Realty Company purchased lots 77-81 in 1915. In 1920, this same parcel was sold to the 128 West 30th Street Corporation.6 This organization had been founded in April of that year as a real estate holding company.
The M. & L. Hess Company was a real estate brokerage firm begun in the early 1900s by Edwin H. and Nathan J. Hess, with offices at 643 and 907 Broadway.8 By 1925, John W. Hahner was listed as the president of the company. It was Hahner who, because of the increased business activity in the area, hired architect Cass Gilbert to design a speculative building for the offices, showrooms and lofts of the furriers who were relocating here.
The relationship between the 128 West 3001 Street Corporation and the M. & L. Hess Company is not known.
Real estate pressure in New York has traditionally encouraged the concentration of manufacturing, and specialized districts have developed, such as those of the silk, wool, leather, toy, or furniture manufacturers.
This makes it convenient and more efficient for buyers to find their markets as well as for subsidiary businesses to cluster. It has also led to the development of the building type known as the manufacturing loft. This type of building, "a machine for the production of a commodity," had specific requirements, including sufficient space to accommodate the necessary machinery and the handling of goods during the manufacturing process, as well as during packing and shipping.
Large elevators and freight halls and high ceilings to transport both raw and finished goods and adequate structural strength for heavy loads on floors are all important considerations for designers of this building type.
Cass Gilbert
Born in Zanesville, Ohio, Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) moved with his family to St. Paul, Minnesota where he completed his secondary education. In 1876, he entered the office of local architect, A. M. Radcliffe. Two years later he began to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Eugene
Leiang. In 1880, Gilbert traveled in Europe, then returned to the United States and briefly worked for the firm of McKim, Mead & White.
By 1882, Gilbert had returned to St. Paul where he set up his own architectural practice, then joined in partnership with fellow M.I.T. graduate James Knox Taylor. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century he built a solid reputation in St. Paul designing residences, churches, and office buildings, primarily in the Shingle and Richardson Romanesque styles.
In 1895, Gilbert won the competition for the Minnesota state capitol, a commission that established his national reputation. Clearly reflecting the impact of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, Gilbert's design was an elegant Beaux Arts style building, which, in its monumental composition, classical style, and elaborate decoration, laid the groundwork for his 1899 winning entry in the New York Customs House design competition.
In 1900, Gilbert moved permanently to New York.
Although established as an architect in New York City, Gilbert continued to produce numerous monumental governmental buildings in other locations, including the Detroit Public Library (1914), the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston (1928-32), and the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. (1933-35), as well as the Federal Courthouse in New York (1934). These structures are elegantly proportioned and elaborately ornamented, both inside and out, in keeping with Gilbert's stated desire to beautify buildings belonging to the public.
At the same time that Gilbert was producing these major government buildings, he was also designing significant skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan, many of which helped to define this new building type and move it toward a fully realized expression. His Broadway-Chambers Building (1899-1900, a designated New York City Landmark) was widely admired as one of the finest examples of the "base-shaft-capital" type yet produced.
His West Street Building (1906-07, a designated New York City Landmark) represented a major advance in tall building design by downplaying the base and emphasizing the verticality of the structure. This idea was carried to its logical conclusion in Cass Gilbert's romantic, neo-Gothic style Woolworth Building (1911-13, a designated New York City Landmark), perhaps his most famous design.
Gilbert was able to create highly varied types of designs based on the specific needs of the client and type of building demanded. His work encompassed utilitarian buildings such as the Austin, Nichols and Company Warehouse in Brooklyn (1909-23) as well as the United States Military Ocean Supply Base, known as the Brooklyn Army Terminal, built in 1918-19.
The design of this early, poured concrete complex was integrated with the structure of the buildings, with no applied ornament. These buildings were highly admired by modern designers and Le Corbusier even used them as an illustration of modern industrial architecture in his book, Towards a New Architecture.
Gilbert's abilities to meet the specific needs of his clients was recognized in the business world. A letter found in Gilbert's business correspondence of 1925 refers to a potential client's interest in Gilbert's work. "Mr. Hill stated that he could not disclose the name of his clients but they had seen some of my work and liked it, that the thing they liked about it was its individuality; that it was individual and had character of its own, and that they wanted a building that was not a mere standardized structure..."
The Design of the 130 West 30th Street Building
The loft building at 130 West 30th Street is a utilitarian structure, combining offices and manufacturing spaces for businesses in the fur trade. Since it was also built as a speculative venture, Gilbert used an idea that had proved successful on the Woolworth Building. He found that a distinctively ornamented building served as an advertisement for its occupants and was more likely to attract good tenants than one which was totally plain.
In addition, Gilbert used terra cotta, which he had previously employed successfully, both as a decorative accent or for complete cladding in several of his earlier designs, including the Broadway-Chambers, the Kinney Building(in Newark), the West Street Building, and the Woolworth Building.
On the 130 West 30th Street Building, Gilbert used terra cotta in three particular areas of the building, for the design emphasis it could create: as spandrel panels on the front, in decorative panels over the entrances, and as friezes marking each setback.
On the front facade, Gilbert set off the main section with monotone terracotta spandrel panels that are part of a gridwork formed by the windows, spandrels and bronze piers. Each terra-cotta panel is covered by an intricate design consisting of a central circle holding a spread-winged bird surrounded by a grid with flowers in each section and geometric patterns framing the rectangle. The panels echo the larger grid of the whole front facade.
The overall effect is almost one of a large woven textile, an idea especially appropriate to a building in the garment district.
A second use of terra cotta on this building consists of the two mirror-image hunting scene panels which are set into the marble above each of the two entrances.
Based on the famous stone reliefs taken from the palace of Assyrian King Assurnasirpal II of c. 883-859 which show the king hunting lions from his chariot, this modern adaptation has two helmeted men, one with a bow and arrow aimed toward a fleeing antelope. The ancient panel shows the lion downed by the arrow, under the legs of the running horses, while in the modern one some sort of cat (or lion) fills the same space.
Each terra-cotta panel is flanked by the three-dimensional front end of a lion, whose head and front legs emerge from the wall, and whose mouth is open to roar. These fierce beasts are also reminiscent of the Assyrian culture, where lions were an important motif.
Motifs taken from the Assyrian culture are extremely rare on New York City buildings, being found only as ornamental accents near the roofline on the Fred F. French and Graybar buildings. Although, to date, no one has discovered any statements by Gilbert indicating why he selected these motifs, comments by one of the designers of the Fred French Building may shed some light on the subject. H. Douglas Ives noted that the stepped masses of 1920s skyscrapers strongly resembled the forms of Assyrian ziggurats or observation towers and decided that "we felt we might safely adapt these Assyrian or Chaldean forms of ornament which were peculiarly suitable to flat surfaces" forthe French building.
Gilbert's terracotta designs are very flat and highly abstracted, with light-colored designs on a darker background. These would have been less expensive to reproduce than the highly sculptural designs Gilbert had employed on many of his office structures and thus more suitable for this industrial building. In addition, many artists and designers of the late 1920s, especially those influenced by the Art Deco designs coming from Europe, were taking inspiration from other, often ancient cultures, particularly those seen as more primitive. This influence can also been seen in Gilbert's panels.
The third use of terra cotta on this building is found on the friezes which encircle the building and are located at each setback level and at the floor above: the tenth and eleventh stories, the fourteenth and fifteenth stories, and at the seventeenth and eighteenth stories.
The friezes consist of two tones of terra cotta: light tan designs with a glossy finish against a darker, matte background. They are composed of panels with two highly stylized, alternating designs: facing winged lions with horse heads, and facing winged lions with human heads above animal heads.
These boldly abstracted creatures can be seen as mythical guardian figures, again drawing inspiration from earlier cultures. These distinctive designs and colorations contributed to an unusual building which stands out strikingly on this bustling, crowded street.
Architectural Terra Cotta
While terra cotta, as a building material was not new, architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century found many more uses for this inexpensive yet effective material. Promoted for its fireproof characteristics, the material was also inexpensive and highly adaptable for many kinds of visual effects.
Architects could create individual and colorful designs for buildings, using terra cotta in panels or inserts, either plain or polychromed. Cass Gilbert employed terra cotta in many different ways and for different design purposes on a number of his buildings. On the 130 West 30"" Street Building, as on the Broadway-Chambers, and the West Street buildings among others, the terra cotta is set off as a distinct area of the design and used to highlight a particular part of each building.
On the Rodin Studios (a designated new York City Landmark) the terra cotta is fully integrated into the design with spandrels and vertical piers made of the material, while it is used as a complete sheathing material on the Woolworth Building. The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company supplied Gilbert with this material for all of these buildings.
Founded in 1897 by DeForest Grant and others, the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company was one of the earliest New York manufacturers of architectural terra cotta, with their factory at Tottenville, Staten Island. Several founding members had worked previously at Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company. The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company was reorganized in 1907 as the consolidation of the Perth Amboy, the Excelsior and the Atlantic Terra Cotta Companies.
The Standard Terra Cotta Works was added to the company shortly thereafter, as was the Atlanta Terra Cotta Company. Their plants were located at Tottenville, Staten Island, Perth Amboy and Rocky Hill, New Jersey, and Atlanta, Georgia. This company was well-known in the architectural field, creating a wide variety of terra cotta products, from the white glazed terra cotta which faced most of the Woolworth Building, to the polychrome decorative work on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the ornate, multi-colored murals on the walls of the Grill Room in the McAlpin Hotel.
The company was clearly proud of its work at 130 West 30th Street and featured it in the March 1928, issue of its magazine. In this article, the author stressed that Gilbert's friezes used only two designs, which were repeated across the facades, and that the spandrel panels were all the same design, also repeated many times, thus showing that the use of terra cotta on buildings could be very economical.
This was important for a speculative loft building. While the building is primarily a very functional design (plain brick walls with large, industrial-type windows), the terra cotta enlivens the facade at a reasonable cost.
Zoning and the 130 West 30th Street Building
Although Gilbert was not hired to design this building until the end of March, 1927,13 it seems that Hahner had previously worked on it and had clear ideas of what he wanted. Gilbert wrote a letter to Hahner dated May 29,1928 that delineated his history of involvement with the project: "Started work on building Stewart & Co. furnished us with a drawing dated Feb. 9,1927 titled 'Layout of building 128-134 West 30th Street, Conforming to Zoning limits"
Gilbert notes that this drawing formed the basis for his own plans. Stewart & Company was the contracting firm hired to complete the project and were likely to have engineers who were familiar with the provisions of New York's 1916 Building Zone Resolution.
This law, which had such an immense effect on the city's skyline, was passed after the 40-story Equitable Building was built at 120 Broadway.15 The enormous height and bulk of this building forced city officials to realize that height limits needed to be placed on new structures so that the city streets could continue to receive enough light and air.
But soon after its passage, World War I limited new building projects and an economic depression that followed in continued this trend. It was not until 1925 that the implications of this zoning law began to be seen in actual buildings. The new law required that buildings set back at certain heights rather than extend straight up from the lot line.
Architects made many attempts to understand the design implications of this law, including Hugh Ferriss' famous, dramatic series of drawings showing several possible massings for tall buildings under the new regulations. The results were buildings with stepped or tiered profiles such as the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. From the 1920s through the 1950s, these buildings and other similar ones dominated the New York City skyline and defined its image.
While the 1916 law was designed to affect tall skyscrapers, setback designs came to be seen as representative of the period, and of everything that was modern. This type of profile could be found on furniture and other objects of the period, as well as buildings, as an indication of the modernity of the design. It was therefore not unusual that when Cass Gilbert was designing this eighteen-story loft building, he should choose to emphasize the setbacks as if it were a much taller building.
In addition, ziggurats or stepped pyramidal shapes were associated with ancient Assyrian buildings, a further association with the architect's design inspiration. Gilbert created setbacks at the 10th, 14th, and 17th stories, emphasizing them with two-tone terra-cotta friezes on those stories and on the stories above.
The frieze was also a modern touch, used instead of a projecting cornice that would have been the finishing element in designs of earlier years. The flat frieze subordinated the cornice, allowing the viewer's eye to continue traveling upward along the building to emphasize its height. Since the building is located mid-block, Gilbert was most concerned with the street facade, rather than those on the sides, but he carried the terra-cotta friezes around both sides anyway.
Description
The building at 130 West 30th Street occupies a mid-block site on a fairly narrow street and rises eighteen stories through a series of setbacks. The base has glass and metal storefronts flanked by marble-framed entryways. The rest of the facade is composed of brick, with large, metal-framed, industrial windows, and terra-cotta at the spandrel panels, window sills, and cornices, as well as in panels over the two main entrances.
The base is two stories high, with two large storefronts in the center section of the facade. Set on a granite watertable, each storefront has large, plate-glass windows in metal framework, with sections of the original metal grill beneath the glass. The double-height metal piers at the outside and between the two stores are original.
Each store has a central entrance with double glass doors recessed between the windows. Fixed glass panels, as in the original design, are above the main shop windows. The side bays of the ground story have entrances framed with travertine marble.
The eastern entrance is for freight, while that on the west is for pedestrians. Each opening is topped by mirror-image terra-cotta panels displaying a hunting scene of two men standing in a horse-drawn chariot. One has a bow and arrow pointed towards a running antelope, with a smaller cat (or lion?) running beneath the horse's legs. The terra-cotta designs are in light tan on a darker brown background. The panels are flanked by highly-stylized, three-dimensional terra-cotta figures of fiercely-roaring lions, their heads and front legs seeming to emerge from the marble wall.
Recessed within the marble at the western side is a bronze and glass doorway composed of three doors topped by a bronze cornice bearing the words "130 West Thirtieth Street." Above the cornice is a transom divided into three sections by bronze mullions. A small bronze insignia is set in the marble, beneath the terra-cotta panel and above the opening, consisting of the vertically arranged letters "SJM" surrounded by a circlet of leaves placed over the word Building.
The marble surround, terra-cotta panel and bronze insignia are the same on the eastern entrance. Recessed within it however, is a non-historic freight entrance. Closer to street level is a metal transom bearing the same lettering "130 West Thirtieth Street"as on the other entryway, with a non-historic three-section glass area above it.
Above the base, the building rises straight up for eight stories. It is symmetrically arranged with a center section eight bays wide and side sections, each one-bay wide. The side bays are faced with brick and each has a single, three-over-three window at each floor. In the spandrels between each floor, the brick is laid as headers, creating a patterned effect.
Within each bay of the center section is a large window, separated from its neighbor by a narrow metal pier which rise continuously to the bottom of the first cornice. Windows on the third and fourth stories have two-pane sash, while all the others have original three-over-three sash. Beneath each window, completely filling the area between the floors, is a rectangular panel in monotone tan terra cotta.
Each panel is completely filled with patterns and designs, including a central circle containing a bird with spread wings, surrounded by a grid in which each section contains a flower. Strips of geometric designs frame each panel. At the top of this section is a cornice that extends across the front and both sides of the building. The frieze consists of panels of stylized terra-cotta designs featuring light tan motifs on a darker brown ground.
Two patterns alternate: facing winged beasts (lions bodies with horses heads), and facing winged lions with human heads on top of the animal heads. Between each panel is a narrow section containing a stylized palm tree. The entire cornice is framed by strips of zig-zag patterns.
Above the tenth story, the front facade steps back the width of one-half a bay. The pattern of the entire front facade, with eight central bays and single side bays, is repeated at this story, and includes another terra-cotta cornice with the same design that begins next to the center section and extends across the side bays and on both sides of the building.
At the eleventh story, the two side bays step back another half a bay, while the center section continues straight up through three more stories. At the top of the fourteenth story is another cornice that goes across the entire front and both sides of the building. Across the center section and its reveals, the cornice is set in a metal frame around each panel, with gargoyles that project between each bay. At the fifteenth story the entire front facade steps back another half bay, with the terra-cotta cornice starting again at each side bay and continuing around the sides of the building.
Above the fifteenth story, the two side bays again step back a half bay while the center section rises through the next two stories. At the top of the seventeenth story is another terra-cotta cornice with metal enframements around each panel where it crosses the center section. The entire front facade steps back again after this story. Another story rises above this cornice with windows in the center section, while the two side bays continue as unfenestrated towers for several stories. Each is capped by a terra-cotta cornice around all four facades.
The side facades of this building are primarily faced in plain brick above the neighboring buildings, except for the terra-cotta cornices, that highlight each side and the one or two bays of industrial windows with sash similar to that on the front which are located near the front, center and rear of the side facade.
- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
The United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, located inside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Heroes & Legends building on Merritt Island, Florida, honors American astronauts and features the world's largest collection of their personal memorabilia, focusing on those astronauts who have been inducted into the Hall. Exhibits include Wally Schirra's Sigma 7 space capsule from the fifth crewed Mercury mission and the Gemini IX spacecraft flown by Gene Cernan and Thomas P. Stafford in 1966.
In the 1980s, the six then-surviving Mercury Seven astronauts conceived of establishing a place where US space travelers could be remembered and honored, along the lines of halls of fame for other fields. The Mercury Seven Foundation and Astronaut Scholarship Foundation were formed, and have a role in the ongoing operations of the Hall of Fame. The foundation's first executive director was former Associated Press space reporter Howard Benedict.
The Astronaut Hall of Fame was opened on October 29, 1990, by the U.S. Space Camp Foundation, which was the first owner of the facility. It was located next to the Florida branch of Space Camp.
The Hall of Fame closed for several months in 2002 when U.S. Space Camp Foundation's creditors foreclosed on the property due to low attendance and mounting debt. That September, an auction was held and the property was purchased by Delaware North Park Services on behalf of NASA and the property was added to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. The Hall of Fame re-opened December 14, 2002.
The Hall of Fame, which was originally located just west of the NASA Causeway, closed to the public on November 2, 2015, in preparation for its relocation to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east on Merritt Island. Outside of the original building was a full-scale replica of a Space Shuttle orbiter named Inspiration (originally named "Shuttle To Tomorrow" where visitors could enter and view a program). Inspiration served only as an outdoor, full scale, static display which visitors could not enter. After the Hall of Fame was transferred to the KSC Visitor Complex, Inspiration was acquired by LVX System and was placed in storage at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center; in 2016, the shuttle was loaded on to a barge to be taken for refurbishment before going on an educational tour.
The building was purchased at auction by visitor complex operator Delaware North and renamed the ATX Center, and for a time housed educational programs including Camp Kennedy Space Center and the Astronaut Training Experience. Those programs have since been moved to the KSC Visitor Complex, and as of December 2019, the structure was being offered for lease. In July 2020, Lockheed Martin announced it would lease the building to support work on the NASA Orion crew capsule.
Inductees into the Hall of Fame are selected by a blue ribbon committee of former NASA officials and flight controllers, historians, journalists, and other space authorities (including former astronauts) based on their accomplishments in space or their contributions to the advancement of space exploration. Except for 2002, inductions have been held every year since 2001.
As its inaugural class in 1990, the Hall of Fame inducted the United States' original group of astronauts: the Mercury Seven. In addition to being the first American astronauts, they set several firsts in American spaceflight, both auspicious and tragic. Alan Shepard was the first American in space and later became one of the twelve people to walk on the Moon. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth and after his induction went on, in 1998, to become the oldest man to fly in space, aged 77. Gus Grissom was the first American to fly in space twice and was the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 1, which resulted in the first astronaut deaths directly related to preparation for spaceflight.
Thirteen astronauts from the Gemini and Apollo programs were inducted in the second class of 1993. This class included the first and last humans to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan; Ed White, the first American to walk in space (also killed in the Apollo 1 accident); Jim Lovell, commander of the famously near-tragic Apollo 13; and John Young, whose six flights included a moonwalk and command of the first Space Shuttle mission.
The third class was inducted in 1997 and consisted of the 24 additional Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP astronauts. Notable members of the class were Roger Chaffee, the third astronaut killed in the Apollo 1 fire and the only unflown astronaut in the Hall; Harrison Schmitt, the first scientist and next-to-last person to walk on the Moon; and Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 crewmembers not previously inducted.
The philosophy regarding the first three groups of inductees was that all astronauts who flew in NASA's "pioneering" programs (which would include Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo Applications Program (Skylab), and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project) would be included simply by virtue of their participation in a spaceflight in these early programs. The first group (the inaugural class of 1990) would only include the original Mercury astronauts (most of whom would go on to fly in later programs). The second group of inductees would include those astronauts who began their spaceflight careers during Gemini (all of whom would go on to fly in later programs). The third group of inductees would include those astronauts who began their spaceflight careers during Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP (some of whom would go on to fly in the Space Shuttle program). Since it would not be practical (or meaningful) to induct all astronauts who ever flew in space, all subsequent inductees (Space Shuttle program and beyond) are considered based on their accomplishments and contributions to the human spaceflight endeavor which would set them apart from their peers.
Over four dozen astronauts from the Space Shuttle program have been inducted since 2001. Among these are Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; Story Musgrave, who flew six missions in the 1980s and 90s; and Francis Scobee, commander of the ill-fated final Challenger mission.
The 2010 class consisted of Guion Bluford Jr., Kenneth Bowersox, Frank Culbertson and Kathryn Thornton. The 2011 inductees were Karol Bobko and Susan Helms. The 2012 inductees were Franklin Chang-Diaz, Kevin Chilton and Charles Precourt. Bonnie Dunbar, Curt Brown and Eileen Collins were inducted in 2013, and Shannon Lucid and Jerry Ross comprised the 2014 class.
Those inducted in 2015 were John Grunsfeld, Steven Lindsey, Kent Rominger, and Rhea Seddon. In 2016, inductees included Brian Duffy and Scott E. Parazynski. Ellen Ochoa and Michael Foale were announced as the 2017 class of the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. Scott Altman and Thomas Jones followed in 2018. The 2019 inductees were James Buchli and Janet L. Kavandi.
Michael López-Alegría, Scott Kelly and Pamela Melroy were the 2020 inductees, inducted in a November 2021 ceremony. The 2022 inductees were Christopher Ferguson, David Leestma, and Sandra Magnus. Roy Bridges Jr. and Mark Kelly were the 2023 inductees.
The Hall of Heroes is composed of tributes to the inductees. Among the Hall of Fame's displays is Sigma 7, the Mercury spacecraft piloted by Wally Schirra which orbited the Earth six times in 1962, and the Gemini 9A capsule flown by Gene Cernan and Thomas P. Stafford in 1966. An Astronaut Adventure room includes simulators for use by children.
The spacesuit worn by Gus Grissom during his 1961 Liberty Bell 7 Mercury flight is on display and has been the subject of a dispute between NASA and Grissom's heirs and supporters since 2002. The spacesuit, along with other Grissom artifacts, were loaned to the original owners of the Hall of Fame by the Grissom family when it opened. After the Hall of Fame went into bankruptcy and was taken over by a NASA contractor in 2002, the family requested that all their items be returned. All of the items were returned to Grissom's family except the spacesuit, because both NASA and the Grissoms claim ownership of it. NASA claims Grissom checked out the spacesuit for a show and tell at his son's school, and then never returned it, while the Grissoms claim Gus rescued the spacesuit from a scrap heap.
The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC.[4] Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.
Though the first Apollo flights and all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from the then-Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, the Launch Operations Directorate. Starting with the fourth Gemini mission, the NASA launch control center in Florida (Mercury Control Center, later the Launch Control Center) began handing off control of the vehicle to the Mission Control Center in Houston, shortly after liftoff; in prior missions it held control throughout the entire mission.
Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial crew missions and researches food production and In-Situ Resource Utilization for off-Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, even adding a new launch pad (LC-39C) in 2015.
There are about 700 facilities and buildings grouped across the center's 144,000 acres (580 km2). Among the unique facilities at KSC are the 525-foot (160 m) tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts dormitories and suit-up area, a Space Station factory, and a 3-mile (4.8 km) long Shuttle Landing Facility. There is also a Visitor Complex open to the public on site.
Since 1949, the military had been performing launch operations at what would become Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel and the Missile Firing Laboratory to NASA to become the Launch Operations Directorate under NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal of a crewed lunar landing by 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1, 1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center (LOC). Also, Cape Canaveral was inadequate to host the new launch facility design required for the mammoth 363-foot (111 m) tall, 7,500,000-pound-force (33,000 kN) thrust Saturn V rocket, which would be assembled vertically in a large hangar and transported on a mobile platform to one of several launch pads. Therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island.
NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles (340 km2) and negotiating with the state of Florida for an additional 87 square miles (230 km2). The major buildings in KSC's Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, and again just a week before his assassination on November 22, 1963.
On November 29, 1963, the facility was given its current name by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnson's order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station ("the facilities of Station No. 1 of the Atlantic Missile Range") under the designation "John F. Kennedy Space Center", spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. NASA Administrator James E. Webb clarified this by issuing a directive stating the Kennedy Space Center name applied only to the LOC, while the Air Force issued a general order renaming the military launch site Cape Kennedy Air Force Station.
Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Miami and Jacksonville on Florida's Space Coast, due east of Orlando. It is 34 miles (55 km) long and roughly six miles (9.7 km) wide, covering 219 square miles (570 km2). KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is approximately one hour's drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The KSC Industrial Area, where many of the center's support facilities are located, is 5 miles (8 km) south of LC-39. It includes the Headquarters Building, the Operations and Checkout Building and the Central Instrumentation Facility. The astronaut crew quarters are in the O&C; before it was completed, the astronaut crew quarters were located in Hangar S[39] at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex (now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station). Located at KSC was the Merritt Island Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network station (MILA), a key radio communications and spacecraft tracking complex.
Facilities at the Kennedy Space Center are directly related to its mission to launch and recover missions. Facilities are available to prepare and maintain spacecraft and payloads for flight. The Headquarters (HQ) Building houses offices for the Center Director, library, film and photo archives, a print shop and security. When the KSC Library first opened, it was part of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. However, in 1965, the library moved into three separate sections in the newly opened NASA headquarters before eventually becoming a single unit in 1970. The library contains over four million items related to the history and the work at Kennedy. As one of ten NASA center libraries in the country, their collection focuses on engineering, science, and technology. The archives contain planning documents, film reels, and original photographs covering the history of KSC. The library is not open to the public but is available for KSC, Space Force, and Navy employees who work on site. Many of the media items from the collection are digitized and available through NASA's KSC Media Gallery or through their more up-to-date Flickr gallery.
A new Headquarters Building was completed in 2019 as part of the Central Campus consolidation. Groundbreaking began in 2014.
The center operated its own 17-mile (27 km) short-line railroad. This operation was discontinued in 2015, with the sale of its final two locomotives. A third had already been donated to a museum. The line was costing $1.3 million annually to maintain.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, operated by Delaware North since 1995, has a variety of exhibits, artifacts, displays and attractions on the history and future of human and robotic spaceflight. Bus tours of KSC originate from here. The complex also includes the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center, north of the VAB and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, six miles west near Titusville. There were 1.5 million visitors in 2009. It had some 700 employees.
It was announced on May 29, 2015, that the Astronaut Hall of Fame exhibit would be moved from its current location to another location within the Visitor Complex to make room for an upcoming high-tech attraction entitled "Heroes and Legends". The attraction, designed by Orlando-based design firm Falcon's Treehouse, opened November 11, 2016.
In March 2016, the visitor center unveiled the new location of the iconic countdown clock at the complex's entrance; previously, the clock was located with a flagpole at the press site. The clock was originally built and installed in 1969 and listed with the flagpole in the National Register of Historic Places in January 2000. In 2019, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program, and the launch of Apollo 10 on May 18. In summer of 2019, Lunar Module 9 (LM-9) was relocated to the Apollo/Saturn V Center as part of an initiative to rededicate the center and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program.
The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of American spaceflight, research, and technology. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.
Though the first Apollo flights and all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from the then-Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, the Launch Operations Directorate. Starting with the fourth Gemini mission, the NASA launch control center in Florida (Mercury Control Center, later the Launch Control Center) began handing off control of the vehicle to the Mission Control Center in Houston, shortly after liftoff; in prior missions it held control throughout the entire mission.
Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial crew missions and researches food production and in-situ resource utilization for off-Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, even adding a new launch pad (LC-39C) in 2015.
There are about 700 facilities and buildings grouped throughout the center's 144,000 acres (580 km2). Among the unique facilities at KSC are the 525-foot (160 m) tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts dormitories and suit-up area, a Space Station factory, and a 3-mile (4.8 km) long Shuttle Landing Facility. There is also a Visitor Complex on site that is open to the public.
Since 1949, the military had been performing launch operations at what would become Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel and the Missile Firing Laboratory to NASA to become the Launch Operations Directorate under NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal of a crewed lunar landing by 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1, 1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center (LOC). Also, Cape Canaveral was inadequate to host the new launch facility design required for the mammoth 363-foot (111 m) tall, 7,500,000-pound-force (33,000 kN) thrust Saturn V rocket, which would be assembled vertically in a large hangar and transported on a mobile platform to one of several launch pads. Therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island.
NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles (340 km2) and negotiating with the state of Florida for an additional 87 square miles (230 km2). The major buildings in KSC's Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, and again just a week before his assassination on November 22, 1963.
On November 29, 1963, the facility was named by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnson's order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station ("the facilities of Station No. 1 of the Atlantic Missile Range") under the designation "John F. Kennedy Space Center", spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. NASA Administrator James E. Webb clarified this by issuing a directive stating the Kennedy Space Center name applied only to the LOC, while the Air Force issued a general order renaming the military launch site Cape Kennedy Air Force Station.
Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Miami and Jacksonville on Florida's Space Coast, due east of Orlando. It is 34 miles (55 km) long and roughly six miles (9.7 km) wide, covering 219 square miles (570 km2). KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is approximately one hour's drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
From 1967 through 1973, there were 13 Saturn V launches, including the ten remaining Apollo missions after Apollo 7. The first of two uncrewed flights, Apollo 4 (Apollo-Saturn 501) on November 9, 1967, was also the first rocket launch from KSC. The Saturn V's first crewed launch on December 21, 1968, was Apollo 8's lunar orbiting mission. The next two missions tested the Lunar Module: Apollo 9 (Earth orbit) and Apollo 10 (lunar orbit). Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16, 1969, made the first Moon landing on July 20. The Apollo 11 launch included crewmembers Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, and attracted a record-breaking 650 million television viewers. Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970 to 1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17.
On May 14, 1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A. By this time, the Cape Kennedy pads 34 and 37 used for the Saturn IB were decommissioned, so Pad 39B was modified to accommodate the Saturn IB, and used to launch three crewed missions to Skylab that year, as well as the final Apollo spacecraft for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975.
As the Space Shuttle was being designed, NASA received proposals for building alternative launch-and-landing sites at locations other than KSC, which demanded study. KSC had important advantages, including its existing facilities; location on the Intracoastal Waterway; and its southern latitude, which gives a velocity advantage to missions launched in easterly near-equatorial orbits. Disadvantages included: its inability to safely launch military missions into polar orbit, since spent boosters would be likely to fall on the Carolinas or Cuba; corrosion from the salt air; and frequent cloudy or stormy weather. Although building a new site at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico was seriously considered, NASA announced its decision in April 1972 to use KSC for the shuttle. Since the Shuttle could not be landed automatically or by remote control, the launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981 for its first orbital mission STS-1, was NASA's first crewed launch of a vehicle that had not been tested in prior uncrewed launches.
In 1976, the VAB's south parking area was the site of Third Century America, a science and technology display commemorating the U.S. Bicentennial. Concurrent with this event, the U.S. flag was painted on the south side of the VAB. During the late 1970s, LC-39 was reconfigured to support the Space Shuttle. Two Orbiter Processing Facilities were built near the VAB as hangars with a third added in the 1980s.
KSC's 2.9-mile (4.7 km) Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) was the orbiters' primary end-of-mission landing site, although the first KSC landing did not take place until the tenth flight, when Challenger completed STS-41-B on February 11, 1984; the primary landing site until then was Edwards Air Force Base in California, subsequently used as a backup landing site. The SLF also provided a return-to-launch-site (RTLS) abort option, which was not utilized. The SLF is among the longest runways in the world.
On October 28, 2009, the Ares I-X launch from Pad 39B was the first uncrewed launch from KSC since the Skylab workshop in 1973.
Beginning in 1958, NASA and military worked side by side on robotic mission launches (previously referred to as unmanned), cooperating as they broke ground in the field. In the early 1960s, NASA had as many as two robotic mission launches a month. The frequent number of flights allowed for quick evolution of the vehicles, as engineers gathered data, learned from anomalies and implemented upgrades. In 1963, with the intent of KSC ELV work focusing on the ground support equipment and facilities, a separate Atlas/Centaur organization was formed under NASA's Lewis Center (now Glenn Research Center (GRC)), taking that responsibility from the Launch Operations Center (aka KSC).
Though almost all robotics missions launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), KSC "oversaw the final assembly and testing of rockets as they arrived at the Cape." In 1965, KSC's Unmanned Launch Operations directorate became responsible for all NASA uncrewed launch operations, including those at Vandenberg Space Force Base. From the 1950s to 1978, KSC chose the rocket and payload processing facilities for all robotic missions launching in the U.S., overseeing their near launch processing and checkout. In addition to government missions, KSC performed this service for commercial and foreign missions also, though non-U.S. government entities provided reimbursement. NASA also funded Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launch pad maintenance and launch vehicle improvements.
All this changed with the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, after which NASA only coordinated its own and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ELV launches. Companies were able to "operate their own launch vehicles" and utilize NASA's launch facilities. Payload processing handled by private firms also started to occur outside of KSC. Reagan's 1988 space policy furthered the movement of this work from KSC to commercial companies. That same year, launch complexes on Cape Canaveral Air Force Force Station started transferring from NASA to Air Force Space Command management.
In the 1990s, though KSC was not performing the hands-on ELV work, engineers still maintained an understanding of ELVs and had contracts allowing them insight into the vehicles so they could provide knowledgeable oversight. KSC also worked on ELV research and analysis and the contractors were able to utilize KSC personnel as a resource for technical issues. KSC, with the payload and launch vehicle industries, developed advances in automation of the ELV launch and ground operations to enable competitiveness of U.S. rockets against the global market.
In 1998, the Launch Services Program (LSP) formed at KSC, pulling together programs (and personnel) that already existed at KSC, GRC, Goddard Space Flight Center, and more to manage the launch of NASA and NOAA robotic missions. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and VAFB are the primary launch sites for LSP missions, though other sites are occasionally used. LSP payloads such as the Mars Science Laboratory have been processed at KSC before being transferred to a launch pad on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
On 16 November 2022, at 06:47:44 UTC the Space Launch System (SLS) was launched from Complex 39B as part of the Artemis 1 mission.
As the International Space Station modules design began in the early 1990s, KSC began to work with other NASA centers and international partners to prepare for processing before launch onboard the Space Shuttles. KSC utilized its hands-on experience processing the 22 Spacelab missions in the Operations and Checkout Building to gather expectations of ISS processing. These experiences were incorporated into the design of the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF), which began construction in 1991. The Space Station Directorate formed in 1996. KSC personnel were embedded at station module factories for insight into their processes.
From 1997 to 2007, KSC planned and performed on the ground integration tests and checkouts of station modules: three Multi-Element Integration Testing (MEIT) sessions and the Integration Systems Test (IST). Numerous issues were found and corrected that would have been difficult to nearly impossible to do on-orbit.
Today KSC continues to process ISS payloads from across the world before launch along with developing its experiments for on orbit. The proposed Lunar Gateway would be manufactured and processed at the Space Station Processing Facility.
The following are current programs and initiatives at Kennedy Space Center:
Commercial Crew Program
Exploration Ground Systems Program
NASA is currently designing the next heavy launch vehicle known as the Space Launch System (SLS) for continuation of human spaceflight.
On December 5, 2014, NASA launched the first uncrewed flight test of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), currently under development to facilitate human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Launch Services Program
Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa)
Research and Technology
Artemis program
Lunar Gateway
International Space Station Payloads
Camp KSC: educational camps for schoolchildren in spring and summer, with a focus on space, aviation and robotics.
The KSC Industrial Area, where many of the center's support facilities are located, is 5 miles (8 km) south of LC-39. It includes the Headquarters Building, the Operations and Checkout Building and the Central Instrumentation Facility. The astronaut crew quarters are in the O&C; before it was completed, the astronaut crew quarters were located in Hangar S at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex (now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station). Located at KSC was the Merritt Island Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network station (MILA), a key radio communications and spacecraft tracking complex.
Facilities at the Kennedy Space Center are directly related to its mission to launch and recover missions. Facilities are available to prepare and maintain spacecraft and payloads for flight. The Headquarters (HQ) Building houses offices for the Center Director, library, film and photo archives, a print shop and security. When the KSC Library first opened, it was part of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. However, in 1965, the library moved into three separate sections in the newly opened NASA headquarters before eventually becoming a single unit in 1970. The library contains over four million items related to the history and the work at Kennedy. As one of ten NASA center libraries in the country, their collection focuses on engineering, science, and technology. The archives contain planning documents, film reels, and original photographs covering the history of KSC. The library is not open to the public but is available for KSC, Space Force, and Navy employees who work on site. Many of the media items from the collection are digitized and available through NASA's KSC Media Gallery Archived December 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine or through their more up-to-date Flickr gallery.
A new Headquarters Building was completed in 2019 as part of the Central Campus consolidation. Groundbreaking began in 2014.
The center operated its own 17-mile (27 km) short-line railroad. This operation was discontinued in 2015, with the sale of its final two locomotives. A third had already been donated to a museum. The line was costing $1.3 million annually to maintain.
The Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) (previously known as the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building) is a historic site on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places dating back to the 1960s and was used to receive, process, and integrate payloads for the Gemini and Apollo programs, the Skylab program in the 1970s, and for initial segments of the International Space Station through the 1990s. The Apollo and Space Shuttle astronauts would board the astronaut transfer van to launch complex 39 from the O&C building.
The three-story, 457,000-square-foot (42,500 m2) Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) consists of two enormous processing bays, an airlock, operational control rooms, laboratories, logistics areas and office space for support of non-hazardous Space Station and Shuttle payloads to ISO 14644-1 class 5 standards. Opened in 1994, it is the largest factory building in the KSC industrial area.
The Vertical Processing Facility (VPF) features a 71-by-38-foot (22 by 12 m) door where payloads that are processed in the vertical position are brought in and manipulated with two overhead cranes and a hoist capable of lifting up to 35 short tons (32 t).
The Hypergolic Maintenance and Checkout Area (HMCA) comprises three buildings that are isolated from the rest of the industrial area because of the hazardous materials handled there. Hypergolic-fueled modules that made up the Space Shuttle Orbiter's reaction control system, orbital maneuvering system and auxiliary power units were stored and serviced in the HMCF.
The Multi-Payload Processing Facility is a 19,647 square feet (1,825.3 m2) building used for Orion spacecraft and payload processing.
The Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) contains a 70-by-110-foot (21 by 34 m) service bay, with a 100,000-pound (45,000 kg), 85-foot (26 m) hook height. It also contains a 58-by-80-foot (18 by 24 m) payload airlock. Its temperature is maintained at 70 °F (21 °C).[55]
The Blue Origin rocket manufacturing facility is located immediately south of the KSC visitor complex. Completed in 2019, it serves as the company's factory for the manufacture of New Glenn orbital rockets.
Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) was originally built for the Saturn V, the largest and most powerful operational launch vehicle until the Space Launch System, for the Apollo crewed Moon landing program. Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, LC-39 has been used to launch every NASA human space flight, including Skylab (1973), the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (1975), and the Space Shuttle program (1981–2011).
Since December 1968, all launch operations have been conducted from launch pads A and B at LC-39. Both pads are on the ocean, 3 miles (4.8 km) east of the VAB. From 1969 to 1972, LC-39 was the "Moonport" for all six Apollo crewed Moon landing missions using the Saturn V, and was used from 1981 to 2011 for all Space Shuttle launches.
Human missions to the Moon required the large three-stage Saturn V rocket, which was 363 feet (111 meters) tall and 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter. At KSC, Launch Complex 39 was built on Merritt Island to accommodate the new rocket. Construction of the $800 million project began in November 1962. LC-39 pads A and B were completed by October 1965 (planned Pads C, D and E were canceled), the VAB was completed in June 1965, and the infrastructure by late 1966.
The complex includes: the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), a 130,000,000 cubic feet (3,700,000 m3) hangar capable of holding four Saturn Vs. The VAB was the largest structure in the world by volume when completed in 1965.
a transporter capable of carrying 5,440 tons along a crawlerway to either of two launch pads;
a 446-foot (136 m) mobile service structure, with three Mobile Launcher Platforms, each containing a fixed launch umbilical tower;
the Launch Control Center; and
a news media facility.
Launch Complex 48 (LC-48) is a multi-user launch site under construction for small launchers and spacecraft. It will be located between Launch Complex 39A and Space Launch Complex 41, with LC-39A to the north and SLC-41 to the south. LC-48 will be constructed as a "clean pad" to support multiple launch systems with differing propellant needs. While initially only planned to have a single pad, the complex is capable of being expanded to two at a later date.
As a part of promoting commercial space industry growth in the area and the overall center as a multi-user spaceport, KSC leases some of its properties. Here are some major examples:
Exploration Park to multiple users (partnership with Space Florida)
Shuttle Landing Facility to Space Florida (who contracts use to private companies)
Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF)-3 to Boeing (for CST-100 Starliner)
Launch Complex 39A, Launch Control Center Firing Room 4 and land for SpaceX's Roberts Road facility (Hanger X) to SpaceX
O&C High Bay to Lockheed Martin (for Orion processing)
Land for FPL's Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center to Florida Power and Light (FPL)
Hypergolic Maintenance Facility (HMF) to United Paradyne Corporation (UPC)
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, operated by Delaware North since 1995, has a variety of exhibits, artifacts, displays and attractions on the history and future of human and robotic spaceflight. Bus tours of KSC originate from here. The complex also includes the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center, north of the VAB and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, six miles west near Titusville. There were 1.5 million visitors in 2009. It had some 700 employees.
It was announced on May 29, 2015, that the Astronaut Hall of Fame exhibit would be moved from its current location to another location within the Visitor Complex to make room for an upcoming high-tech attraction entitled "Heroes and Legends". The attraction, designed by Orlando-based design firm Falcon's Treehouse, opened November 11, 2016.
In March 2016, the visitor center unveiled the new location of the iconic countdown clock at the complex's entrance; previously, the clock was located with a flagpole at the press site. The clock was originally built and installed in 1969 and listed with the flagpole in the National Register of Historic Places in January 2000. In 2019, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program, and the launch of Apollo 10 on May 18. In summer of 2019, Lunar Module 9 (LM-9) was relocated to the Apollo/Saturn V Center as part of an initiative to rededicate the center and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program.
Historic locations
NASA lists the following Historic Districts at KSC; each district has multiple associated facilities:
Launch Complex 39: Pad A Historic District
Launch Complex 39: Pad B Historic District
Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) Area Historic District
Orbiter Processing Historic District
Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Disassembly and Refurbishment Complex Historic District
NASA KSC Railroad System Historic District
NASA-owned Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Industrial Area Historic District
There are 24 historic properties outside of these historic districts, including the Space Shuttle Atlantis, Vehicle Assembly Building, Crawlerway, and Operations and Checkout Building.[71] KSC has one National Historic Landmark, 78 National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) listed or eligible sites, and 100 Archaeological Sites.
Further information: John F. Kennedy Space Center MPS
Other facilities
The Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) is responsible for the preparation of solid rocket booster segments for transportation to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The RPSF was built in 1984 to perform SRB operations that had previously been conducted in high bays 2 and 4 of the VAB at the beginning of the Space Shuttle program. It was used until the Space Shuttle's retirement, and will be used in the future by the Space Launch System[75] (SLS) and OmegA rockets.
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Pobeda Confectionery a multinational company, founded in Russia in 1999, is a producer of confectionery, most widely known for its chocolate bars and candies. The company’s headquarters are located in Moscow, Russia.
Pobeda owns production facilities in Yegoryevsk, Russia.
Its core brand products include Pobeda chocolates, Victory of the Taste, Bear Family, Bird of Happiness, Axiome, All at Once, Bumblebee Tummy and Funny Cows.
In total, the three Pobeda plants occupy 43,000 sq. meters of production space. All manufacturing processes are automated, enabling meticulously controlled product quality standards.
In 2015, the company employed over 1,500 people. In 2016, its revenue surpassed 90mln Euros. Since 1999, the accumulated value of its investments has exceeded 80mln Euros.
One of the keystones of Pobeda’s approach to chocolate manufacturing is a painstakingly precise selection of raw materials and product ingredients.
The three central principles of the company’s policy include the exclusive use of high quality ingredients, systematic and thorough audits of its suppliers, and the compliance of all ingredients with quality standards, adopted by the European EU, the Eurasian EAEU and the American FDA.
The Pobeda products’ world-class quality and safety have been certified by BRC Global Standards, FSSC 22000, ISO 22000:2005 and ISO 9001: 2005.
The company distributes its products in the following countries: Australia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Armenia, Belorussia, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Israel, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Palestinian territories, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, and the USA.
An image of the British Steel Corporation, Chemicals Division, Coke Ovens and By-Products Works, at Orgreave, on 30/09/1990, just three weeks after closure of the works, and track-lifting has begun in earnest.
The image portrays the tracks which formerly provided access to and from the top end of the works, or the Handsworth end of the works, down to the bottom end of the works, or the Treeton end of the works. The tracks which have just descended, in a curving loop, from the former Great Central Railway, at Orgreaves Colliery Junction, have just passed over the top railway weigh bridge.
The set of three, branching into four tracks on the left-hand-side of the photograph formerly serviced the side-wagon tippler, and the coke screens. The set of two tracks, branching into three tracks on the right-hand-side of the photograph formerly serviced the end-wagon tippler and the two through running roads.
In the middle of the photograph, and in the distance, can be seen No.7 coke oven battery chimney, and No.7 coke oven battery quenching tower in front of the chimney.
The large structure just visible through the pipe gantry which obscures most of this building is one of the coal blending units.
The collection of vertical, cylindrical, and horizontal, cylindrical structures just visible on the right-hand-side of the photograph, are part of the gas scrubbing unit, whereby the raw coke oven gas, produced as a by-product of the coke manufacturing process, was firstly ‘washed’, prior to further processing. Beyond the gas scrubbing unit, and not visible in this photograph, lay the Ammonium Sulphate House.
COPYRIGHT RETAINED; N. JORDAN - I would ask that you please note that the copyright of this image is fully retained by N. Jordan. Should you wish to either copy this image, for anything other than for private research purposes, or you wish to reproduce and publish this image elsewhere, then I would be obliged, if you would be good enough to seek and secure my express written agreement beforehand.
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
The HB Viva, announced in September 1966 and sold by Vauxhall until 1970, was a larger car than the HA, featuring coke bottle styling, and was modelled after American General Motors (GM) models such as the Chevrolet Impala/Caprice of the period. It featured the same basic engine as the HA, but enlarged to 1,159 cc, but with the added weight of the larger body the final drive gearing was reduced from 3.9 to 1 to 4.1 to keep the nippy performance (except the SL90 which retained the 3.9 diff having the power to cope with the higher ratio).
The automatic Viva HB was offered from February 1967, and fitted with the ubiquitous Borg Warner Type 35 system. Cars of this size featuring automatic transmission were still unusual owing to the amount of power the transmission systems absorbed: in a heartfelt if uncharacteristically blunt piece of criticism a major British motoring journal later described Viva HBs with automatic transmission as "among the slowest cars on the road".
The HB used a completely different suspension design from the HA, having double-wishbone and coil springs with integrated telescopic dampers at the front, and trailing arms and coil springs at the rear. Lateral location and anti-squat of the rear axle was achieved using upper trailing arms mounted at approximately 45° fixed to lugs at the top of the differential. Both front and rear could also be fitted with optional anti-roll bars. The HB set new standards for handling in its class as a result of the adoption of this suspension design, where many of its contemporaries stuck with leaf springs and MacPherson struts.
This time, apart from the standard and 90 stages of tune, there was also, for a brief time, a Brabham SL/90 HB that was purported to have been developed with the aid of world racing champion Jack Brabham. Brabham models were marked out externally by distinctive lateral black stripes at the front of the bonnet that curved down the wings and then headed back to end in a taper at the front doors. This model is almost impossible to find today. This model and the Viva GT are the two most sought after models made. The Brabham model differed from the standard Viva SL/90 in having a different cam-shaft, uprated suspension with anti-roll bars, different exhaust manifolds, and a unique twin-carb manifold, as well as differing interior trim. The Viva GT had substantially different engine and running gear and interior from the standard Viva HB models. It was distinguished by having a black bonnet with twin louvres and being all-over white. Later GTs came in different colours.
Two larger overhead camshaft engines from the larger Vauxhall Victor were also offered – a twin carb 1975 cc in the Viva GT from Feb 1968 and a 1599 cc making up the Viva 1600 from May 1968.
With the expanded engine programme, the HB saw numerous permutations of model offerings, with base, deluxe and SL trims offered with a choice of standard 1.2, tuned 90 1.2, Brabham 90 1.2 and the aforementioned overhead cam units offered during its run. The Brabham was effectively replaced by the 1600, although many complained of high fuel consumption with this engine. Front disc brakes came with the 90 and overhead cam engine models, while a larger 12 gallon fuel tank was also part of the 1600 and GT package.
The brakes were problematic: a 1971 survey of passenger cars registered in Sweden during 1967 place the HB Viva at the top of a list of cars identified as having faulty brakes as part of an annual testing procedure. Problems were concentrated on uneven braking and dragging brakes, generally at the rear, and affected 26% of the cars tested. Second on the list, with 24% of cars triggering brake fault reports, was the similarly configured Opel Kadett estate. Although it avoided the bottom spot in other individual categories, the poor score achieved by the brakes left the Viva with the highest overall rate of failure of the 34 passenger cars included in sufficient numbers to feature in the reports of the Swedish test results.
Originally offered as just a two-door saloon, a three-door estate joined the HB range in June 1967, but the advent of the four-door in October 1968 saw the HB breaking sales records worldwide. The introduction of the four-door option coincided with various minor improvements to the interior trim, while 'auxiliary' switches were relocated from a remote panel to positions nearer to the steering wheel. The GM "energy absorbing" steering column was now fitted to all models and the fuel tank capacity was increased from 8 to 12 British gallons (36 to 55 litres). The 4-door saloon was designed and engineered by Holden in Australia who exported it as a kit of parts back to Vauxhall in England.
In the later 1960s and early 1970s, Britain's Motor magazine polled readers about their cars: they included a poll of HB Viva 1600 owners. The answers given greatest prominence were to the final question which asked whether or not respondents would buy another car of the same model: just 21% of Viva 1600 owning respondents answered “yes”, which was the lowest score for this question achieved by any of the first seventeen models for which surveys were conducted. By the time of the readership poll, the HB Viva was within a year of being replaced even though the 1600 version itself had only been offered since 1968, so the sample will have been relatively small: it appears that the low satisfaction rate may have reflected not so much the car’s design but rather a lack of effective quality control in the manufacturing processes.
A van version of the Viva HB was developed, but it never got beyond the prototype/mock-up stage. However, General Motors New Zealand did sell versions of the three-door station wagon with no rear seat as 'van' models and continued this with the later HC version.
Aftermarket conversion specialists, Crayford, also ran off some convertibles based on the 2-door Viva. Very few of these conversions exist still, only two GT model HBs were converted, but both are known to survive, and will likely be on the show scene in the coming years.
Continuing the de-clutter of my house. 100 CDs for 'Design Builder' an educational CD-ROM I developed in 1995/6 for the 'Innovative Design Engineering Research group in the Manufacturing Systems department at the University of Hertfordshire. It was a joint project under an early HEFCE initiative (TLTP) to encourage the use of learning technologies in universities, developed with Sheffield Hallam University.
The CD-ROM took the user through the design of a winch and demonstrated 'concurrent engineering' principles. The aim was to design a winch that was able to drag a RNLI Lifeboat up a ramp and to ensure that the design came in on cost. Each user was given a different problem and they could build their design using tens of thousands of real-world components. Virtual experts watched the user's decisions and would try to interject to offer advice from 'their perspective' on why decisions were good or bad. Unlike most educational CD-ROMs there was no right answer and the advice offered would often conflict with advice from other virtual experts. For example the company's accountant might complain that the materials chosen were expensive, while the materials expert would agree that the choice seemed most appropriate for the manufacturing process chosen.
Some serious blood and sweat went into this product. I know at times I was working 120 hours a week, with computers rendering 3D 'solutions' round the clock for weeks on end.
I think 2000 were produced and we sold about 150, along with a number of site licenses. Unfortunately, because the project was part-funded by HEFCE (the English University funding body) we had to sell the CD at 'cost' price (£60). So unfortunately, there was no way the development team could survive. Other TLTP projects which had chosen to develop simple 'electronic books' that could be churned out quickly, oddly where better equipped to continue. They could sell each 'book' for a similar price as our complex learning tool. Our product had about 4 'man years' development work in it. So there was no way we could quickly churn out new tools. I guess it wasn't a fair situation and the rules lead to a self-defeating situation, where lots of educational resources were produced but weren't updated because the teams had to disband within a year of completion. But we were idealistic and believed that we should be pushing the boundaries if we wanted lecturers to start to think about adopting electronic learning materials.
Most of the CDs were disposed off by the Uni years ago. Myself and the lecturer in charge of the project kept a box each. I don't know why as we had made the product freely available to download by then. I think we couldn't bring ourselves to throw them away because of all the effort that had gone into making the product. But I'm the only member left and I closed down the project's server earlier in the year. So I think it's time to say goodbye and get some space back. Pity, we were a very idealistic team and even 16 years after it's release, I've seen few pieces of educational software that attempt to be as adventurous as we were with this project.
Wotancraft's Traveler's Notebook and City Explorer Camera Bag Review - Part 1
Our job to find great stuffs from all over the world doesn't stop at product level, I believe understanding the concept and stories behind is far more important than product features. Only through digging deeper will I be able to bring true benefits to end users, in the process of doing this I learned a lot and makes my job an adventurous one. It is exactly this practice which sets us apart from a typical retail chain store.
This review is separated into two parts. Part 1 is a story in this post, Part 2 is a product review in the next post.
I first found Wotancraft from random searching on the net a year or so before, then I popped into a great store in Hong Kong called Annie Barton and found their products there. Admiring the quality and aesthetics I grew interest in the brand, I was scared away by the price though. So despite having the feeling that those bags suit my needs and in styles I adore, I found myself staring at them repeatedly on the net and never got myself one. What stopped me from getting one? The price tag and lack of knowledge about Wotancraft's true attention to details. Annie Barton told me each one of the bags were made by hand by those artisans in Taiwan, I couldn't believe it, no way, the bags are so well made I thought they were produced by professional mass producing bag maker. Judging from the details, each model requires literally hundreds of manufacturing processes and it was not possible to be made by just a few persons by hands. The story turned out entirely true when I got a chance to visit Taipei 20 days ago.
On the day I arrived Taipei, before other business engagements I shot right away to the Wotancraft showroom/shop. It was a huge disparity between what's inside the place and everything else surrounding it! Inside a dim florescent lit office building full of local trading businesses with zero taste and style decorations, I was still assuming Wotancraft a corporation you know, but once I entered the showroom, everything changed.
Surrounded by cozy fixtures made from aged wood and pig iron, products made from leather and canvas, I immediately felt homey. One side of the store was an open shelf displaying full product range and prototypes, while the other side is a service counter full of custom made leather straps for Panerai watches. I picked up the City Explorer series of bags and started examining each one of them until a friendly staff came out of the backyard and explained to me product details.
Soon I was unpacking my camera bag and started trying out almost every model possible. I guess camera bag to a guy is like fashion to a girl, you can spend hours enjoying the selection process in a setting like that. The staff noticed my Traveler's Notebook and some of my leather craft stuffs like camera case and straps. "James have the same notebook! He made crazy customization of it." That's when real conversation began.
By then I realized that each one of their bags were literally made by their own hands. Four artisans made up the entire Wotancraft company, the two I met in store were among them. It was not a corporation I presumed before, just a small bunch of people doing everything by themselves. Time to leave for a business engagement, hungered for more stories, I used Paypal to pay for the City Explorer 002 Ranger bag, left the showroom and determined to contact James about his Traveler's Notebook and come back a few days later. During my initial stay at the showroom, there were constant influx of Panerai fans looking for unique leather straps, but I'm not gonna cover that part of the story here.
3 days later, after a few email exchanges I finally met James, the soul behind Wotancraft. The company was created out of his pure passion in photography and watches, despite working as a bio-chemist after his graduation, he started to make his first prototype camera bag 5 years ago. Not satisfied with camera bags with trivial features and ugly looks, he explored different forms and materials and came up with a bag he would use. He was kind enough to show me all the thoughts he put into this City Explorer 002 Ranger bag, comparing it to his first prototype. I will cover the details in Part 2 in the next post.
Let's talk about James' Traveler's Notebook. In a typical Traveler's Notebook show me yours and I'll show you mine fashion, we exchanged our usage patterns. His cover is not the original but one made by himself, a very thoughtful implementation. There are two layers of leathers, a thicker one forms the shape while the outer thinner one gives its distinct Wotancraft look.
The thin leather on the cover is the same material James uses in his City Explorer series of camera bags. Stitched together on 3 sides, the notebook cover has an opening on one side doubling the cover as a pocket by itself. To increase the pocket size, James relocated the elastic string attachment point from the middle of the back to the edge, creating an inner space large enough for his stationery stuffs.
As a master of customization, he of course couldn't settle with a bookmark without his very own Wotancraft branded charm and leather tag. On typical day, James would use two types of notebooks inside - Traveler's Notebook lightweight paper for note taking, sketch paper for sketching. Inspecting his TN, I found inspirations common to creative people, not only would he take notes in meticulous details, he sketches out architectural structures purely out of his head, perhaps this keen practice is his way of precipitating his creativity into reality.
James' TN is so far the best Traveler's Notebook mod I've ever seen, functional and pleasing. I've got to make one myself someday :) Stay tuned for Part 2.
More on Scription blog: scription.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/wotancrafts-travelers-...
- this was the final football coin that I needed to complete my 1964 set...the coin has been damaged on the front and back during the manufacturing process.
Lawrence "Sonny" Homer (b. July 8, 1936 in Trail, British Columbia - d. February 22, 2006, in North Vancouver, British Columbia at age 69) was a professional Canadian football wide receiver who played eleven seasons in the Canadian Football League for the BC Lions. He was part of the Lions' 1964 Grey Cup victory, his best season when he caught 50 passes for 776 yards (15.5 yards/catch average). He had 217 catches in his career for 3,765 yards (17.4 yards/catch average).
Homer played with only one kidney.
Link to his stats - www.justsportsstats.com/footballstatsindex.php?player_id=...
Link to - Remembering Sonny Homer - www.bclions.com/2006/03/17/remembering_sonny_homer/
Link to some of his issued football cards - www.footballcardgallery.com/player/Sonny_Homer/
Embossed writing on the back of this coin (type 2 back / orange cap) - POTATO CHIPS / NALLEY'S / AND SNACKS * SAVE A COMPLETE SET OF 100 WESTERN CONFERENCE FOOTBALL STARS
As part of the required course knowledge pupils need to be able to outline the process involved in taking a square wooden blank and preparing it for turning between centres. These pictures depict that process chronologically.
Stage 1 * Preparation of wooden blank. Cut to size. Sand square. Mark across diagonals. Centre punch the centre point. Use spring dividers to mark circumference. Repeat on other end.
Stage 2 * Plane off corners down to circumference line. This takes cross section from square to octagon. This reduces force on cutting toll in initial prep of blank. Mount between fork [driven] centre and dead [or live ] centre at tailstock end. Apply grease a dead centre end. apply force from tailstock end to force fork into material at driven end. Adjust toolstock height to suit. Check for clearance.
Stage 3 * Roughout using scraper to diameter. Use combination of gouges and skew chisels to add beads and other decorative detailing as required. Ensure spindle speed is appropriate for material and cross section under consideration. Obey all safety instructions.
Chowking (Chinese: 超群) is a Philippine-based chain that pioneered the Asian quick-service restaurant concept in the Philippines. The concept combines a Western fast-food service style with Chinese food. Chowking predominantly sells noodle soups, dimsum, and rice toppings. The company was founded in 1985 at a time when Western-style burger joints were dominating the Philippine fast food scene.
In 1989, Chowking started expanding its market share amid the volatility in the domestic market. It started its franchising operations[1] and made its entry into the provincial markets the same year. On January 1, 2000, Chowking became a wholly owned subsidiary of Jollibee Foods Corporation, the Philippines' biggest fast-food chain. The change in ownership gave rise to store renovations and a new corporate look and mindset that is visible from front-end to back-end.
Typical exterior of a Chowking restaurant
Chowking restaurant in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig.
Chowking chao fan in a box.To ensure its continued growth, Chowking explored markets outside the Philippines. As of 2008, Chowking has over 400 stores within the Philippines and in markets such as the United States, Middle East and Indonesia. Chowking has steadily been expanding its network in the Philippines. It is able to ensure the freshness of its food and the reliability of its supply through its main commissaries in Highland, Muntinlupa City and Sucat, Parañaque City as well as satellite commissaries in Iloilo, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and Pangasinan. In Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Chowking's commissary serves ten stores and is expanding to other areas.
In 2008, Chowking announced the completion of a Php270-million (USD 5.65-million) modernization program, which will help set the stage for the company’s future growth. Called “Project DMSSM”(pronounced “dimsum”) for “Designed, Modernized and Streamlined Supply Chain and Manufacturing,” the two-year modernization program that started in 2006 involves the expansion and renovation of Chowking’s Noodle Building, increased automation, and the improved integration of food manufacturing processes in its two commissaries in Muntinlupa City
My gracious host for my night in Kendal near the Lake District.
"Kendal, once Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England. Historically in Westmorland, it lies 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Windermere, 19 miles (31 km) north of Lancaster, 23 miles (37 km) north-east of Barrow-in-Furness and 38 miles (61 km) north-west of Skipton, in the dale of the River Kent, from which comes its name. The 2011 census found a population of 28,586. making it the third largest town in Cumbria after Carlisle and Barrow. It is known today mainly as a centre for tourism, as the home of Kendal mint cake, and as a producer of pipe tobacco and snuff. Its local grey limestone buildings have earned it the nickname "Auld Grey Town".
A chartered market town, the centre of Kendal has formed round a high street with fortified alleyways, known locally as yards, off to either side, which allowed local people to shelter from the Anglo-Scottish raiders known as Border Reivers. The main industry in those times was the manufacture of woollen goods, whose importance is reflected in the town's coat of arms and in its Latin motto Pannus mihi panis (Cloth is my bread.) "Kendal Green" was a hard-wearing, wool-based fabric specific to the local manufacturing process. It was supposedly sported by the Kendalian archers instrumental in the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Kendal Green was also worn by slaves in the Americas and appears in songs and literature from that time. Shakespeare notes it as the colour of clothing worn by foresters (Henry IV, Part 1).
Kendal Castle has a long history as a stronghold, built on the site of several successive castles. The earliest was a Norman motte and bailey (now located on the west side of the town), when the settlement went under the name of Kirkbie Strickland. The most recent is from the late 12th century, as the castle of the Barony of Kendal, the part of Westmorland ruled from here. The castle is best known as the home of the Parr family, as heirs of these barons. They inherited it through marriage in the reign of Edward III of England. Rumours still circulate that King Henry VIII's sixth wife Catherine Parr was born at Kendal Castle, but the evidence available leaves this unlikely: by her time the castle was beyond repair and her father was already based in Blackfriars, London, at the court of King Henry VIII." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
Become a patron to my photography on Patreon.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
In the grand scope of World War 2 fighter aircraft there is a little-remembered French design designated the Arsenal "VG-33". The aircraft was born from a rather lengthy line of prototype developments put forth by the company in the years leading up to World War 2 and the VG-33 and its derivatives represented the culmination of this work before the German invasion rendered all further work moot.
The Arsenal de l'Aeronautique company was formed by the French government in 1936 ahead of World War 2. It began operations with dedicated design and development of a fast fighter type until the German conquer of France in 1940 after which the company then focused on engine production after 1945. Then followed a period of design and construction of gliders and missiles before being privatized in 1952 (as SFECMAS). The company then fell under the SNCAN brand label and became "Nord Aviation" in 1955.
The VG-33 was the result of the company's research. Work on a new fast fighter began by Arsenal engineers in 1936 and the line began with the original VG-30 prototype achieving first flight on October 1st, 1938. Named for engineer Vernisse (V) and designer Jean Gaultier (G), the VG-30 showcased a sound design with good performance and speed during the tests, certainly suitable for progression as a military fighter and with future potential.
Development continued into what became the VG-31 which incorporated smaller wings. The VG-32 then followed which returned to the full-sized wings and installed the American Allison V-1710-C15 inline supercharged engine of 1,054 horsepower. The VG-32 then formed the basis of the VG-33 which reverted to a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 engine and first flight was in early 1939, months ahead of the German invasion of Poland. Flight testing then spanned into August and serial production of this model was ordered.
The VG-33 was one of the more impressive prewar fighter ventures by the French that included the Dewoitine D.520, understood to be on par with the lead German fighter aircraft of the period - the famous Messerschmitt Bf 109.
Only about forty or so French Arsenal VG-33 fighters were completed before the Fall of France in 1940, with 160 more on order and in different states of completion. Despite the production contract, Arsenal' engineers continued work on the basic design for improved and specialized sub-types. The VG-34 appeared in early 1940 outfitted with the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-45 engine of 935 horsepower, which improved performance at altitude. An uprated engine was installed in VG-35 and VG-36, too. They utilized a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 engine of 1,000 horsepower with a revised undercarriage and radiator system.
VG-37 was a long-range version that was not furthered beyond the drawing board, but the VG-38 with a Hispano-Suiza 12Y-77 engine that featured two exhaust turbochargers for improved performance at high altitude, achived pre-production status with a series of about 10 aircraft. These were transferred to GC 1/3 for field trials in early 1940 and actively used in the defence against the German invasion.
The VG-39 ended the line as the last viable prototype model with its drive emerging from a Hispano-Suiza 12Z engine of 1,280 horsepower. A new three-machine-gun wing was installed for a formidable six-gun armament array. This model was also ordered into production as the VG-39bis and was to carry a 1,600 horsepower Hispano-Suiza 12Z-17 engine into service. However, the German invasion eliminated any further progress, and eventually any work on the Arsenal VG fighter family was abandoned, even though more designs were planned, e .g. the VG-40, which mounted a Rolls-Royce Merlin III, and the VG-50, featuring the newer Allison V-1710-39. Neither was built.
Anyway, the finalized VG-38 was an all-modern looking fighter design with elegant lines and a streamlined appearance. Its power came from an inline engine fitted to the front of the fuselage and headed by a large propeller spinner at the center of a three-bladed unit. The cockpit was held over midships with the fuselage tapering to become the tail unit.
The tail featured a rounded vertical tail fin and low-set horizontal planes in a traditional arrangement - all surfaces enlarged for improved high altitude performance.
The monoplane wing assemblies were at the center of the design in the usual way. The pilot's field of view was hampered by the long nose ahead, the wings below and the raised fuselage spine aft, even though the pilot sat under a largely unobstructed canopy utilizing light framing. The canopy opened to starboard.
A large air scoop for the radiator and air intercooler was mounted under the fuselage. As an unusual feature its outlet was located in a dorsal position, behind the cockpit. The undercarriage was of the typical tail-dragger arrangement of the period, retracting inwards. The tail wheel was retractable, too.
Construction was largely of wood which led to a very lightweight design that aided performance and the manufacture process. Unlike other fighters of the 1930s, the VG-38 was well-armed with a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon, firing through the propeller hub, complemented by 4 x 7.5mm MAC 1934 series machine guns in the wings, just like the VG-33.
The aircraft never saw combat action in the Battle of France. Its arrival was simply too late to have any effect on the outcome of the German plans. Therefore, with limited production and very limited combat service during the defence of Paris in May 1940, it largely fell into the pages of history with all completed models lost.
Specifications:
Crew: 1
Length: 28.05 ft (8.55 m)
Width: 35.43 ft (10.80 m)
Height: 10.83ft (3.30 m)
Weight: Empty 4,519 lb (2,050 kg), MTOW 5,853 lb (2,655 kg)
Maximum Speed: 398 mph (641 kmh at 10.000m)
Maximum Range: 746 miles (1,200 km)
Service Ceiling: 39,305 ft (12.000 m; 7.458 miles)
Powerplant:
1x Hispano-Suiza 12Y-77 V-12 liquid-cooled inline piston engine
with two Brown-Boveri exhaust turbochargers, developing 1,100 hp (820 kW).
Armament:
1x 20mm Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
4x 7.5mm MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
I found the VG-33 fascinating - an obscure and sleek fighter with lots of potential that suffered mainly from bad timing. There are actually VG-33 kits from Azur and Pegasus, but how much more fun is it to create your own interpretation of the historic events, esp. as a submission to a Battle of Britain Group Build at whatifmodelers.com?
I had this project on the whif agenda for a long time, and kept my eyes open for potential models. One day I encountered Amodel's Su-1 and Su-3 kits and was stunned by this aircraft's overall similarity to the VG-33. When I found the real VG-38 description I decided to convert the Su-3 into this elusive French fighter!
The Su-3 was built mainly OOB, it is a nice kit with much detail, even though it needs some work as a short run offering. I kept the odd radiator installation of the Suchoj aircraft, but changed the landing gear from a P-40 style design (retracting backwards and rotating 90°) into a conservative, inward retracting system. I even found forked gear struts in the spares box, from a Fiat G.50. The covers come from a Hawker Hurricane, and the wells were cut out from this pattern, while the rest of the old wells was filled with putty.
Further mods include the cleaned cowling (the Su-3's fuselage-mounted machine guns had to go), while machine guns in the wings were added. The flaps were lowered, too, and the small cockpit canopy cut in two pieces in, for an opened position - a shame you can hardly see anything from the neat interior. Two large antenna masts complete the French style.
Painting and markings:
Again, a rather conservative choice: typical French Air Force colors, in Khaki/Dark Brown/Blue Gray with light blue-gray undersides.
One very inspiring fact about the French tricolor-paint scheme is that no aircraft looked like the other – except for a few types, every aircraft had an individual scheme with more or less complexity or even artistic approach. Even the colors were only vaguely unified: Field mixes were common, as well as mods with other colors that were mixed into the basic three tones!
I settled for a scheme I found on a 1940 Curtiss 75, with clearly defined edges between the paint fields. Anything goes! I used French Khaki, Dark Blue Grey and Light Blue Grey (for the undersides) from Modelmaster's Authentic Enamels range, and Humbrol 170 (Brown Bess) for the Chestnut Brown. Interior surfaces were painted in dark grey (Humbrol 32) while the landing gear well parts of the wings were painted in Aluminum Dope (Humbrol 56).
The decals mainly come from a Hobby Boss Dewoitine D.520, but also from a PrintScale aftermarket sheet and the scrap box.
The kit was slightly weathered with a black ink wash and some dry-painting, more for a dramatic effect than simulating wear and tear, since any aircraft from the VG-33 family would only have had a very short service career.
Well, a travesty whif - and who would expect an obscure Soviet experimental fighter to perform as a lookalike for an even more obscure French experimental fighter? IMHO, it works pretty fine - conservative sould might fair over the spinal radiator outlet and open the dorsal installation, overall both aircraft are very similar in shape, size and layout. :D
Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing process that can be used for many different applications.
The SLM process starts by numerically slicing a 3D CAD model into a number of finite layers. For each sliced layer a laser scan path is calculated which defines both the boundary contour and some form of fill sequence, often a raster pattern. Each layer is then sequentially recreated by depositing powder layers, one on top of the other, and melting their surface by scanning a laser beam.
The powder is spread uniformly by a wiper. A high power-density fibre laser with a 40µm beam spot size fully melts the pre-deposited powder layer. The melted particles fuse and solidify to form a layer of the component.
For more information please visit www.twi-global.com/technologies/welding-surface-engineeri...
If you wish to use this image each use should be accompanied by the credit line and notice, "Courtesy of TWI Ltd".
* High Modulus Custom Carbon Racing Bicycle Frame
* Italian Bottom Bracket or BB30
* Tapered head tube/fork
* Best Road Bike Available in Formigli Collection
* 20% lighter 27% more rigid than Asiel
MSRP- $5999.99
The Asiel RF is our top of the line, flagship carbon racing frame. It is the result of 20 years of technological advancement, offering superior materials, manufacturing processes, and design. The Asiel RF is hand made with a tapered head tube/fork, BB30 bottom bracket (or Italian thread), and an integrated seat post. This makes for a no-compromises race frame that is unmatched in performance and is 20% lighter and 27% stiffer than the Asiel. A new paint scheme has also been developed to give this high caliber frame a unique and stunning look.
* FRAME Carbon with Carbon drop outs
* FORK Full Carbon Fork 1 1/2 to 1/ 1/8
* HEADSET Integrated *Dedda, Cane Creek or FSA headset included with frame purchase
* BOTTOM BRACKET Italian Thread OR BB30
* SEATPOST Integrated
Availble in one color scheme as shown.
The composite used to build the RF is an IM600 carbon fiber with a tensile strength equal to 48,000 lbs. Utilizing a special nanotechnology, Formigli optimizes the pre-impregnation of epoxy resin into the IM600 carbon fabric resulting in a final product that is 20% lighter and 27% more rigid and responsive than the Asiel.
Geometric Design
The Asiel RF was conceived with the vision to obtain a frame with maximum tensional stiffness. This was achieved through our research in tube design that optimizes the stresses of torque.
Looking at the rear of the frame, you can notice a significant drop in the seat-stays. This solution gave the frame more rigidity in the rear, thus obtaining a greater responsiveness in wheel traction. This drop can be felt especially in the hills and in sprints. It is most noticeable in low gears. Looking at the center of the frame, the bottom of the seat tube near the bottom bracket, the tube has a larger cross-section supporting the weight of the cyclist on a broader base. This gives the frame greater resistance and higher performance under stress.
We decided to build the Asiel RF with an internally integrated seat post with a slight rise of the seat post support and compensating the eventual rise with internal carbon plugs, shaped like the tube. The fork was designed with a tapered steering tube which provides a greater circumference to support the frame, improving the stability of the bike, as well as reducing the vibrations that are formed especially on high speed descents.
Fabric Composition
Layers: 6 layers + 3k cross weave (the upper, visible layer)
Laminate: Layered unidirectional and bidirectional oriented 12k
Resin: Epoxy
Fiber: Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)
Fabric: Preimpregnated fabric yarn (long fiber) molded with a vacuum sealing technique and chemically bonded 120°c.
Mechanical Properties
Tensile Strength: R. 220 Kgmmg
Modulus Elasticity: 38,000 Kgmmg
Fatigue: 100 million cycles/ 1400 MPa maxiumum load
Physical weight of carbon at 18°c is 1.86 kg/ dm3 (30% resin)
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Available at KGS Bikes kgsbikes.com with the added value of our BalancePoint™ positioning system to design your perfect custom bicycle.
Coconut candy refer to various candies made with coconut or coconut flavorings.
In Vietnamese cuisine, kẹo dừa coconut candy is most commonly produced in Bến Tre province, Vietnam with coconut milk and coconut cream.
In the United States, coconut candy was sometimes spelled as cocoanut candy. These included various traditional confections in the United States. Mason Pecan Cocoanut Candy was made in the 1950s in Milprint, Milwaukee. Squirrel Brand made Cocoanut Zippers. There was also a Mason Cherry Cocoanut candy produced in Mineola, New York. Welch's made Cocoanut Candy Bar from Hinde & Dauch. Welch's Cocoanut candy was also produced by the James O. Welch Company.
Sauerkraut candy is made with grated coconut. Grated coconut is often used in various chocolate confections.
VIETNAM
The Bến Tre Province is nicknamed by Vietnamese as the "Land of Coconut" (Xu Dua). The Vietnamese term for coconut candy is "kẹo dừa", with kẹo = candy and dừa = coconut. Coconut candy was originally associated with Mỏ Cày, a small township within the Bến Tre province.
MANUFACTURING PROCESS
The production of Vietnamese coconut candy starts with the grating of fresh coconut flesh. The grated flesh is then pressed to extract coconut milk and coconut cream. The next step is the addition of malt syrup and sugar to this mixture of coconut milk and cream. The ratio of the various ingredients is a closely guarded secret of individual coconut candy manufacturers. The mixing process is often entrusted only to family members of the factory owner. Slight variations in the ingredient ratios can lead to very different texture and taste in the final product.
The mixture is then heated to a very high temperature in large woks over fires generated by the burning of coconut shells. While being heated, the mixture is stirred continuously to ensure even heat distribution. Traditionally, this stirring process was done manually with large wooden paddles. In larger modern manufacturing facilities, these paddles have been replaced by electric motors. The mixture eventually caramelises to a thicker texture. Recognising when the mixture has been cooked to the right level is more of an art than an exact science. While it is still hot and soft, the thickened mixture is then stringed out into moulds and allowed to cool. The final step sees the candy strings cut into rectangular lozenges, then wrapped and packaged.
Traditionally, coconut candy is wrapped in two layers of wrappings. The inner layer is edible rice paper, and the outer layer is paper soaked in vegetable oil. These measures were necessary to stop the candy from sticking to the paper wrapping. Larger manufacturers now use heat-sealed foil paper, which does not stick to the candy.
ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE
Bến Tre currently has over one hundred coconut candy manufacturers, making up thirty percent of local enterprises. However, the market is dominated by a handful of well-known brands, with most manufacturers producing candy under licence for these brands. Coconut candy is sold throughout Vietnam. It is also exported to other Asian countries, Australia, Europe, and North America.
COCONUT CANDY TYPES
Bounty (chocolate bar) contains coconut (it is known as Bounty outside of the U.S.)
Coconut ice
Ferrero Raffaello
Perle de coco
Ounhmangu
WIKIPEDIA
Guessed by sidewalk_story
Summary
Designed by the preeminent architect Cass Gilbert, and constructed in 1927-28, the 130 West 30th Street Building was built to accommodate offices, showrooms and manufacturing space. The 18-story structure was a speculative project for the real estate firm of M. & L. Hess, Inc. and of particular interest to its president, John W. Hahner.
Gilbert's work includes a wide variety of types of buildings that illustrate his ability to create designs to meet the individual needs of each client: large-scale monumental structures in classical revival styles for official government purposes, distinctive skyscrapers for corporate clients, and highly functional industrial buildings, each combining modern building techniques with a unique appearance.
In this loft building on narrow West 30th Street in New York's fur district, the architect displays his ability to use the style most appropriate to the job. Here modern skyscraper style setbacks reflect the zoning rules required by the 1916 Building Zone Resolution to admit more light and air onto the streets. The bold, abstracted terra-cotta designs on the entryway panels and cornices, based on traditional Assyrian hunting scenes and mythical guardian figures help distinguish this building from its neighbors and are truly unusual motifs.
The Assyrian Revival style, one of numerous historically-inspired styles used during this period, was seen on only two other buildings in New York City. Fabricated by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, these terra cotta bands and elaborate geometrically-ornamented spandrel panels add an unexpected and exotic element to this industrial building, which was considered an asset for attracting tenants.
The Neighborhood'
This block of 30th Street from Sixth to Seventh Avenues was, in the late nineteenth century, part of the notorious Tenderloin section of New York. This area, infamous for its extensive criminal activity, stretched roughly from 23rd to 42nd Streets and from Fifth to Seventh Avenues.
These endeavors co-existed with (and were inspired by) New York's entertainment district which was centered on Broadway, between 23rd and 34th Streets, during the period from about 1860 through 1910. In 1907-08, in response to neighborhood conditions. New York City constructed a new police station just to the west of where 130 West 30th Street would be built.
During the early years of the twentieth century, as New York's theaters, restaurants and hotels moved north to Times Square, the Tenderloin followed, encompassing the streets between 42nd and 62nd Streets. The area around Madison Square became home to growing numbers of small garment manufacturers who moved into lofts and showrooms from their previous cramped locations in the tenements of the Lower East Side.
These companies were soon pushed north and west by the Fifth Avenue Association, a group of merchants who banded together to foster retail trade in the Madison Square area. As the number of people employed in the manufacturing of ready-to-wear garments increased dramatically, an association of garment manufacturers joined together to develop two large sites near Seventh Avenue and 37th Street.
By 1920, this became the locus for the garment district, with its manufacturing and designing lofts, showrooms and offices, that eventually took over the area from Sixth to Ninth Avenues, from 30Ul to 42nd Streets.3 During the years between the wars, garment manufacturing and selling and its related trades became New York's largest industry "in terms of both work force and commercial output."
A subset of this industry was the fur trade, with a somewhat more specialized production, which located in the adjoining neighborhood to the south, between 25"1 and 31st Streets, between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. This area became the fur district, the center of this labor-intensive industry which employed highly-skilled fur designers and production workers, and their sales and design staff, as well as their suppliers.
130 West 30 Street Building
West 30th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, was organized into lots beginning in the 1830s. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, lots 75 through 81 (on which this building is located) were combined into one parcel. Early in the twentieth century, development activity in the area increased, as demonstrated by the heightened investment level of realty companies.
The United States Realty Company purchased lots 77-81 in 1915. In 1920, this same parcel was sold to the 128 West 30th Street Corporation.6 This organization had been founded in April of that year as a real estate holding company.
The M. & L. Hess Company was a real estate brokerage firm begun in the early 1900s by Edwin H. and Nathan J. Hess, with offices at 643 and 907 Broadway.8 By 1925, John W. Hahner was listed as the president of the company. It was Hahner who, because of the increased business activity in the area, hired architect Cass Gilbert to design a speculative building for the offices, showrooms and lofts of the furriers who were relocating here.
The relationship between the 128 West 3001 Street Corporation and the M. & L. Hess Company is not known.
Real estate pressure in New York has traditionally encouraged the concentration of manufacturing, and specialized districts have developed, such as those of the silk, wool, leather, toy, or furniture manufacturers.
This makes it convenient and more efficient for buyers to find their markets as well as for subsidiary businesses to cluster. It has also led to the development of the building type known as the manufacturing loft. This type of building, "a machine for the production of a commodity," had specific requirements, including sufficient space to accommodate the necessary machinery and the handling of goods during the manufacturing process, as well as during packing and shipping.
Large elevators and freight halls and high ceilings to transport both raw and finished goods and adequate structural strength for heavy loads on floors are all important considerations for designers of this building type.
Cass Gilbert
Born in Zanesville, Ohio, Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) moved with his family to St. Paul, Minnesota where he completed his secondary education. In 1876, he entered the office of local architect, A. M. Radcliffe. Two years later he began to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Eugene
Leiang. In 1880, Gilbert traveled in Europe, then returned to the United States and briefly worked for the firm of McKim, Mead & White.
By 1882, Gilbert had returned to St. Paul where he set up his own architectural practice, then joined in partnership with fellow M.I.T. graduate James Knox Taylor. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century he built a solid reputation in St. Paul designing residences, churches, and office buildings, primarily in the Shingle and Richardson Romanesque styles.
In 1895, Gilbert won the competition for the Minnesota state capitol, a commission that established his national reputation. Clearly reflecting the impact of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, Gilbert's design was an elegant Beaux Arts style building, which, in its monumental composition, classical style, and elaborate decoration, laid the groundwork for his 1899 winning entry in the New York Customs House design competition.
In 1900, Gilbert moved permanently to New York.
Although established as an architect in New York City, Gilbert continued to produce numerous monumental governmental buildings in other locations, including the Detroit Public Library (1914), the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston (1928-32), and the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. (1933-35), as well as the Federal Courthouse in New York (1934). These structures are elegantly proportioned and elaborately ornamented, both inside and out, in keeping with Gilbert's stated desire to beautify buildings belonging to the public.
At the same time that Gilbert was producing these major government buildings, he was also designing significant skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan, many of which helped to define this new building type and move it toward a fully realized expression. His Broadway-Chambers Building (1899-1900, a designated New York City Landmark) was widely admired as one of the finest examples of the "base-shaft-capital" type yet produced.
His West Street Building (1906-07, a designated New York City Landmark) represented a major advance in tall building design by downplaying the base and emphasizing the verticality of the structure. This idea was carried to its logical conclusion in Cass Gilbert's romantic, neo-Gothic style Woolworth Building (1911-13, a designated New York City Landmark), perhaps his most famous design.
Gilbert was able to create highly varied types of designs based on the specific needs of the client and type of building demanded. His work encompassed utilitarian buildings such as the Austin, Nichols and Company Warehouse in Brooklyn (1909-23) as well as the United States Military Ocean Supply Base, known as the Brooklyn Army Terminal, built in 1918-19.
The design of this early, poured concrete complex was integrated with the structure of the buildings, with no applied ornament. These buildings were highly admired by modern designers and Le Corbusier even used them as an illustration of modern industrial architecture in his book, Towards a New Architecture.
Gilbert's abilities to meet the specific needs of his clients was recognized in the business world. A letter found in Gilbert's business correspondence of 1925 refers to a potential client's interest in Gilbert's work. "Mr. Hill stated that he could not disclose the name of his clients but they had seen some of my work and liked it, that the thing they liked about it was its individuality; that it was individual and had character of its own, and that they wanted a building that was not a mere standardized structure..."
The Design of the 130 West 30th Street Building
The loft building at 130 West 30th Street is a utilitarian structure, combining offices and manufacturing spaces for businesses in the fur trade. Since it was also built as a speculative venture, Gilbert used an idea that had proved successful on the Woolworth Building. He found that a distinctively ornamented building served as an advertisement for its occupants and was more likely to attract good tenants than one which was totally plain.
In addition, Gilbert used terra cotta, which he had previously employed successfully, both as a decorative accent or for complete cladding in several of his earlier designs, including the Broadway-Chambers, the Kinney Building(in Newark), the West Street Building, and the Woolworth Building.
On the 130 West 30th Street Building, Gilbert used terra cotta in three particular areas of the building, for the design emphasis it could create: as spandrel panels on the front, in decorative panels over the entrances, and as friezes marking each setback.
On the front facade, Gilbert set off the main section with monotone terracotta spandrel panels that are part of a gridwork formed by the windows, spandrels and bronze piers. Each terra-cotta panel is covered by an intricate design consisting of a central circle holding a spread-winged bird surrounded by a grid with flowers in each section and geometric patterns framing the rectangle. The panels echo the larger grid of the whole front facade.
The overall effect is almost one of a large woven textile, an idea especially appropriate to a building in the garment district.
A second use of terra cotta on this building consists of the two mirror-image hunting scene panels which are set into the marble above each of the two entrances.
Based on the famous stone reliefs taken from the palace of Assyrian King Assurnasirpal II of c. 883-859 which show the king hunting lions from his chariot, this modern adaptation has two helmeted men, one with a bow and arrow aimed toward a fleeing antelope. The ancient panel shows the lion downed by the arrow, under the legs of the running horses, while in the modern one some sort of cat (or lion) fills the same space.
Each terra-cotta panel is flanked by the three-dimensional front end of a lion, whose head and front legs emerge from the wall, and whose mouth is open to roar. These fierce beasts are also reminiscent of the Assyrian culture, where lions were an important motif.
Motifs taken from the Assyrian culture are extremely rare on New York City buildings, being found only as ornamental accents near the roofline on the Fred F. French and Graybar buildings. Although, to date, no one has discovered any statements by Gilbert indicating why he selected these motifs, comments by one of the designers of the Fred French Building may shed some light on the subject. H. Douglas Ives noted that the stepped masses of 1920s skyscrapers strongly resembled the forms of Assyrian ziggurats or observation towers and decided that "we felt we might safely adapt these Assyrian or Chaldean forms of ornament which were peculiarly suitable to flat surfaces" forthe French building.
Gilbert's terracotta designs are very flat and highly abstracted, with light-colored designs on a darker background. These would have been less expensive to reproduce than the highly sculptural designs Gilbert had employed on many of his office structures and thus more suitable for this industrial building. In addition, many artists and designers of the late 1920s, especially those influenced by the Art Deco designs coming from Europe, were taking inspiration from other, often ancient cultures, particularly those seen as more primitive. This influence can also been seen in Gilbert's panels.
The third use of terra cotta on this building is found on the friezes which encircle the building and are located at each setback level and at the floor above: the tenth and eleventh stories, the fourteenth and fifteenth stories, and at the seventeenth and eighteenth stories.
The friezes consist of two tones of terra cotta: light tan designs with a glossy finish against a darker, matte background. They are composed of panels with two highly stylized, alternating designs: facing winged lions with horse heads, and facing winged lions with human heads above animal heads.
These boldly abstracted creatures can be seen as mythical guardian figures, again drawing inspiration from earlier cultures. These distinctive designs and colorations contributed to an unusual building which stands out strikingly on this bustling, crowded street.
Architectural Terra Cotta
While terra cotta, as a building material was not new, architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century found many more uses for this inexpensive yet effective material. Promoted for its fireproof characteristics, the material was also inexpensive and highly adaptable for many kinds of visual effects.
Architects could create individual and colorful designs for buildings, using terra cotta in panels or inserts, either plain or polychromed. Cass Gilbert employed terra cotta in many different ways and for different design purposes on a number of his buildings. On the 130 West 30"" Street Building, as on the Broadway-Chambers, and the West Street buildings among others, the terra cotta is set off as a distinct area of the design and used to highlight a particular part of each building.
On the Rodin Studios (a designated new York City Landmark) the terra cotta is fully integrated into the design with spandrels and vertical piers made of the material, while it is used as a complete sheathing material on the Woolworth Building. The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company supplied Gilbert with this material for all of these buildings.
Founded in 1897 by DeForest Grant and others, the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company was one of the earliest New York manufacturers of architectural terra cotta, with their factory at Tottenville, Staten Island. Several founding members had worked previously at Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company. The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company was reorganized in 1907 as the consolidation of the Perth Amboy, the Excelsior and the Atlantic Terra Cotta Companies.
The Standard Terra Cotta Works was added to the company shortly thereafter, as was the Atlanta Terra Cotta Company. Their plants were located at Tottenville, Staten Island, Perth Amboy and Rocky Hill, New Jersey, and Atlanta, Georgia. This company was well-known in the architectural field, creating a wide variety of terra cotta products, from the white glazed terra cotta which faced most of the Woolworth Building, to the polychrome decorative work on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the ornate, multi-colored murals on the walls of the Grill Room in the McAlpin Hotel.
The company was clearly proud of its work at 130 West 30th Street and featured it in the March 1928, issue of its magazine. In this article, the author stressed that Gilbert's friezes used only two designs, which were repeated across the facades, and that the spandrel panels were all the same design, also repeated many times, thus showing that the use of terra cotta on buildings could be very economical.
This was important for a speculative loft building. While the building is primarily a very functional design (plain brick walls with large, industrial-type windows), the terra cotta enlivens the facade at a reasonable cost.
Zoning and the 130 West 30th Street Building
Although Gilbert was not hired to design this building until the end of March, 1927,13 it seems that Hahner had previously worked on it and had clear ideas of what he wanted. Gilbert wrote a letter to Hahner dated May 29,1928 that delineated his history of involvement with the project: "Started work on building Stewart & Co. furnished us with a drawing dated Feb. 9,1927 titled 'Layout of building 128-134 West 30th Street, Conforming to Zoning limits"
Gilbert notes that this drawing formed the basis for his own plans. Stewart & Company was the contracting firm hired to complete the project and were likely to have engineers who were familiar with the provisions of New York's 1916 Building Zone Resolution.
This law, which had such an immense effect on the city's skyline, was passed after the 40-story Equitable Building was built at 120 Broadway.15 The enormous height and bulk of this building forced city officials to realize that height limits needed to be placed on new structures so that the city streets could continue to receive enough light and air.
But soon after its passage, World War I limited new building projects and an economic depression that followed in continued this trend. It was not until 1925 that the implications of this zoning law began to be seen in actual buildings. The new law required that buildings set back at certain heights rather than extend straight up from the lot line.
Architects made many attempts to understand the design implications of this law, including Hugh Ferriss' famous, dramatic series of drawings showing several possible massings for tall buildings under the new regulations. The results were buildings with stepped or tiered profiles such as the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. From the 1920s through the 1950s, these buildings and other similar ones dominated the New York City skyline and defined its image.
While the 1916 law was designed to affect tall skyscrapers, setback designs came to be seen as representative of the period, and of everything that was modern. This type of profile could be found on furniture and other objects of the period, as well as buildings, as an indication of the modernity of the design. It was therefore not unusual that when Cass Gilbert was designing this eighteen-story loft building, he should choose to emphasize the setbacks as if it were a much taller building.
In addition, ziggurats or stepped pyramidal shapes were associated with ancient Assyrian buildings, a further association with the architect's design inspiration. Gilbert created setbacks at the 10th, 14th, and 17th stories, emphasizing them with two-tone terra-cotta friezes on those stories and on the stories above.
The frieze was also a modern touch, used instead of a projecting cornice that would have been the finishing element in designs of earlier years. The flat frieze subordinated the cornice, allowing the viewer's eye to continue traveling upward along the building to emphasize its height. Since the building is located mid-block, Gilbert was most concerned with the street facade, rather than those on the sides, but he carried the terra-cotta friezes around both sides anyway.
Description
The building at 130 West 30th Street occupies a mid-block site on a fairly narrow street and rises eighteen stories through a series of setbacks. The base has glass and metal storefronts flanked by marble-framed entryways. The rest of the facade is composed of brick, with large, metal-framed, industrial windows, and terra-cotta at the spandrel panels, window sills, and cornices, as well as in panels over the two main entrances.
The base is two stories high, with two large storefronts in the center section of the facade. Set on a granite watertable, each storefront has large, plate-glass windows in metal framework, with sections of the original metal grill beneath the glass. The double-height metal piers at the outside and between the two stores are original.
Each store has a central entrance with double glass doors recessed between the windows. Fixed glass panels, as in the original design, are above the main shop windows. The side bays of the ground story have entrances framed with travertine marble.
The eastern entrance is for freight, while that on the west is for pedestrians. Each opening is topped by mirror-image terra-cotta panels displaying a hunting scene of two men standing in a horse-drawn chariot. One has a bow and arrow pointed towards a running antelope, with a smaller cat (or lion?) running beneath the horse's legs. The terra-cotta designs are in light tan on a darker brown background. The panels are flanked by highly-stylized, three-dimensional terra-cotta figures of fiercely-roaring lions, their heads and front legs seeming to emerge from the marble wall.
Recessed within the marble at the western side is a bronze and glass doorway composed of three doors topped by a bronze cornice bearing the words "130 West Thirtieth Street." Above the cornice is a transom divided into three sections by bronze mullions. A small bronze insignia is set in the marble, beneath the terra-cotta panel and above the opening, consisting of the vertically arranged letters "SJM" surrounded by a circlet of leaves placed over the word Building.
The marble surround, terra-cotta panel and bronze insignia are the same on the eastern entrance. Recessed within it however, is a non-historic freight entrance. Closer to street level is a metal transom bearing the same lettering "130 West Thirtieth Street"as on the other entryway, with a non-historic three-section glass area above it.
Above the base, the building rises straight up for eight stories. It is symmetrically arranged with a center section eight bays wide and side sections, each one-bay wide. The side bays are faced with brick and each has a single, three-over-three window at each floor. In the spandrels between each floor, the brick is laid as headers, creating a patterned effect.
Within each bay of the center section is a large window, separated from its neighbor by a narrow metal pier which rise continuously to the bottom of the first cornice. Windows on the third and fourth stories have two-pane sash, while all the others have original three-over-three sash. Beneath each window, completely filling the area between the floors, is a rectangular panel in monotone tan terra cotta.
Each panel is completely filled with patterns and designs, including a central circle containing a bird with spread wings, surrounded by a grid in which each section contains a flower. Strips of geometric designs frame each panel. At the top of this section is a cornice that extends across the front and both sides of the building. The frieze consists of panels of stylized terra-cotta designs featuring light tan motifs on a darker brown ground.
Two patterns alternate: facing winged beasts (lions bodies with horses heads), and facing winged lions with human heads on top of the animal heads. Between each panel is a narrow section containing a stylized palm tree. The entire cornice is framed by strips of zig-zag patterns.
Above the tenth story, the front facade steps back the width of one-half a bay. The pattern of the entire front facade, with eight central bays and single side bays, is repeated at this story, and includes another terra-cotta cornice with the same design that begins next to the center section and extends across the side bays and on both sides of the building.
At the eleventh story, the two side bays step back another half a bay, while the center section continues straight up through three more stories. At the top of the fourteenth story is another cornice that goes across the entire front and both sides of the building. Across the center section and its reveals, the cornice is set in a metal frame around each panel, with gargoyles that project between each bay. At the fifteenth story the entire front facade steps back another half bay, with the terra-cotta cornice starting again at each side bay and continuing around the sides of the building.
Above the fifteenth story, the two side bays again step back a half bay while the center section rises through the next two stories. At the top of the seventeenth story is another terra-cotta cornice with metal enframements around each panel where it crosses the center section. The entire front facade steps back again after this story. Another story rises above this cornice with windows in the center section, while the two side bays continue as unfenestrated towers for several stories. Each is capped by a terra-cotta cornice around all four facades.
The side facades of this building are primarily faced in plain brick above the neighboring buildings, except for the terra-cotta cornices, that highlight each side and the one or two bays of industrial windows with sash similar to that on the front which are located near the front, center and rear of the side facade.
- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Kaolin (China clay) is used in the manufacture of paper products and ceramics and in fillers in plastics and rubber. Exposure occurs mostly in those involved in the mining and processing of kaolin but also in those involved in manufacturing processes utilizing kaolin. Inhaled kaolin appears as small golden brown particles and usually results in pulmonary fibrosis. In this image kaolin is present within alveoli and fibrosis is absent.
Image contributed by Dr. Yale Rosen - @yro854
The picture was taken from sample of an ancient bridge in Brazil dating from the 1860’s. Its structure is made in puddle iron, an historical structural material. It dates from the end of the 18th century and it was produced until the early 20th century. It represented a technological advance over cast iron. This material supplied the growing demand during the industrial revolution in England as it had a reduced production cost. On its manufacturing process, highly qualified workers called puddlers would try and remove the slag off the melting metal manually with the help of long shovels. This well paid job would lead them to an early death at an average age of 40 years old. Despite their effort, the resulting product still contained a considerable amount of slag, as we can see in the image. Many famous structures were built using this material such as the Eiffel tower and several bridges and railways across Europe.
Study conducted by the researchers: Juan Manuel Pardal (Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering) and Yuri Sande Renni (Mechanical Engineering Graduation Student) - from Universidade Federal Fluminense, Laboratório de Metalografia e Tratamentos Térmicos (LABMETT) - Niterói – Brazil.
Courtesy of Mr. FRANCISCO RANGEL , MCTI/INT
Image Details
Instrument used: Quanta SEM
Magnification: 2,500x
Horizontal Field Width: 119 µm
Voltage: 20 kV
Working Distance: 12.4
Soda Springs (Geyser) is a group of thousands of natural carbonated springs in the area of Soda Springs, Idaho. The springs were a landmark on the Oregon Trail.
“Past volcanic activity has shaped the landscape, and the residual geothermal activity has caused the numerous hot bubbling springs that gave it its name. Geothermal activity hundreds of feet below the ground heats water and mixes in carbon dioxide gas. Soda Springs gets its name from the naturally carbonated water. The resulting increased pressure contributes to the number of springs and was the cause of the geyser.”
The Oregon Trail passed through Soda Springs. At the time it was known as the "Oasis of Soda Springs". Between Fort Laramie and Fort Boise, Soda Springs was a major landmark Soda Springs is the second oldest settlement in Idaho. Sulphur Springs was the first hot spring that the Oregon Trail immigrants encountered in the soda springs area. Pyramid springs was discovered by fur trappers and pioneers, they discovered the springs by noticing mounds of soda formed rock and clay Johnkirk Townsends said in his diary, “Our encampment on the 8th was near what are called the’White Clay pits,” still on Bear River. The soil is soft chalk, white and tenacious: and in the vicinity are several springs of strong super carbonated water which bubble up with all the activity of artificial fountains. The taste was very agreeable and refreshing, resembling Saratoga water but not so saline. The whole plain to the hills is having depressions on their summits from which once issued streams of water. The extent of these eruptions, at some former period, must have been very great. At about half a mile distant, is an eruptive thermal spring of the temperature of 90 [degrees], and near this is an opening in the earth front which a stream of gas issues without water.”
This spring was known for its excellent water quality. Fred J. Kiesel of Ogden Utah heard of the excellent water and set up a bottling plant with W.J. Clark of Butte, MT. The product name was "Idanha." The natural mineral company was incorporated in 1887 and began distributing it around the nation and the globe. The water became so prestigious that it took first place at the Chicago's World Fair in 1893, and again in the World's Fair in Paris, France.
On November 30, 1937, a well drilling operation while attempting to build a natural hot springs swimming pool was surprised when it unintentionally released Soda Springs’s famous captive geyser, which surprised everyone by shooting 100 feet into the air. It has been capped and a timer activates it once every hour. The water is approximately 72 degrees Fahrenheit. There is now a park and a visitor center at the site.In addition to its captive geyser, Soda Springs also boasts a man-made lava flow, from the dumping of molten rock left over from Monsanto's phosphate mining and manufacturing process one mile north of the town.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_Springs_Geyser
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Built in 1929-31, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s 500 Fifth Avenue Building is a soaring 59-story Art Deco skyscraper, located at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed concurrently with the Empire State Building. Because the site was so valuable and so small, measuring only 100 feet by 208 feet, the building was designed to the maximum height and floor area allowable under the 1916 zoning code. Located in two zoning districts with differing setback requirements, it is asymmetrically massed with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on Fifth Avenue and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on West 42nd Street. Sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality.
On Fifth Avenue the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical relief by sculptor Edmond Amateis “symbolizing the genius of the modern skyscraper.” Capping the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline. When it opened in March 1931, 500 Fifth Avenue was the crowning achievement of real estate developer Walter J. Salmon, who was responsible for rebuilding the north side of West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the first decades of the 20th century. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon was one of the leading architectural firms in the country specializing in skyscraper design. In addition to 500 Fifth Avenue, Shreve Lamb & Harmon designed the Empire State Building (1929-31, 350 Fifth Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark). 500 Fifth Avenue continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History and Development of Midtown and the 500 Fifth Avenue Site
The area surrounding Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and the southern end of Central Park remained rural in character until the second half of the nineteenth century, when speculative residences and mansions began to be constructed on lots newly mapped by the city. By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings. By 1923, so many banks and trust companies had established uptown branches near the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street and on the blocks of Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street, that Rider’s New York City guide reported the area was popularly known as “Little Wall Street.” 42nd Street, which linked this business district to Times Square, became one of the busiest thoroughfares in New York while Fifth Avenue remained the most fashionable shopping street in the city, leading Real Estate Record & Guide to declare the parcel at 500 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 42nd Street, as “the most valuable building site on Manhattan Island north of Wall Street.”
In 1903 a young and ambitious real estate entrepreneur named Walter J. Salomon (18711953), who later changed his surname to Salmon, leased the corner lot and the adjacent L-shaped lot, which fronted on Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street. Salmon then converted the existing building, the eight-story Hotel Bristol, into a commercial and office building and renamed it the Bristol Building. This property was to form the core of Salmon’s redevelopment plan for 500 Fifth Avenue, his crowning achievement as a real estate man and the final puzzle piece in the transformation of the entire block front into an imposing wall of modern commercial structures.
New York’s Art Deco Skyscrapers
America’s involvement in World War I, followed by a recession in the early 1920s, caused a construction lull in New York City, as in other parts of the country. By the mid 1920s, the economy had bounced back, and demand for new and larger commercial buildings was booming. Fifteen new office skyscrapers were erected in New York in 1925, and 1926 saw the construction of 30 more. This building frenzy lasted through the 1929 stock market crash, as construction went forward in the early 1930s on buildings that had already been planned and financed; although largely finished by 1932, the boom left behind a “rich array of towers,” many of them executed in what is known today as the Art Deco style. Indeed, several of New York’s most spectacular skyscrapers from this period—including the Chanin Building (Sloan & Robertson, 1927-29), the Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1928-30), the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1929-31) and the General Electric Building (Cross & Cross, 1929-31), all designated New York City Landmarks, are among the country’s most significant examples of Art Deco design.
Into the 1910s, no limits on building height or bulk existed in New York City. In 1916, New York implemented the nation’s first zoning regulations, which permitted unrestricted height on one quarter of a building site, but required skyscrapers to taper as they rose to allow light and air to reach the street. Six years later, architect and critic Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) and architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published a group of influential renderings that explored zoning’s impact on the shape of tall buildings. Presented as a series of illustrations progressing from the abstract, pyramidal shape of the zoning envelope to a stepped-back practicable building form, these drawings catalyzed a trend in which “buildings endeavored to take on the feeling of sculpted mountains, their shape suddenly more important than their historical detail or even their style.” So pervasive were the new stepped-back skyscrapers that by the mid-1920s, architects and critics spoke of an emerging “setback style”.
Another important influence on 1920s skyscraper design was Eliel Saarinen’s 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune’s new tower. With its straightforward shape, vertical emphasis, and limited ornament, Saarinen’s ahistorical design was “taken to be style-less and was thought in the twenties to have freed architects from what seemed the inevitable alternatives in skyscraper design, Gothic solutions on the one hand and vertically stretched Classicism on the other.”
The issue of what constituted “modern” design was expounded upon in the press and occupied many architects, who sought an appropriate means of expressing the societal changes brought about by new technology and manufacturing processes. A dichotomy existed, according to Ada Louise Huxtable, between the “modern” architecture of Europe and the “modernistic” new skyscrapers of New York:
‘Modern’ was radical, reductive, and reformist; ‘modernistic’ was richly decorative and attached to conservative and hedonistic values. ‘Modern’ was the austere, abstract, elite, avant-garde work of … [Walter] Gropius, Mies [van der Rohe], and Le Corbusier, united in its early days under the rubric of the International Style. ‘Modernistic’ was neither pure nor revolutionary; it fused the ornamental and the exotic for what was really the last great decorative style.
Only a handful of International Style skyscrapers were constructed in the United States before World War II. Far more popular was the “modernistic” style, which was later termed “Art Deco” based on its debt to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Flamboyant, dynamic, and dazzling to the eye, Art Deco’s primary characteristic was its “sumptuous ornament, and the lush textures and colors achieved by combining several materials, such as stone, brick, terra cotta, and metal.” Gilding and shiny materials were frequently used, and favorite decorative motifs, drawn from the natural world and geometric forms, included “spirals, sunflowers, steps, zigzags, triangles, double triangles, hexagons, fragmented circles, and seashells.” Frequently, facades were given a woven fabric treatment, in buildings including One Wall Street (Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark) and the 21 West Street Building (Starrett & Van Vleck, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark). Wall surfaces read as thin decorative veneers, as “stage sets” to a public infatuated with movies and the theater.
As Art Deco was conquering New York, a new skyscraper form, the slab, emerged. Into the 1920s, the city’s tallest skyscrapers were typically constructed on enormous lots. These sites were big enough, as with the Chrysler Building, to allow for “geometrically pure” square, needle-like towers that broke free of their bases and pierced the sky. But as large lots became rarer and developers sought to construct tall office buildings on narrow lots, this approach became unfeasible; the square tower, if made too small, lost too much of its internal space to elevators. As a result, new skyscrapers on narrower lots took on a slab-like form, their long and rectangular upper stories seemingly extruded from their bases. The pioneering slab skyscraper was H. Douglas Ives’ and Sloan & Robertson’s 38-story Fred F. French Building (1927, a designated New York City Landmark) at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, which was constructed on a relatively small lot.
But the master of the slab at the end of the 1920s was Raymond Hood, whose Daily News Building marked the most radical departure of any tall building from previous skyscraper form. Despite the rich Art Deco bas-relief over its main entrance, Hood’s building, with its artfully planned setbacks and flat, unornamented roofline, came closer to abstract sculpture than any skyscraper before; falling, in style, “between modern and modernistic,” it forsook the decorated crown of the Art Deco skyscraper and approached the purity of the International Style. Hood built upon his experience with the Daily News Building in designing another of the city’s great slab skyscrapers, the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (a designated New York City Landmark), which was completed in 1933.
Located just three blocks from the French Building, and similar in design and materials to the Daily News Building, 500 Fifth Avenue’s slender, slab-form tower situated the building within this group of transitional skyscrapers, precursors to the postwar office building. But with the Depression remaining entrenched and money for office buildings drying up, few Art Deco skyscrapers were completed in New York after Rockefeller Center, and the style, increasingly employed for government and institutional buildings, became considerably more restrained.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
Richmond Harold Shreve (1877-1946)
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1958
Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958)
The architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, formed in 1929, was one of New York City’s premier design teams, known primarily for their modern office buildings and especially the Empire State Building (completed 1931, a designated New York City Landmark). The three principal designers had traditional architectural educations and experience with important New York firms before they joined together and created buildings specifically adapted to the design requirements and technological advances of the modern era.
Richmond Harold Shreve was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduating in 1902, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the School of Architecture there. While at Cornell, he supervised the construction of Goldwin Smith Hall, designed by the New York firm of Carrère & Hastings, and at the conclusion of the project he joined the firm. William Frederick Lamb, son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. Graduating from Williams College in 1904, Shreve subsequently studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. After receiving his diploma from the École des Beaux Arts in 1911, Lamb returned to New York and joined the firm of Carrère & Hastings where he met Shreve. In 1920, Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrère & Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
By 1924, they decided to establish their own partnership, and five years later they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Harmon, who had been born in Chicago, studied at the Art Institute there and graduated from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1901. He worked as a designer in the firm of McKim, Mead & White between 1902 and 1911. From 1912 to 1913, he was an associate in the firm of Wallis & Goodwillie, and then practiced alone until joining Shreve and Lamb. His works from that period include 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. For the Empire State Building, the firm’s most famous work, Lamb was the designer, but Shreve’s organizational skills were generally credited with enabling the building to be constructed in just one year. Shreve was also active as a planner beyond 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 (such as No. 130 East 57th Street and No. 30 East 76th Street, located within the Upper East Side Historic District). Their residential work was largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular historical styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux Arts ornament for which Carrère & Hastings had been famous. Their other buildings in New York included the L.P. Hollander & Company Building at 3 East 57th Street (1929-30, a designated New York City Landmark), a 1931-33 addition to 14 Wall Street (a designated New York City Landmark), the Best & Company store at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street (demolished), an addition to the New York Times Annex on West 43rd Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building. Outside of New York City, their work includes the Standard Oil Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Chimes Building in Syracuse, NY. These tend to be similar to their New York City work, with unadorned limestone cladding, metal-framed windows and simple, set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
Edmond R. Amateis
Edmond R. Amateis (1897-1981) was an American sculptor born in Rome and trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. Working in the U.S. and Europe, Amateis created monumental public sculpture of a heroic-classical nature. Early in his career he won recognition with his award of the Prix de Rome (1921), the Avery Prize of the Architectural League of New York (1929), and the McCleese Prize of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1933). For the New York World’s Fair of 1939, Amateis sculpted a monumental allegorical group based on American folklore, with figures depicting Johnny Appleseed as Benevolence, Paul Bunyan as Efficiency, and Strap Buckner as Humility. Amateis’s other major commissions included a sculptural frieze for the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, completed in 1938, and a memorial to American soldiers who died in France during World War II, located in Draguignan, France.
Design and Construction of the 500 Fifth Avenue Building
With his acquisition of the properties at nos. 3, 5, 7, and 9 West 42nd Street in 1915, Walter J. Salmon had assembled a parcel of 20,900 square feet at 500 Fifth Avenue, about the minimum size necessary for profitable redevelopment. In 1922, Gerry Estates, Inc. entered into an agreement with Salmon to redevelop the site. With other projects in the works, including the adjacent Salmon Tower at 11-27 West 42nd Street, Salmon delayed beginning work on the corner site until the summer of 1929. At that time he announced plans for a fifty-eight story building with frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 208 feet on 42nd Street to be built to the design of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Given its status as the second most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan, redevelopment of this site was greatly anticipated among the real estate community and by the public at large. An article in the Real Estate Record & Guide described the high-profile nature of the project:
For years residents of the city and out-of-town visitors alike have speculated as to the future of this corner, wondering that so prominent a location—at “the crossroads of the world”—should have been neglected in the modern development of Fifth Avenue as the leading shopping street of the world and of the Grand Central area as the midtown financial and business district…With the fashionable shopping district definitely extending its limits above Forty-second Street; with the north and south flow of automobile and pedestrian traffic and the cross flow between Grand Central Station and Times Square making the intersection one of the busiest in the world, and with other building under way, the time appeared ripe for an improvement on this corner.
The construction of the office building at 500 Fifth Avenue had a significant impact on the eventual development of the adjacent parcels, because its planning affected the zoning of the entire Fifth Avenue block front. The zoning code permitted a taller building on 42nd Street than on Fifth Avenue, so Salmon acquired a long-term lease on the adjacent four-story converted dwelling at 508 Fifth Avenue in 1927; by merging the zoning lots of this 25 by 102-foot building and that of 500 Fifth Avenue, he was able to build a higher tower than would have otherwise been possible.
The program for 500 Fifth Avenue called for street-level stores, banking facilities on the second and third floors, and office units on the floors above, totaling approximately 450,000 square feet of rentable area. Plans were submitted to the Buildings Department in October 1929, and excavation began in February of 1930; the estimated cost of the project was $4,000,000. Charles T. Wills, Inc. was the general contractor, and McClintic-Marshall Co. the steel contractor. Erection of the skyscraper’s steel skeleton began at the end of March, and was completed in a mere four months owing to a highly efficient system whereby the steel arrived on site and was hoisted by derricks to the 36th floor, where it was assembled and continuously distributed by a relay derrick to other floors. The exterior brickwork was completed in early September 1930, and the general contract for the building was completed in January 1931. At the height of the building project nearly 2,200 workers were employed.
The construction of 500 Fifth Avenue and its sister skyscraper the Empire State Building (constructed concurrently from January 1930 to May 1931) set a new standard for speed and efficiency in building construction. Each component of 500 Fifth Avenue’s structure was planned, mapped, and measured in advance, in what historian Christopher Gray called a “tight ballet of scheduling.” This strategic approach to construction planning and oversight was successfully realized at 500 Fifth Avenue through the close collaboration of the architect, building owner, real estate advisers, operating managers, and builder throughout the entire process of planning and construction. Architect Richmond Shreve was a great proponent of rationalized building construction, and expounded on his ideas in an essay titled “The Economic Design of Office Buildings”:
To set up properly an income-producing building the control of its design and construction should be in the hands of a Board on which sit Owner, Banker, Builder, Architect, Engineers, and Real Estate Men. The record of their decisions finds place in plans, specifications and contracts, financial transactions and leases, and the outcome of their work, if it is to be successful, must have been foreseen far in advance of its realization.
500 Fifth Avenue was completed in just over a year without accident or serious injury, and opened in March 1931 in time for the traditional renewal date for business leases of May 1. William F. Lamb called 500 Fifth Avenue “a thoroughly frank expression of the requirements of an up-to-date office building.” These requirements included modern, well lit and properly ventilated office units near elevators and bathrooms; fast and efficient elevator service; and maximum rentable floor space. Despite its relatively small lot (less than a quarter of the size of the Empire State Building lot) and constricted building envelope, 500 Fifth Avenue offered all of these things; moreover, its unusually advantageous corner location across from the New York Public Library and Bryant Park afforded ample natural light, cross-ventilation, and unobstructed views for two blocks to the south.
Effectively, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed 500 Fifth Avenue from the top down, determining the placement of the building’s service core within the tower and then the base, and from the inside out, determining the ideal office unit as a basis for formulating the overall plan and circulation. The building’s set-back configuration, which allowed for an unusually high window-to-wall ratio, as well as a 25-foot wide light court on the west side of the building beginning at the sixth floor, ensured that no office unit would be more than 30 feet from natural light; a distance of 28 feet or less was considered optimal for modern office buildings before the development of air-conditioning. Floor areas ranged from 2,150 to 18,000 square feet, with office units as small as 9 feet in width and as large as an entire floor. The typical floor plan for the building’s base had 21 office units, while the typical floor plan for the tower had nine office units.
The main entrance to the building was placed on the Fifth Avenue facade, about 70 feet from 42nd Street and on center with the sheer tower rising above the setbacks, and the remainder of the ground floor on both the east and south facades was dominated by an unbroken line of bronze-framed, plate-glass storefronts. The main entrance was framed dramatically by pylons and crowned with the highly stylized bas-relief figure of a Grecian woman holding a staff with a winged sun disc and kneeling beside a model of the building itself, an allegorical representation of the “genius of the modern skyscraper,” sculpted from a single block of limestone by Edward Amateis.
The dramatically massed exterior of 500 Fifth Avenue expressed the constraints of the zoning code, which allowed more bulk on the 42nd Street side than on the Fifth Avenue side and thus determined the positioning of the tower on the base. The building’s tight footprint, which limited the size of the base, and the imperative of maximizing profits with top-quality office and retail space in a relatively small building envelope, resulted in the complex geometry of setbacks stepping up asymmetrically to the slender tower. With regards to the height of office buildings in a competitive real estate market, “…there is 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.” At 500 Fifth Avenue, the projected height of 58 stories (plus a penthouse, making the total 59 stories), or 697 feet, was considered the limit of economic feasibility for a 100- by 208-foot lot. In his essay on tall office buildings, Shreve summed up the design problem inherent in the 1916 zoning ordinance, describing the modern tall office building as
“a geometrical form consisting of a base enclosed by vertical walls, an intermediate section defined by sloping limits, and a tower…[and]…practical usable office floor area, supported and enclosed by structural forms, served by mechanical equipment, and reached through public spaces which are not directly sources of revenue.”
Shreve went on to offer this thought:
The demands of time, cost, and practicability need not be hostile to the aesthetic side of the work. Indeed, may it not be fairly said that character is improved and greater success of pure design assured if sound reasoning as to value, and honest recognition of function, accompany and guide our struggle to attain architectural beauty?
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s completed building was noted in the press for its height, its zoning conditions, and its real estate value; it was among the city’s notable tall buildings of the time and remains a distinguished example of Art Deco skyscraper design. Stylized geometrical ornament, a restrained color palette, and the “vertical accent” created by spandrels and channeling all contributed to the building’s “modern architectural treatment”, in the words of partner William Lamb. On the second, third, and fourth stories, limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and light-green metal spandrels decorated with folds and chevrons reflect Art Deco’s affinity for stylized geometric forms. Around the main entrance the carved limestone pylons and allegorical bas-relief are picked out in gilding, and on the 42nd Street facade a pair of eagles carved in profile enhance the figural quality of the ornamental scheme. Rising above the base is 500 Fifth Avenue’s flat-roofed, slab-form tower.
The tower’s vertical buff-brick stripes are likely inspired by Hood’s Daily News Building, which bridged Art Deco and the emerging International Style when it opened in 1930. As with the Daily News Building—where Hood sought to conceal the windows to avoid the effect of a wall “shot full of holes”—these stripes alternate with dark window bands. In the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, 500 Fifth Avenue’s terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward. Seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline. This striped effect is continued on the north elevation, where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta.
Above its base, 500 Fifth Avenue is virtually free of ornament, except at the tower, where a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Subsequent History
A year after the stock market crash and three months before the opening of 500 Fifth Avenue, Walter J. Salmon was quoted in the papers on the subject of his prospects for an immediate return on his investment: “We feel that it will take some time to absorb the approximately 500,000 square feet of office space in the building, but the enterprise was undertaken with the greatest faith in the future of midtown expansion and development.” By May 1931, three months after its opening, the 15th, 16th and 20th floors of the building had been fully rented ; by the end of the year, several prestigious tenants had signed leases, including the Electrolux Corporation, no less than ten railroad corporations, and the Western Universities Club, which used the penthouse and the three floors below for its club facilities. An article in the New York Times from January 1932 reported a consistent demand for business space in the midtown area, calling business renting “brisk.”
Later tenants of 500 Fifth Avenue included the Austrian and Japanese consulates, and in the mid-1930s the building became the target of Communist protests directed at the Japanese consulate, which had offices on the 40th floor.
In 1944, when the Manufacturers Trust Company—then located at 513 Fifth Avenue–and the Mutual Insurance Company entered into a lease in which Mutual Life agreed to construct a new bank building on the property at nos. 508 and 510-514 Fifth Avenue, a corollary agreement with Walter Salmon permitted Manufacturers Trust Company to sublease, and ultimately redevelop, 508 Fifth Avenue. An important stipulation in this agreement was that during the time Salmon’s lease remained in effect (1944-65), any building erected on the portion of the lot at No. 508 would not exceed the height of the then-existing building (63 feet) or otherwise interfere with 500 Fifth Avenue. Thus, the height of the new bank building was effectively limited to four or five stories, and light and ventilation levels on the north wall of 500 Fifth Avenue were preserved.
In 1955, the land under 500 Fifth Avenue was sold by Gerry Brothers & Co., whose principals were descendents of the original ownership, to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 500 Fifth Avenue was again the site of political disturbance in 1980, when Croatian nationalists bombed a Yugoslavian bank located on the 30th floor of the building; there were no injuries, and only minor damage to the interior spaces. In the mid-1990s, the facade of 500 Fifth Avenue was repaired, ornament was restored or selectively refabricated, and replacement windows were installed. The building continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
Description
500 Fifth Avenue is an asymmetrically massed skyscraper with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on the Fifth Avenue (east) facade and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on the 42nd Street (south) facade; the side (west) facade is partially visible from street; sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality; on the Fifth Avenue facade the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical bas-relief; the metal-and-glass main entrance door is deeply recessed and has returns of polished stone or metal; possibly historic pendant and wall-mounted light fixtures within recess of main entrance; possibly historic light fixtures and flag poles flank the main entrance; freight entrance in seventh bay of ground floor on 42nd Street facade; ground-floor storefronts on the Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades retain the original patinated metal cornice with chevron motifs; the three commercial stories above the storefronts have large show-window openings set between limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and patinated metal spandrels decorated with stylized folds and chevrons; the majority of the show windows on the 2nd Street facade are historic multi-pane metal sash; on the Fifth Avenue facade only a few of these historic show windows remain; on the buff-brick mid-section and tower the windows are arranged into paired and triple groups separated by projecting piers, with the major piers enhanced by vertical channeling; in the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, the terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward; seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline; this striped effect is continued on the back (north) elevation where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta; crowning the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Alterations: non-historic metal-and-glass storefront infill on ground story; several non-historic plate-glass windows with metal frames on second through fourth stories of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; metal plaques and security lights at main entrance on Fifth Avenue facade; four utility boxes affixed to southeast corner of building above fifth story; double-hung metal replacement windows in all openings above the fourth story; louvers or vents in several window openings or as replacement window panes on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; brick replaced at corners of building; dunnage/cooling tower and antennas visible on roof.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Starting in January 2012 the Department for Transport is conducting a trial of longer semi-trailers. The trial involves 900 semi-trailers of 14.6m in length (i.e. 1 metre longer than the current maximum), and a further 900 semi-trailers of 15.65m in length (i.e. 2.05 metres longer). This will result in the total maximum length of the semi-trailer truck being 17.5 metres (for trailers of 14.6 metre in length) and 18.55 metres (for trailers of 15.65 metres in length). The increase in length will not result in the 44,000 kg (97,000 lb) weight limit being exceeded, and will allow some operators to approach the weight limit which may not have been previously possible due to the previous length of trailers. The trial will run for a maximum of 10 years.
www.dft.gov.uk/topics/freight/road-freight/longer-semi-tr...
United Biscuits, the company famous for well known UK brands KP, Jacobs, McVities, McCoys, Go Ahead and Jaffa Cakes to name just a few, has recently taken delivery of 20 longer semi trailers built by South Manchester based Cartwright.
The Curtainside Longer Semi Trailers, which operate from United Biscuit’s distribution centre at Ashby de la Zouche are 15650mm in length, Tri-axle in design with a rear command steering axle. The Clearspan body design has insulated and security curtains and conforms to the EN12642XL standard. They are painted in six different liveries promoting the distinctive United Biscuits brands and include an impactive liveried environmental vehicle which runs on waste vegetable oil, a by product of UB’s manufacturing process.
CARTWRIGHT GROUP says its longer semitrailers (LSTs) will use the “command rearsteer” technology because it is more versatile than current self-tracking rear-steer solutions.
The Altrincham-based body and trailer manufacturer is in the process of building its irst LST, says director Steven Cartwright, which is expected to be unveiled in January 2012. “We are inalising the design but we will initially use command [positive] rear-steer technology, which in this case is Tridec, as it is more versatile and reduces the tyre wear.
“With self-tracking rear-steer trailers, which are cheaper and lighter, you have to straightenup to slot the pin into place before reversing with three ixed axles – and there will be a lot of yards where this might not be possible,” he says.
Manufacturers developing maximum length longer trailers with a single rear-steer axle are yet to achieve a true 44-tonne GVW because they are unable to put the axle in the right position to achieve the required turning circle without compromising weight distribution.
Cartwright admits its company’s design is currently at 42-tonnes GVW. However, a reduced GVW could beneit operators that regularly cube-out and those involved with the pallet networks, as there is no height restriction with longer trailers.
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--Officials cut the ribbon Feb. 27 ceremonially opening a brand new education center that will help Airmen stationed at this central coast base achieve their personal and professional education goals.
The $14.2 million center replaced a 60-year-old elementary school campus, which had been used as the education center for more than 40 years.
"We hear the dollar value, and I just can't stress how precious those dollars are in today's fiscal environment," said Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "The fact that we get to do military construction at all, especially something for the quality of our Airmen and their families, says a lot about the importance we place on education."
One of the center's first customers was Senior Airman Antoine Marshall, 30th Force Support Squadron, who joined the Air Force four years ago with an associate degree in criminal justice.
"I just took the analyzing and interpreting literature CLEP (College Level Examination Program) exam," said Marshall, who's pursuing a bachelor's degree in organizational management. "It was my first one--I passed it. I'm extremely happy!"
The 38,384-square-foot facility includes 20 classrooms, computer lab, testing center, and 75-seat auditorium, as well as offices for various colleges and universities serving the Vandenberg community.
"I think the facility is great," said Marshall. "Overall, it provides a better environment to work and study, and it's just comfortable."
The design-build project was constructed by Corps contractor Teehee-Straub, a joint-venture team from Oceanside, Calif.
"The design was quite extensive, just due to the detail and the location," said Keith Hamilton, project executive for Teehee-Straub. "The site work was very challenging, and I think that was something that brought a lot of character to this building."
Teehee-Straub's 21st century design included sustainable development and energy efficiencies, such as light pollution reduction and water use reduction.
"This is a sustainable building," said Col. Kim Colloton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District commander. "We can build our buildings smartly, so they can do more; it's more [money] that can go back into the base."
During construction, 75 percent of the construction and demolition debris was diverted from landfills and redirected back to the manufacturing process as reusable and recyclable material. Walk-off mats, exhaust systems and filtered heating and cooling improves indoor air quality. Low-flow fixtures and faucets, high-efficiency drip irrigation and drought-tolerant landscaping reduce potable water use by more than 40 percent. All are efficiencies the contractor believes will achive a LEED Silver rating (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a Green Building Council rating system).
"We're just proud to be part of this," said Teehee-Straub managing partner Richard Straub. "The Corps of Engineers is one of our favorite customers, and we love supporting the Air Force in doing a job that will educate a lot of servicemen."
500 Fifth Avenue (aka 500-506 Fifth
Avenue; 1-9 West 42nd Street), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Built in 1929-31, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s 500 Fifth Avenue Building is a soaring 59-story Art Deco skyscraper, located at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed concurrently with the Empire State Building. Because the site was so valuable and so small, measuring only 100 feet by 208 feet, the building was designed to the maximum height and floor area allowable under the 1916 zoning code. Located in two zoning districts with differing setback requirements, it is asymmetrically massed with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on Fifth Avenue and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on West 42nd Street. Sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality.
On Fifth Avenue the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical relief by sculptor Edmond Amateis “symbolizing the genius of the modern skyscraper.” Capping the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline. When it opened in March 1931, 500 Fifth Avenue was the crowning achievement of real estate developer Walter J. Salmon, who was responsible for rebuilding the north side of West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the first decades of the 20th century. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon was one of the leading architectural firms in the country specializing in skyscraper design. In addition to 500 Fifth Avenue, Shreve Lamb & Harmon designed the Empire State Building (1929-31, 350 Fifth Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark). 500 Fifth Avenue continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History and Development of Midtown and the 500 Fifth Avenue Site
The area surrounding Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and the southern end of Central Park remained rural in character until the second half of the nineteenth century, when speculative residences and mansions began to be constructed on lots newly mapped by the city. By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings. By 1923, so many banks and trust companies had established uptown branches near the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street and on the blocks of Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street, that Rider’s New York City guide reported the area was popularly known as “Little Wall Street.” 42nd Street, which linked this business district to Times Square, became one of the busiest thoroughfares in New York while Fifth Avenue remained the most fashionable shopping street in the city, leading Real Estate Record & Guide to declare the parcel at 500 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 42nd Street, as “the most valuable building site on Manhattan Island north of Wall Street.”
In 1903 a young and ambitious real estate entrepreneur named Walter J. Salomon (18711953), who later changed his surname to Salmon, leased the corner lot and the adjacent L-shaped lot, which fronted on Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street. Salmon then converted the existing building, the eight-story Hotel Bristol, into a commercial and office building and renamed it the Bristol Building. This property was to form the core of Salmon’s redevelopment plan for 500 Fifth Avenue, his crowning achievement as a real estate man and the final puzzle piece in the transformation of the entire block front into an imposing wall of modern commercial structures.
New York’s Art Deco Skyscrapers
America’s involvement in World War I, followed by a recession in the early 1920s, caused a construction lull in New York City, as in other parts of the country. By the mid 1920s, the economy had bounced back, and demand for new and larger commercial buildings was booming. Fifteen new office skyscrapers were erected in New York in 1925, and 1926 saw the construction of 30 more. This building frenzy lasted through the 1929 stock market crash, as construction went forward in the early 1930s on buildings that had already been planned and financed; although largely finished by 1932, the boom left behind a “rich array of towers,” many of them executed in what is known today as the Art Deco style. Indeed, several of New York’s most spectacular skyscrapers from this period—including the Chanin Building (Sloan & Robertson, 1927-29), the Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1928-30), the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1929-31) and the General Electric Building (Cross & Cross, 1929-31), all designated New York City Landmarks, are among the country’s most significant examples of Art Deco design.
Into the 1910s, no limits on building height or bulk existed in New York City. In 1916, New York implemented the nation’s first zoning regulations, which permitted unrestricted height on one quarter of a building site, but required skyscrapers to taper as they rose to allow light and air to reach the street. Six years later, architect and critic Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) and architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published a group of influential renderings that explored zoning’s impact on the shape of tall buildings. Presented as a series of illustrations progressing from the abstract, pyramidal shape of the zoning envelope to a stepped-back practicable building form, these drawings catalyzed a trend in which “buildings endeavored to take on the feeling of sculpted mountains, their shape suddenly more important than their historical detail or even their style.” So pervasive were the new stepped-back skyscrapers that by the mid-1920s, architects and critics spoke of an emerging “setback style”.
Another important influence on 1920s skyscraper design was Eliel Saarinen’s 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune’s new tower. With its straightforward shape, vertical emphasis, and limited ornament, Saarinen’s ahistorical design was “taken to be style-less and was thought in the twenties to have freed architects from what seemed the inevitable alternatives in skyscraper design, Gothic solutions on the one hand and vertically stretched Classicism on the other.”
The issue of what constituted “modern” design was expounded upon in the press and occupied many architects, who sought an appropriate means of expressing the societal changes brought about by new technology and manufacturing processes. A dichotomy existed, according to Ada Louise Huxtable, between the “modern” architecture of Europe and the “modernistic” new skyscrapers of New York:
‘Modern’ was radical, reductive, and reformist; ‘modernistic’ was richly decorative and attached to conservative and hedonistic values. ‘Modern’ was the austere, abstract, elite, avant-garde work of … [Walter] Gropius, Mies [van der Rohe], and Le Corbusier, united in its early days under the rubric of the International Style. ‘Modernistic’ was neither pure nor revolutionary; it fused the ornamental and the exotic for what was really the last great decorative style.
Only a handful of International Style skyscrapers were constructed in the United States before World War II. Far more popular was the “modernistic” style, which was later termed “Art Deco” based on its debt to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Flamboyant, dynamic, and dazzling to the eye, Art Deco’s primary characteristic was its “sumptuous ornament, and the lush textures and colors achieved by combining several materials, such as stone, brick, terra cotta, and metal.” Gilding and shiny materials were frequently used, and favorite decorative motifs, drawn from the natural world and geometric forms, included “spirals, sunflowers, steps, zigzags, triangles, double triangles, hexagons, fragmented circles, and seashells.” Frequently, facades were given a woven fabric treatment, in buildings including One Wall Street (Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark) and the 21 West Street Building (Starrett & Van Vleck, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark). Wall surfaces read as thin decorative veneers, as “stage sets” to a public infatuated with movies and the theater.
As Art Deco was conquering New York, a new skyscraper form, the slab, emerged. Into the 1920s, the city’s tallest skyscrapers were typically constructed on enormous lots. These sites were big enough, as with the Chrysler Building, to allow for “geometrically pure” square, needle-like towers that broke free of their bases and pierced the sky. But as large lots became rarer and developers sought to construct tall office buildings on narrow lots, this approach became unfeasible; the square tower, if made too small, lost too much of its internal space to elevators. As a result, new skyscrapers on narrower lots took on a slab-like form, their long and rectangular upper stories seemingly extruded from their bases. The pioneering slab skyscraper was H. Douglas Ives’ and Sloan & Robertson’s 38-story Fred F. French Building (1927, a designated New York City Landmark) at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, which was constructed on a relatively small lot.
But the master of the slab at the end of the 1920s was Raymond Hood, whose Daily News Building marked the most radical departure of any tall building from previous skyscraper form. Despite the rich Art Deco bas-relief over its main entrance, Hood’s building, with its artfully planned setbacks and flat, unornamented roofline, came closer to abstract sculpture than any skyscraper before; falling, in style, “between modern and modernistic,” it forsook the decorated crown of the Art Deco skyscraper and approached the purity of the International Style. Hood built upon his experience with the Daily News Building in designing another of the city’s great slab skyscrapers, the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (a designated New York City Landmark), which was completed in 1933.
Located just three blocks from the French Building, and similar in design and materials to the Daily News Building, 500 Fifth Avenue’s slender, slab-form tower situated the building within this group of transitional skyscrapers, precursors to the postwar office building. But with the Depression remaining entrenched and money for office buildings drying up, few Art Deco skyscrapers were completed in New York after Rockefeller Center, and the style, increasingly employed for government and institutional buildings, became considerably more restrained.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
Richmond Harold Shreve (1877-1946)
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1958
Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958)
The architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, formed in 1929, was one of New York City’s premier design teams, known primarily for their modern office buildings and especially the Empire State Building (completed 1931, a designated New York City Landmark). The three principal designers had traditional architectural educations and experience with important New York firms before they joined together and created buildings specifically adapted to the design requirements and technological advances of the modern era.
Richmond Harold Shreve was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduating in 1902, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the School of Architecture there. While at Cornell, he supervised the construction of Goldwin Smith Hall, designed by the New York firm of Carrère & Hastings, and at the conclusion of the project he joined the firm. William Frederick Lamb, son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. Graduating from Williams College in 1904, Shreve subsequently studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. After receiving his diploma from the École des Beaux Arts in 1911, Lamb returned to New York and joined the firm of Carrère & Hastings where he met Shreve. In 1920, Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrère & Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
By 1924, they decided to establish their own partnership, and five years later they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Harmon, who had been born in Chicago, studied at the Art Institute there and graduated from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1901. He worked as a designer in the firm of McKim, Mead & White between 1902 and 1911. From 1912 to 1913, he was an associate in the firm of Wallis & Goodwillie, and then practiced alone until joining Shreve and Lamb. His works from that period include 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. For the Empire State Building, the firm’s most famous work, Lamb was the designer, but Shreve’s organizational skills were generally credited with enabling the building to be constructed in just one year. Shreve was also active as a planner beyond 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 (such as No. 130 East 57th Street and No. 30 East 76th Street, located within the Upper East Side Historic District). Their residential work was largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular historical styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux Arts ornament for which Carrère & Hastings had been famous. Their other buildings in New York included the L.P. Hollander & Company Building at 3 East 57th Street (1929-30, a designated New York City Landmark), a 1931-33 addition to 14 Wall Street (a designated New York City Landmark), the Best & Company store at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street (demolished), an addition to the New York Times Annex on West 43rd Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building. Outside of New York City, their work includes the Standard Oil Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Chimes Building in Syracuse, NY. These tend to be similar to their New York City work, with unadorned limestone cladding, metal-framed windows and simple, set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
Edmond R. Amateis
Edmond R. Amateis (1897-1981) was an American sculptor born in Rome and trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. Working in the U.S. and Europe, Amateis created monumental public sculpture of a heroic-classical nature. Early in his career he won recognition with his award of the Prix de Rome (1921), the Avery Prize of the Architectural League of New York (1929), and the McCleese Prize of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1933). For the New York World’s Fair of 1939, Amateis sculpted a monumental allegorical group based on American folklore, with figures depicting Johnny Appleseed as Benevolence, Paul Bunyan as Efficiency, and Strap Buckner as Humility. Amateis’s other major commissions included a sculptural frieze for the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, completed in 1938, and a memorial to American soldiers who died in France during World War II, located in Draguignan, France.
Design and Construction of the 500 Fifth Avenue Building
With his acquisition of the properties at nos. 3, 5, 7, and 9 West 42nd Street in 1915, Walter J. Salmon had assembled a parcel of 20,900 square feet at 500 Fifth Avenue, about the minimum size necessary for profitable redevelopment. In 1922, Gerry Estates, Inc. entered into an agreement with Salmon to redevelop the site. With other projects in the works, including the adjacent Salmon Tower at 11-27 West 42nd Street, Salmon delayed beginning work on the corner site until the summer of 1929. At that time he announced plans for a fifty-eight story building with frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 208 feet on 42nd Street to be built to the design of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Given its status as the second most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan, redevelopment of this site was greatly anticipated among the real estate community and by the public at large. An article in the Real Estate Record & Guide described the high-profile nature of the project:
For years residents of the city and out-of-town visitors alike have speculated as to the future of this corner, wondering that so prominent a location—at “the crossroads of the world”—should have been neglected in the modern development of Fifth Avenue as the leading shopping street of the world and of the Grand Central area as the midtown financial and business district…With the fashionable shopping district definitely extending its limits above Forty-second Street; with the north and south flow of automobile and pedestrian traffic and the cross flow between Grand Central Station and Times Square making the intersection one of the busiest in the world, and with other building under way, the time appeared ripe for an improvement on this corner.
The construction of the office building at 500 Fifth Avenue had a significant impact on the eventual development of the adjacent parcels, because its planning affected the zoning of the entire Fifth Avenue block front. The zoning code permitted a taller building on 42nd Street than on Fifth Avenue, so Salmon acquired a long-term lease on the adjacent four-story converted dwelling at 508 Fifth Avenue in 1927; by merging the zoning lots of this 25 by 102-foot building and that of 500 Fifth Avenue, he was able to build a higher tower than would have otherwise been possible.
The program for 500 Fifth Avenue called for street-level stores, banking facilities on the second and third floors, and office units on the floors above, totaling approximately 450,000 square feet of rentable area. Plans were submitted to the Buildings Department in October 1929, and excavation began in February of 1930; the estimated cost of the project was $4,000,000. Charles T. Wills, Inc. was the general contractor, and McClintic-Marshall Co. the steel contractor. Erection of the skyscraper’s steel skeleton began at the end of March, and was completed in a mere four months owing to a highly efficient system whereby the steel arrived on site and was hoisted by derricks to the 36th floor, where it was assembled and continuously distributed by a relay derrick to other floors. The exterior brickwork was completed in early September 1930, and the general contract for the building was completed in January 1931. At the height of the building project nearly 2,200 workers were employed.
The construction of 500 Fifth Avenue and its sister skyscraper the Empire State Building (constructed concurrently from January 1930 to May 1931) set a new standard for speed and efficiency in building construction. Each component of 500 Fifth Avenue’s structure was planned, mapped, and measured in advance, in what historian Christopher Gray called a “tight ballet of scheduling.” This strategic approach to construction planning and oversight was successfully realized at 500 Fifth Avenue through the close collaboration of the architect, building owner, real estate advisers, operating managers, and builder throughout the entire process of planning and construction. Architect Richmond Shreve was a great proponent of rationalized building construction, and expounded on his ideas in an essay titled “The Economic Design of Office Buildings”:
To set up properly an income-producing building the control of its design and construction should be in the hands of a Board on which sit Owner, Banker, Builder, Architect, Engineers, and Real Estate Men. The record of their decisions finds place in plans, specifications and contracts, financial transactions and leases, and the outcome of their work, if it is to be successful, must have been foreseen far in advance of its realization.
500 Fifth Avenue was completed in just over a year without accident or serious injury, and opened in March 1931 in time for the traditional renewal date for business leases of May 1. William F. Lamb called 500 Fifth Avenue “a thoroughly frank expression of the requirements of an up-to-date office building.” These requirements included modern, well lit and properly ventilated office units near elevators and bathrooms; fast and efficient elevator service; and maximum rentable floor space. Despite its relatively small lot (less than a quarter of the size of the Empire State Building lot) and constricted building envelope, 500 Fifth Avenue offered all of these things; moreover, its unusually advantageous corner location across from the New York Public Library and Bryant Park afforded ample natural light, cross-ventilation, and unobstructed views for two blocks to the south.
Effectively, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed 500 Fifth Avenue from the top down, determining the placement of the building’s service core within the tower and then the base, and from the inside out, determining the ideal office unit as a basis for formulating the overall plan and circulation. The building’s set-back configuration, which allowed for an unusually high window-to-wall ratio, as well as a 25-foot wide light court on the west side of the building beginning at the sixth floor, ensured that no office unit would be more than 30 feet from natural light; a distance of 28 feet or less was considered optimal for modern office buildings before the development of air-conditioning. Floor areas ranged from 2,150 to 18,000 square feet, with office units as small as 9 feet in width and as large as an entire floor. The typical floor plan for the building’s base had 21 office units, while the typical floor plan for the tower had nine office units.
The main entrance to the building was placed on the Fifth Avenue facade, about 70 feet from 42nd Street and on center with the sheer tower rising above the setbacks, and the remainder of the ground floor on both the east and south facades was dominated by an unbroken line of bronze-framed, plate-glass storefronts. The main entrance was framed dramatically by pylons and crowned with the highly stylized bas-relief figure of a Grecian woman holding a staff with a winged sun disc and kneeling beside a model of the building itself, an allegorical representation of the “genius of the modern skyscraper,” sculpted from a single block of limestone by Edward Amateis.
The dramatically massed exterior of 500 Fifth Avenue expressed the constraints of the zoning code, which allowed more bulk on the 42nd Street side than on the Fifth Avenue side and thus determined the positioning of the tower on the base. The building’s tight footprint, which limited the size of the base, and the imperative of maximizing profits with top-quality office and retail space in a relatively small building envelope, resulted in the complex geometry of setbacks stepping up asymmetrically to the slender tower. With regards to the height of office buildings in a competitive real estate market, “…there is 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.” At 500 Fifth Avenue, the projected height of 58 stories (plus a penthouse, making the total 59 stories), or 697 feet, was considered the limit of economic feasibility for a 100- by 208-foot lot. In his essay on tall office buildings, Shreve summed up the design problem inherent in the 1916 zoning ordinance, describing the modern tall office building as
“a geometrical form consisting of a base enclosed by vertical walls, an intermediate section defined by sloping limits, and a tower…[and]…practical usable office floor area, supported and enclosed by structural forms, served by mechanical equipment, and reached through public spaces which are not directly sources of revenue.”
Shreve went on to offer this thought:
The demands of time, cost, and practicability need not be hostile to the aesthetic side of the work. Indeed, may it not be fairly said that character is improved and greater success of pure design assured if sound reasoning as to value, and honest recognition of function, accompany and guide our struggle to attain architectural beauty?
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s completed building was noted in the press for its height, its zoning conditions, and its real estate value; it was among the city’s notable tall buildings of the time and remains a distinguished example of Art Deco skyscraper design. Stylized geometrical ornament, a restrained color palette, and the “vertical accent” created by spandrels and channeling all contributed to the building’s “modern architectural treatment”, in the words of partner William Lamb. On the second, third, and fourth stories, limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and light-green metal spandrels decorated with folds and chevrons reflect Art Deco’s affinity for stylized geometric forms. Around the main entrance the carved limestone pylons and allegorical bas-relief are picked out in gilding, and on the 42nd Street facade a pair of eagles carved in profile enhance the figural quality of the ornamental scheme. Rising above the base is 500 Fifth Avenue’s flat-roofed, slab-form tower.
The tower’s vertical buff-brick stripes are likely inspired by Hood’s Daily News Building, which bridged Art Deco and the emerging International Style when it opened in 1930. As with the Daily News Building—where Hood sought to conceal the windows to avoid the effect of a wall “shot full of holes”—these stripes alternate with dark window bands. In the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, 500 Fifth Avenue’s terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward. Seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline. This striped effect is continued on the north elevation, where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta.
Above its base, 500 Fifth Avenue is virtually free of ornament, except at the tower, where a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Subsequent History
A year after the stock market crash and three months before the opening of 500 Fifth Avenue, Walter J. Salmon was quoted in the papers on the subject of his prospects for an immediate return on his investment: “We feel that it will take some time to absorb the approximately 500,000 square feet of office space in the building, but the enterprise was undertaken with the greatest faith in the future of midtown expansion and development.” By May 1931, three months after its opening, the 15th, 16th and 20th floors of the building had been fully rented ; by the end of the year, several prestigious tenants had signed leases, including the Electrolux Corporation, no less than ten railroad corporations, and the Western Universities Club, which used the penthouse and the three floors below for its club facilities. An article in the New York Times from January 1932 reported a consistent demand for business space in the midtown area, calling business renting “brisk.”
Later tenants of 500 Fifth Avenue included the Austrian and Japanese consulates, and in the mid-1930s the building became the target of Communist protests directed at the Japanese consulate, which had offices on the 40th floor.
In 1944, when the Manufacturers Trust Company—then located at 513 Fifth Avenue–and the Mutual Insurance Company entered into a lease in which Mutual Life agreed to construct a new bank building on the property at nos. 508 and 510-514 Fifth Avenue, a corollary agreement with Walter Salmon permitted Manufacturers Trust Company to sublease, and ultimately redevelop, 508 Fifth Avenue. An important stipulation in this agreement was that during the time Salmon’s lease remained in effect (1944-65), any building erected on the portion of the lot at No. 508 would not exceed the height of the then-existing building (63 feet) or otherwise interfere with 500 Fifth Avenue. Thus, the height of the new bank building was effectively limited to four or five stories, and light and ventilation levels on the north wall of 500 Fifth Avenue were preserved.
In 1955, the land under 500 Fifth Avenue was sold by Gerry Brothers & Co., whose principals were descendents of the original ownership, to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 500 Fifth Avenue was again the site of political disturbance in 1980, when Croatian nationalists bombed a Yugoslavian bank located on the 30th floor of the building; there were no injuries, and only minor damage to the interior spaces. In the mid-1990s, the facade of 500 Fifth Avenue was repaired, ornament was restored or selectively refabricated, and replacement windows were installed. The building continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
Description
500 Fifth Avenue is an asymmetrically massed skyscraper with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on the Fifth Avenue (east) facade and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on the 42nd Street (south) facade; the side (west) facade is partially visible from street; sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality; on the Fifth Avenue facade the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical bas-relief; the metal-and-glass main entrance door is deeply recessed and has returns of polished stone or metal; possibly historic pendant and wall-mounted light fixtures within recess of main entrance; possibly historic light fixtures and flag poles flank the main entrance; freight entrance in seventh bay of ground floor on 42nd Street facade; ground-floor storefronts on the Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades retain the original patinated metal cornice with chevron motifs; the three commercial stories above the storefronts have large show-window openings set between limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and patinated metal spandrels decorated with stylized folds and chevrons; the majority of the show windows on the 2nd Street facade are historic multi-pane metal sash; on the Fifth Avenue facade only a few of these historic show windows remain; on the buff-brick mid-section and tower the windows are arranged into paired and triple groups separated by projecting piers, with the major piers enhanced by vertical channeling; in the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, the terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward; seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline; this striped effect is continued on the back (north) elevation where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta; crowning the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Alterations: non-historic metal-and-glass storefront infill on ground story; several non-historic plate-glass windows with metal frames on second through fourth stories of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; metal plaques and security lights at main entrance on Fifth Avenue facade; four utility boxes affixed to southeast corner of building above fifth story; double-hung metal replacement windows in all openings above the fourth story; louvers or vents in several window openings or as replacement window panes on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; brick replaced at corners of building; dunnage/cooling tower and antennas visible on roof.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
The Dart-class destroyer of the Federal Republic of Casia is one of the newest additions to the Casian Naval Arm. Shortly after the end of the Feral War, the Naval Procurement Board was looking for a standard fleet-ship to replenish its depleted air fleet, and issued a demand for a capable, low cost, small- to medium-sized airship that could be produced in large numbers. The winning design was submitted by Lughead Airworks, a long-standing military airship company.
The Dart-class has the largest gun-to-weight ratio of any airship on the Continent, with most of those being small-caliber Repeaters. However, it also features two heavy cannon mounts on its underbelly, as well as four aerial torpedo launchers, giving it a very heavy punch for a ship its size. However, the Dart-class was almost rejected due to its high cost. A compromise was reached, whereas after an initial bulk order, a certain number would be slowly built over time, spreading out the cost while still allowing a decent number of these ships to be built.
This awkward manufacturing process means the Federal Navy never has an overabundance of ships, but those it does have are extremely capable. Conceived too late to participate in the Feral War, the Dart class nevertheless saw extensive service throughout the Continental War. Studies show it suffered much lower losses than other ships in its size and weight class, even though it saw just as much, if not more, action than them.
The design uses a unique intermeshing twin-propeller configuration, which allows for higher speeds while keeping a smaller profile. The Dart-class is notorious for being cramped and uncomfortable due to all the space being taken up by either guns or armour. Its sensor suite is fair-to-middling, but the Elektrics onboard are known to be fragile and prone to failure, leading to the standard doctrine of always deploying Darts in pairs or more.
Only one Dart-class destroyer has been sold, to the island nation of Jorken. Otherwise sales are prohibited. Tensions flared shortly before the Continental War when one of the first Dart classes to be built suffered an engine explosion and crashed near the border with the Straser Imperium. Imperial troops managed to get to the wreckage, but shortly after a Federal flotilla arrived and fire-bombed the wreckage, destroying the enitre ship and the Imperial troops. Some say this incident started the Continental War, but the fact that the war started several years after this incident suggests otherwise.
Upgrades are planned for the Dart-class, especially to the Elektrics and Mechanicae. There are currently open contracts for another fleet destroyer design, but so far no one has been able to produce a suitable alternative to the Dart-class, and its future appears secure.
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500 Fifth Avenue (aka 500-506 Fifth
Avenue; 1-9 West 42nd Street), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Built in 1929-31, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s 500 Fifth Avenue Building is a soaring 59-story Art Deco skyscraper, located at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed concurrently with the Empire State Building. Because the site was so valuable and so small, measuring only 100 feet by 208 feet, the building was designed to the maximum height and floor area allowable under the 1916 zoning code. Located in two zoning districts with differing setback requirements, it is asymmetrically massed with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on Fifth Avenue and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on West 42nd Street. Sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality.
On Fifth Avenue the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical relief by sculptor Edmond Amateis “symbolizing the genius of the modern skyscraper.” Capping the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline. When it opened in March 1931, 500 Fifth Avenue was the crowning achievement of real estate developer Walter J. Salmon, who was responsible for rebuilding the north side of West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the first decades of the 20th century. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon was one of the leading architectural firms in the country specializing in skyscraper design. In addition to 500 Fifth Avenue, Shreve Lamb & Harmon designed the Empire State Building (1929-31, 350 Fifth Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark). 500 Fifth Avenue continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History and Development of Midtown and the 500 Fifth Avenue Site
The area surrounding Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and the southern end of Central Park remained rural in character until the second half of the nineteenth century, when speculative residences and mansions began to be constructed on lots newly mapped by the city. By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings. By 1923, so many banks and trust companies had established uptown branches near the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street and on the blocks of Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street, that Rider’s New York City guide reported the area was popularly known as “Little Wall Street.” 42nd Street, which linked this business district to Times Square, became one of the busiest thoroughfares in New York while Fifth Avenue remained the most fashionable shopping street in the city, leading Real Estate Record & Guide to declare the parcel at 500 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 42nd Street, as “the most valuable building site on Manhattan Island north of Wall Street.”
In 1903 a young and ambitious real estate entrepreneur named Walter J. Salomon (18711953), who later changed his surname to Salmon, leased the corner lot and the adjacent L-shaped lot, which fronted on Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street. Salmon then converted the existing building, the eight-story Hotel Bristol, into a commercial and office building and renamed it the Bristol Building. This property was to form the core of Salmon’s redevelopment plan for 500 Fifth Avenue, his crowning achievement as a real estate man and the final puzzle piece in the transformation of the entire block front into an imposing wall of modern commercial structures.
New York’s Art Deco Skyscrapers
America’s involvement in World War I, followed by a recession in the early 1920s, caused a construction lull in New York City, as in other parts of the country. By the mid 1920s, the economy had bounced back, and demand for new and larger commercial buildings was booming. Fifteen new office skyscrapers were erected in New York in 1925, and 1926 saw the construction of 30 more. This building frenzy lasted through the 1929 stock market crash, as construction went forward in the early 1930s on buildings that had already been planned and financed; although largely finished by 1932, the boom left behind a “rich array of towers,” many of them executed in what is known today as the Art Deco style. Indeed, several of New York’s most spectacular skyscrapers from this period—including the Chanin Building (Sloan & Robertson, 1927-29), the Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1928-30), the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1929-31) and the General Electric Building (Cross & Cross, 1929-31), all designated New York City Landmarks, are among the country’s most significant examples of Art Deco design.
Into the 1910s, no limits on building height or bulk existed in New York City. In 1916, New York implemented the nation’s first zoning regulations, which permitted unrestricted height on one quarter of a building site, but required skyscrapers to taper as they rose to allow light and air to reach the street. Six years later, architect and critic Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) and architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published a group of influential renderings that explored zoning’s impact on the shape of tall buildings. Presented as a series of illustrations progressing from the abstract, pyramidal shape of the zoning envelope to a stepped-back practicable building form, these drawings catalyzed a trend in which “buildings endeavored to take on the feeling of sculpted mountains, their shape suddenly more important than their historical detail or even their style.” So pervasive were the new stepped-back skyscrapers that by the mid-1920s, architects and critics spoke of an emerging “setback style”.
Another important influence on 1920s skyscraper design was Eliel Saarinen’s 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune’s new tower. With its straightforward shape, vertical emphasis, and limited ornament, Saarinen’s ahistorical design was “taken to be style-less and was thought in the twenties to have freed architects from what seemed the inevitable alternatives in skyscraper design, Gothic solutions on the one hand and vertically stretched Classicism on the other.”
The issue of what constituted “modern” design was expounded upon in the press and occupied many architects, who sought an appropriate means of expressing the societal changes brought about by new technology and manufacturing processes. A dichotomy existed, according to Ada Louise Huxtable, between the “modern” architecture of Europe and the “modernistic” new skyscrapers of New York:
‘Modern’ was radical, reductive, and reformist; ‘modernistic’ was richly decorative and attached to conservative and hedonistic values. ‘Modern’ was the austere, abstract, elite, avant-garde work of … [Walter] Gropius, Mies [van der Rohe], and Le Corbusier, united in its early days under the rubric of the International Style. ‘Modernistic’ was neither pure nor revolutionary; it fused the ornamental and the exotic for what was really the last great decorative style.
Only a handful of International Style skyscrapers were constructed in the United States before World War II. Far more popular was the “modernistic” style, which was later termed “Art Deco” based on its debt to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Flamboyant, dynamic, and dazzling to the eye, Art Deco’s primary characteristic was its “sumptuous ornament, and the lush textures and colors achieved by combining several materials, such as stone, brick, terra cotta, and metal.” Gilding and shiny materials were frequently used, and favorite decorative motifs, drawn from the natural world and geometric forms, included “spirals, sunflowers, steps, zigzags, triangles, double triangles, hexagons, fragmented circles, and seashells.” Frequently, facades were given a woven fabric treatment, in buildings including One Wall Street (Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark) and the 21 West Street Building (Starrett & Van Vleck, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark). Wall surfaces read as thin decorative veneers, as “stage sets” to a public infatuated with movies and the theater.
As Art Deco was conquering New York, a new skyscraper form, the slab, emerged. Into the 1920s, the city’s tallest skyscrapers were typically constructed on enormous lots. These sites were big enough, as with the Chrysler Building, to allow for “geometrically pure” square, needle-like towers that broke free of their bases and pierced the sky. But as large lots became rarer and developers sought to construct tall office buildings on narrow lots, this approach became unfeasible; the square tower, if made too small, lost too much of its internal space to elevators. As a result, new skyscrapers on narrower lots took on a slab-like form, their long and rectangular upper stories seemingly extruded from their bases. The pioneering slab skyscraper was H. Douglas Ives’ and Sloan & Robertson’s 38-story Fred F. French Building (1927, a designated New York City Landmark) at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, which was constructed on a relatively small lot.
But the master of the slab at the end of the 1920s was Raymond Hood, whose Daily News Building marked the most radical departure of any tall building from previous skyscraper form. Despite the rich Art Deco bas-relief over its main entrance, Hood’s building, with its artfully planned setbacks and flat, unornamented roofline, came closer to abstract sculpture than any skyscraper before; falling, in style, “between modern and modernistic,” it forsook the decorated crown of the Art Deco skyscraper and approached the purity of the International Style. Hood built upon his experience with the Daily News Building in designing another of the city’s great slab skyscrapers, the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (a designated New York City Landmark), which was completed in 1933.
Located just three blocks from the French Building, and similar in design and materials to the Daily News Building, 500 Fifth Avenue’s slender, slab-form tower situated the building within this group of transitional skyscrapers, precursors to the postwar office building. But with the Depression remaining entrenched and money for office buildings drying up, few Art Deco skyscrapers were completed in New York after Rockefeller Center, and the style, increasingly employed for government and institutional buildings, became considerably more restrained.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
Richmond Harold Shreve (1877-1946)
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1958
Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958)
The architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, formed in 1929, was one of New York City’s premier design teams, known primarily for their modern office buildings and especially the Empire State Building (completed 1931, a designated New York City Landmark). The three principal designers had traditional architectural educations and experience with important New York firms before they joined together and created buildings specifically adapted to the design requirements and technological advances of the modern era.
Richmond Harold Shreve was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduating in 1902, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the School of Architecture there. While at Cornell, he supervised the construction of Goldwin Smith Hall, designed by the New York firm of Carrère & Hastings, and at the conclusion of the project he joined the firm. William Frederick Lamb, son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. Graduating from Williams College in 1904, Shreve subsequently studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. After receiving his diploma from the École des Beaux Arts in 1911, Lamb returned to New York and joined the firm of Carrère & Hastings where he met Shreve. In 1920, Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrère & Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
By 1924, they decided to establish their own partnership, and five years later they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Harmon, who had been born in Chicago, studied at the Art Institute there and graduated from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1901. He worked as a designer in the firm of McKim, Mead & White between 1902 and 1911. From 1912 to 1913, he was an associate in the firm of Wallis & Goodwillie, and then practiced alone until joining Shreve and Lamb. His works from that period include 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. For the Empire State Building, the firm’s most famous work, Lamb was the designer, but Shreve’s organizational skills were generally credited with enabling the building to be constructed in just one year. Shreve was also active as a planner beyond 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 (such as No. 130 East 57th Street and No. 30 East 76th Street, located within the Upper East Side Historic District). Their residential work was largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular historical styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux Arts ornament for which Carrère & Hastings had been famous. Their other buildings in New York included the L.P. Hollander & Company Building at 3 East 57th Street (1929-30, a designated New York City Landmark), a 1931-33 addition to 14 Wall Street (a designated New York City Landmark), the Best & Company store at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street (demolished), an addition to the New York Times Annex on West 43rd Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building. Outside of New York City, their work includes the Standard Oil Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Chimes Building in Syracuse, NY. These tend to be similar to their New York City work, with unadorned limestone cladding, metal-framed windows and simple, set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
Edmond R. Amateis
Edmond R. Amateis (1897-1981) was an American sculptor born in Rome and trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. Working in the U.S. and Europe, Amateis created monumental public sculpture of a heroic-classical nature. Early in his career he won recognition with his award of the Prix de Rome (1921), the Avery Prize of the Architectural League of New York (1929), and the McCleese Prize of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1933). For the New York World’s Fair of 1939, Amateis sculpted a monumental allegorical group based on American folklore, with figures depicting Johnny Appleseed as Benevolence, Paul Bunyan as Efficiency, and Strap Buckner as Humility. Amateis’s other major commissions included a sculptural frieze for the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, completed in 1938, and a memorial to American soldiers who died in France during World War II, located in Draguignan, France.
Design and Construction of the 500 Fifth Avenue Building
With his acquisition of the properties at nos. 3, 5, 7, and 9 West 42nd Street in 1915, Walter J. Salmon had assembled a parcel of 20,900 square feet at 500 Fifth Avenue, about the minimum size necessary for profitable redevelopment. In 1922, Gerry Estates, Inc. entered into an agreement with Salmon to redevelop the site. With other projects in the works, including the adjacent Salmon Tower at 11-27 West 42nd Street, Salmon delayed beginning work on the corner site until the summer of 1929. At that time he announced plans for a fifty-eight story building with frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 208 feet on 42nd Street to be built to the design of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Given its status as the second most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan, redevelopment of this site was greatly anticipated among the real estate community and by the public at large. An article in the Real Estate Record & Guide described the high-profile nature of the project:
For years residents of the city and out-of-town visitors alike have speculated as to the future of this corner, wondering that so prominent a location—at “the crossroads of the world”—should have been neglected in the modern development of Fifth Avenue as the leading shopping street of the world and of the Grand Central area as the midtown financial and business district…With the fashionable shopping district definitely extending its limits above Forty-second Street; with the north and south flow of automobile and pedestrian traffic and the cross flow between Grand Central Station and Times Square making the intersection one of the busiest in the world, and with other building under way, the time appeared ripe for an improvement on this corner.
The construction of the office building at 500 Fifth Avenue had a significant impact on the eventual development of the adjacent parcels, because its planning affected the zoning of the entire Fifth Avenue block front. The zoning code permitted a taller building on 42nd Street than on Fifth Avenue, so Salmon acquired a long-term lease on the adjacent four-story converted dwelling at 508 Fifth Avenue in 1927; by merging the zoning lots of this 25 by 102-foot building and that of 500 Fifth Avenue, he was able to build a higher tower than would have otherwise been possible.
The program for 500 Fifth Avenue called for street-level stores, banking facilities on the second and third floors, and office units on the floors above, totaling approximately 450,000 square feet of rentable area. Plans were submitted to the Buildings Department in October 1929, and excavation began in February of 1930; the estimated cost of the project was $4,000,000. Charles T. Wills, Inc. was the general contractor, and McClintic-Marshall Co. the steel contractor. Erection of the skyscraper’s steel skeleton began at the end of March, and was completed in a mere four months owing to a highly efficient system whereby the steel arrived on site and was hoisted by derricks to the 36th floor, where it was assembled and continuously distributed by a relay derrick to other floors. The exterior brickwork was completed in early September 1930, and the general contract for the building was completed in January 1931. At the height of the building project nearly 2,200 workers were employed.
The construction of 500 Fifth Avenue and its sister skyscraper the Empire State Building (constructed concurrently from January 1930 to May 1931) set a new standard for speed and efficiency in building construction. Each component of 500 Fifth Avenue’s structure was planned, mapped, and measured in advance, in what historian Christopher Gray called a “tight ballet of scheduling.” This strategic approach to construction planning and oversight was successfully realized at 500 Fifth Avenue through the close collaboration of the architect, building owner, real estate advisers, operating managers, and builder throughout the entire process of planning and construction. Architect Richmond Shreve was a great proponent of rationalized building construction, and expounded on his ideas in an essay titled “The Economic Design of Office Buildings”:
To set up properly an income-producing building the control of its design and construction should be in the hands of a Board on which sit Owner, Banker, Builder, Architect, Engineers, and Real Estate Men. The record of their decisions finds place in plans, specifications and contracts, financial transactions and leases, and the outcome of their work, if it is to be successful, must have been foreseen far in advance of its realization.
500 Fifth Avenue was completed in just over a year without accident or serious injury, and opened in March 1931 in time for the traditional renewal date for business leases of May 1. William F. Lamb called 500 Fifth Avenue “a thoroughly frank expression of the requirements of an up-to-date office building.” These requirements included modern, well lit and properly ventilated office units near elevators and bathrooms; fast and efficient elevator service; and maximum rentable floor space. Despite its relatively small lot (less than a quarter of the size of the Empire State Building lot) and constricted building envelope, 500 Fifth Avenue offered all of these things; moreover, its unusually advantageous corner location across from the New York Public Library and Bryant Park afforded ample natural light, cross-ventilation, and unobstructed views for two blocks to the south.
Effectively, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed 500 Fifth Avenue from the top down, determining the placement of the building’s service core within the tower and then the base, and from the inside out, determining the ideal office unit as a basis for formulating the overall plan and circulation. The building’s set-back configuration, which allowed for an unusually high window-to-wall ratio, as well as a 25-foot wide light court on the west side of the building beginning at the sixth floor, ensured that no office unit would be more than 30 feet from natural light; a distance of 28 feet or less was considered optimal for modern office buildings before the development of air-conditioning. Floor areas ranged from 2,150 to 18,000 square feet, with office units as small as 9 feet in width and as large as an entire floor. The typical floor plan for the building’s base had 21 office units, while the typical floor plan for the tower had nine office units.
The main entrance to the building was placed on the Fifth Avenue facade, about 70 feet from 42nd Street and on center with the sheer tower rising above the setbacks, and the remainder of the ground floor on both the east and south facades was dominated by an unbroken line of bronze-framed, plate-glass storefronts. The main entrance was framed dramatically by pylons and crowned with the highly stylized bas-relief figure of a Grecian woman holding a staff with a winged sun disc and kneeling beside a model of the building itself, an allegorical representation of the “genius of the modern skyscraper,” sculpted from a single block of limestone by Edward Amateis.
The dramatically massed exterior of 500 Fifth Avenue expressed the constraints of the zoning code, which allowed more bulk on the 42nd Street side than on the Fifth Avenue side and thus determined the positioning of the tower on the base. The building’s tight footprint, which limited the size of the base, and the imperative of maximizing profits with top-quality office and retail space in a relatively small building envelope, resulted in the complex geometry of setbacks stepping up asymmetrically to the slender tower. With regards to the height of office buildings in a competitive real estate market, “…there is 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.” At 500 Fifth Avenue, the projected height of 58 stories (plus a penthouse, making the total 59 stories), or 697 feet, was considered the limit of economic feasibility for a 100- by 208-foot lot. In his essay on tall office buildings, Shreve summed up the design problem inherent in the 1916 zoning ordinance, describing the modern tall office building as
“a geometrical form consisting of a base enclosed by vertical walls, an intermediate section defined by sloping limits, and a tower…[and]…practical usable office floor area, supported and enclosed by structural forms, served by mechanical equipment, and reached through public spaces which are not directly sources of revenue.”
Shreve went on to offer this thought:
The demands of time, cost, and practicability need not be hostile to the aesthetic side of the work. Indeed, may it not be fairly said that character is improved and greater success of pure design assured if sound reasoning as to value, and honest recognition of function, accompany and guide our struggle to attain architectural beauty?
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s completed building was noted in the press for its height, its zoning conditions, and its real estate value; it was among the city’s notable tall buildings of the time and remains a distinguished example of Art Deco skyscraper design. Stylized geometrical ornament, a restrained color palette, and the “vertical accent” created by spandrels and channeling all contributed to the building’s “modern architectural treatment”, in the words of partner William Lamb. On the second, third, and fourth stories, limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and light-green metal spandrels decorated with folds and chevrons reflect Art Deco’s affinity for stylized geometric forms. Around the main entrance the carved limestone pylons and allegorical bas-relief are picked out in gilding, and on the 42nd Street facade a pair of eagles carved in profile enhance the figural quality of the ornamental scheme. Rising above the base is 500 Fifth Avenue’s flat-roofed, slab-form tower.
The tower’s vertical buff-brick stripes are likely inspired by Hood’s Daily News Building, which bridged Art Deco and the emerging International Style when it opened in 1930. As with the Daily News Building—where Hood sought to conceal the windows to avoid the effect of a wall “shot full of holes”—these stripes alternate with dark window bands. In the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, 500 Fifth Avenue’s terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward. Seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline. This striped effect is continued on the north elevation, where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta.
Above its base, 500 Fifth Avenue is virtually free of ornament, except at the tower, where a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Subsequent History
A year after the stock market crash and three months before the opening of 500 Fifth Avenue, Walter J. Salmon was quoted in the papers on the subject of his prospects for an immediate return on his investment: “We feel that it will take some time to absorb the approximately 500,000 square feet of office space in the building, but the enterprise was undertaken with the greatest faith in the future of midtown expansion and development.” By May 1931, three months after its opening, the 15th, 16th and 20th floors of the building had been fully rented ; by the end of the year, several prestigious tenants had signed leases, including the Electrolux Corporation, no less than ten railroad corporations, and the Western Universities Club, which used the penthouse and the three floors below for its club facilities. An article in the New York Times from January 1932 reported a consistent demand for business space in the midtown area, calling business renting “brisk.”
Later tenants of 500 Fifth Avenue included the Austrian and Japanese consulates, and in the mid-1930s the building became the target of Communist protests directed at the Japanese consulate, which had offices on the 40th floor.
In 1944, when the Manufacturers Trust Company—then located at 513 Fifth Avenue–and the Mutual Insurance Company entered into a lease in which Mutual Life agreed to construct a new bank building on the property at nos. 508 and 510-514 Fifth Avenue, a corollary agreement with Walter Salmon permitted Manufacturers Trust Company to sublease, and ultimately redevelop, 508 Fifth Avenue. An important stipulation in this agreement was that during the time Salmon’s lease remained in effect (1944-65), any building erected on the portion of the lot at No. 508 would not exceed the height of the then-existing building (63 feet) or otherwise interfere with 500 Fifth Avenue. Thus, the height of the new bank building was effectively limited to four or five stories, and light and ventilation levels on the north wall of 500 Fifth Avenue were preserved.
In 1955, the land under 500 Fifth Avenue was sold by Gerry Brothers & Co., whose principals were descendents of the original ownership, to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 500 Fifth Avenue was again the site of political disturbance in 1980, when Croatian nationalists bombed a Yugoslavian bank located on the 30th floor of the building; there were no injuries, and only minor damage to the interior spaces. In the mid-1990s, the facade of 500 Fifth Avenue was repaired, ornament was restored or selectively refabricated, and replacement windows were installed. The building continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
Description
500 Fifth Avenue is an asymmetrically massed skyscraper with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on the Fifth Avenue (east) facade and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on the 42nd Street (south) facade; the side (west) facade is partially visible from street; sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality; on the Fifth Avenue facade the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical bas-relief; the metal-and-glass main entrance door is deeply recessed and has returns of polished stone or metal; possibly historic pendant and wall-mounted light fixtures within recess of main entrance; possibly historic light fixtures and flag poles flank the main entrance; freight entrance in seventh bay of ground floor on 42nd Street facade; ground-floor storefronts on the Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades retain the original patinated metal cornice with chevron motifs; the three commercial stories above the storefronts have large show-window openings set between limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and patinated metal spandrels decorated with stylized folds and chevrons; the majority of the show windows on the 2nd Street facade are historic multi-pane metal sash; on the Fifth Avenue facade only a few of these historic show windows remain; on the buff-brick mid-section and tower the windows are arranged into paired and triple groups separated by projecting piers, with the major piers enhanced by vertical channeling; in the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, the terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward; seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline; this striped effect is continued on the back (north) elevation where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta; crowning the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Alterations: non-historic metal-and-glass storefront infill on ground story; several non-historic plate-glass windows with metal frames on second through fourth stories of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; metal plaques and security lights at main entrance on Fifth Avenue facade; four utility boxes affixed to southeast corner of building above fifth story; double-hung metal replacement windows in all openings above the fourth story; louvers or vents in several window openings or as replacement window panes on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; brick replaced at corners of building; dunnage/cooling tower and antennas visible on roof.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Queensbridge, Long Island City, Queens, New York City, New York, United States of America
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Works Building is a unique vestige of one of the most important terra cotta manufacturing concerns in the Northeast. Built in 1892, the building served as the office headquarters of the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company, New York's only major manufacturer of architectural terra cotta.
For some 50 years terra cotta was a major building material in the United States and one which has a significant impact on the shape and form of New York's architecture. The prominently-located headquarters building was calculated to display with great elegance the range and potential of the products manufactured by the company. It is a veritable catalogue of the company's art and the only one of its kind known to survive in the United States.
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company
Although the use of terra cotta in architecture dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times, architectural terra cotta was not generally accepted in the United States until the mid 1870s.
Architectural terra cotta gained popularity for its comparative low cost over stone, its ornamental possibilities, and its fireproof properties. Chicago had been the first American city to establish a manufacturing works for terra cotta. The Chicago manufacturer corresponded with J.M. Blashfield, founder of a major terra cotta plant in Stamford, England. As a result, James Taylor, Blashfield's plant superintendent, made contact with the Chicago company and joined the firm in 1870 when it was reorganized as the Chicago Terra Cotta Works.
Taylor was engaged as the superintendent, a position he held until 1877. The firm prospered after the fire of 1871, due to increased demand for fireproof building materials. The Chicago Company supplied terra cotta for two influential New York City buildings during Taylor's tenure there: a residence of 1877 on East 36th Street, designed by George C. Post; and the Morse Building (1878), at Nassau and Beekman Streets, the design of Silliman & Farnsworth, in which raised vertical joints were first used to point the masonry. In 1877, the A. Hall & Sons Fire and Bricks Works of Perth Amboy, New Jersey was reorganized to manufacture architectural terra cotta.
By 1879, the company was incorporated under the name Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company, with James Taylor as its superintendent. After serving as superintendent of the Boston Terra Cotta Company from 1880 to 1886, he joined the newly-formed New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company as its superintendent in 1886. Taylor has been called the "father of architectural terra cotta" in the United States.
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company, which owed much of its success to Taylor's expertise, was established in 1886 by New York real estate magnate Orlando B. Potter, with his son-in-law, attorney Walter Geer. Taylor brought with him Carl Matherson, who had
worked with him in Boston and then' in Perth Amboy, to serve as his assistant, .manager, and W.T. McGregor, a celebrated sculptor and modeller, also from the Boston works.
The company offices were set up in the Potter Building at 38 Park Row. A six-story manufacturing building on the waterfront in the once rural Ravenswood area of Queens (now Long Island City), was built en the site of the Wallach estate.
The architect was Clarence B. Cutler of Troy, New York. The first kiln was set in operation at the works on April 29, 1886. The cellar of. the new factory contained clay pits, an engine, and machinery for burning clay.
The ground floor had kilns and offices. The second floor had a showroom , and molding rooms were located on the third and fourth floors. The top floor has a room: and modelling studios. The old Wallach mansion was used, for showrooms and offices. This manufacturing site was considered the most up-to-date in the area.
The community eagerly welcomed the .New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company, a new. industry which brought many skilled workers to the area. Less than three months after operations began, on a Saturday. evening (July 17, 1886), a fire swept through the plant and destroyed all but a portion of the walls. However, the fire had been so successful even in this short period of time that an additional 100 men had been hired to join the force of 150 at the manufacturing works.
Taylor announced that, "we shall rebuild without a moment's delay," and the management erected temporary sheds and set workers about filling orders .
After the fire the kilns were found with their contents preserved, and the boilers were salvaged. As a result of the loss of power, clay was prepared manually. By October of 1886, the plant, with a new automatic sprinkler system, was rebuilt, and a new dock was in place.
Four kilns were in use (one more than before the fire). The offices were moved from the Wallach mansion to the newly rebuilt manufacturing works, while Taylor and his family, who had previously resided in New Jersey, moved into the mansion.
The Long Island City community hailed this successful effort to continue manufacturing under emergency circumstances and to rise "Phoenix-like" from the ashes.'
The Manufacture and use of Architectural Terra Cotta
Architectural terra cotta was used in conjunction with brick to highlight and emphasize architectural detail. Beginning in the 1890s, it was also used for exterior cladding over steel-frame structures.
It gained popularity for several reasons. The material has -he-unique capability of achieving a variety of tints and contrasts. Its plasticity allows for artistic versatility, "it also allows architects to view actual full-sized details through various stages of design before final placement on a building. Taylor praised architectural terra cotta as a "recognized building materiel, having its own quality and purpose ...not an imitation of stone, or iron or wood.
The material or architectural terra cotta is burnt clay that derives its color from the constituent elements remaining after firing. The selection of raw material in the process of manufacturing architectural terra cotta is integral to the success of the endeavor, as each shade and tint calls for the mixing of clays from different localities.
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company used clays from northern and central New Jersey, and occasionally from other parts of the country. As related by Walter Geer in his 1891 pamphlet on terra cotta, the clay, after being mined, had to be properly seasoned before it was delivered to the factory.
Once received from the docks, it was crushed and ground or washed, then mixed with grit, and water. The clay was then piled in layers, each quality being in a separate layer, to attain as many as twelve strata. Perpendicular cuts were then taken from this mass, which was again tempered in pug mills or with rollers which mixed all the ingredients.
It was then formed into small cakes and sent to molding rooms. Using the architect's specifications, architectural details were formed into full-sized molds of plaster and clay in the modelling and molding rooms. When the molds were dried, they were sent to the pressing department where clay was pressed into molds, and when partially dry, the work was turned out on the floor. It was here that the carver or modeller would follow the often intricate tracing of the architect's designs to fit and trim each piece.
This stage required great precision, as only the joints could be chiselled down or trimmed to secure a proper fit after firing. The work was then placed on the drying floor and loaded into kilns, where it remained for seven days for burning and cooling. For practical reasons 'of manufacture and final installation, terra-cotta elements had to be of a size that would allow rot installation by no more than two workers. Large-scale designs were therefore created in segments,, carefully designed to fit into an integrated ensemble.
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company had a photographic department to reproduce architect's plans. Copies of the plans were, provided to every department head, to enable him to paint out in colored inks each portion of the work as it progressed.
These records were preserved in order to duplicate orders years hence, as well as to keep a graphic record of the progress of each item.
The facilities of the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company were the largest of their kind in the country and were built, specifically for the manufacture of architectural terra cotta. In his 1891 pamphlet on terra cotta, Walter Geer noted that the company catalogue illustrated "the wonderful range of uses and diverse styles of design of which terra cotta, is capable." The company kept in stock a large assortment of molded brick, and details, of every kind, including chimney pots, wall copings, panels, tiles, moldings, sills, jambs, lintels, brackets, corbels, etc. for national sale. Thus an architect or builder had the option of ordering stock pieces or placing a special order.
Taylor noted the role of architects themselves in fostering the development of architectural terra cotta:
Having no precedent-, they made all kinds of demands, such as had not hithertofore been required or expected; but these very requirements have tended to lead the makers into new channels, which have produced successful results in regard to color, ornamentation, construction, and surface treatment, so that now there is no reasonable doubt that architectural terra cotta as it is designee and made and used in America is far better in many respects than the best products of European factories.
With its increasing popularity due in large part to its versatility, the material was being used in a majority of the masonry buildings constructed in New York by the turn of the. century.
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company supplied terra cotta for a host of prominent architects and numerous buildings. By 1891, the company had filled contracts in fifteen states as well as Canada. Some of the New York projects for which the company supplied terra cotta were: the Lincoln Building (1886), R.H. Robertson; the Corbin Building (1888). Francis K. Kimball; the Schermerhom Building (1889), H.J. Hardenbergh; the Old Grolier Club (1890), Charles V. Romeyn.; the Montauk Club (1891), Francis K. Kimball; Carnegie Hall (1891), William B. Tuthill; All Saints Church (1891), Renwich, Aspinwall L Russell; and the Ansonia Hotel (1904), Paul E.M. Duboy.
Through Walter Geer's writings, the company also made a significant contribution to the documentation of the material, itself. In 1891. Geer published Terra-Cotta in. Architecture and in 1920, he wrote The Story of Terra-Cotta.
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Works Building
By 1892, with the growth of the company, a need was evidently felt for an, office facility-separate from the manufacturing plant, and the headquarters building was constructed. The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Works. Building is a fanciful, two-story structure that displays in its construction at: exuberant use of brick and terra cotta. Placed at the Easternmost end of the nearly two-acre site with a frontage of over 200 feet on the East River. the head-quarters building stood against a backdrop of the company's entire manufacturing, warehouse and shipping operation when built in 1892.
The entire complex was decs surrounded to the north, south and east by brick walls. All that remains on the site are a much-altered trick warehouse and segments of the brick walls which curve inward to reveal the mansion-like headquarters building.
The building, combining elements of the Renaissance and Tudor Revival styles in its design is rectangular in plan, with its longer sides running parallel to Vernon Boulevard.
The principal facade faces east, and has two entries of equal size at its north and south end. The gable ends of the roof terminate in stepped parapet;- with pyramidally-shaped coping stones of beige terra cotta.
The peaked roof is sheathed in semi-circular pantiles which have the appearance of slate shingles. It is pierced by the two chimneys, one at its southern end,-- and one atop a semi-circular projecting bay, placed slightly off-center toward the southern end of the facade. This bay has a conical roof, and its chimney flue, have Tudor Revival chimney pots, identical to those featured in the company's catalogue offerings.
The major facade elements stand out from the wall which is faced with light brown brick. To the south of the semi-circular bay are two windows each at the first and second stories.
To the north of the bay are four windows at the first story and three at the second story. A belt course of terra-cotta ornament in a Vitruvian scroll pattern runs the length of the entire facade, just below the level of the lintels of the first, story windows.
The flush window lintels, molded in beige, terra cotta, have drip moldings with foliate ornament on the keystones and ends. The sills, also of beige terra cotta, project slightly and have foliate patterns at their bases.
The entrances at either of the facade are approached by steps of beige terra cotta. Both entryways contain wood-panelled doors, and the doorways are flanked by pilasters with composite capitals and northern Renaissance-derived panel carvings with paired figures.
The pilasters support friezes of intricate leaf patterns, the design of which conceals masks to achieve a trompe l'oeil effect. The coronas have modified egg and dart motifs.
The southernmost entry carries the former street address (401 Vernon Boulevard; of the company on the frieze directly above it.
The frieze on the corresponding doorway of the north entry reads "Office." The focal point of the main facade is the asymmetrically Placed curved projecting bay. Its north and south side have windows which match in detail the trim of the other windows of the facade. The bay itself is faced with a darker, rock faced brick.
The center of the bay bears a rectangular plaque, giving the name of the company "Now York Architectural Terra. Cotta Works," in flowing letters, executed in relief against a terra-cotta background. The plaque, which approximates the size of the windows, is slightly recessed from the surface of the brick around it.
This plaque is flanked by fluted pilasters with composite capitals. The pilasters support a frieze in trompe l'oeiI design of leaves and masks which matches those of the entries, and is capped by a pediment. Centered above, at the second story level, is another smaller plaque, bearing "Anno Domini 1892" in a flowing scroll-like form, framed by an egg and dart trim.
A band of cast terra cotta with a foliate design runs the length of the facade, just below the roof line. Foliate consoles at the south and north ends of the facade intersect the stepped parapets.
The north elevation is partially obscured by a one-story addition, and the lower section of the southern elevation is obscured by a small, one-story shed.
The north facade has a central, circular window with two smaller openings flanking it. The west elevation which faced una factory, has a fenestration pattern matching that of the front facade, although its lintels and sills are of a more utilitarian design. The roof band is similar.
Conclusion
By 1915 the company was the fourth largest employer in Long Island City. The terra cotta company's business prospered into the 1920s when it acquired a second manufacturing site in Old Bridge, New Jersey, allowing for direct access to clay deposits. Shipments of 400 tons per barge were made twice weekly to Long Island City works from the Cheesquake, New Jersey area.) Walter Geer, Jr., the son of Walter Geer, continued the family involvement in the company until it went bankrupt in 1928-29.
Richard Dalton, who had beer, the president of the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company from 1919 to 1928, formed the Eastern Terra Cotta Company in 1931, This company, combining the facilities of the New York and New Jersey companies, produced architectural terra cotta for New York's recreational facilities under the administration of Robert Moses and his architect Aymar Embury II in the 1930s.
Business continued into the mid-1940s. After its closing, Mr. Dalton used the headquarters building for his own construction company's offices until his death in 1968.
In 1968, the Helton family sold the building and property to Citibank. In 1976 the manufacturing works buildings were demolished.
Today only the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Works Building survives as a symbol of the material and industry which transformed the construction profession in the late 19th century. Built at a time when terra cotta was enjoying an unparalleled popularity, the building was a showpiece for the company and a major example of the quality and range of the company's products. As the headquarters of New York City's only major terra cotta manufacturer, it has special significance in the history of architecture and construction and is one of this country's few tangible links with this important manufacturing process.
- From the 1982 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
1) Aramith builds the Valley Cougar cue ball to our specifications. It is a premium product designed to be perfectly balanced, perfectly round and the same weight as the object balls.
2) Aramith also builds premium object balls. There are a number of these where the finish does not meet up to their impressively high standards.
3) Rather than waste would be an absolutely perfect ball but for a minor finish flaw, Aramith takes these balls and grinds them down further to a smaller size; but still smooth, perfectly round and perfectly balanced. They will still show numbers and stripes because Aramith’s quality manufacturing process for their object balls is “more than skin deep” (yet another reason their balls are standard equipment in every Valley and Dynamo pool table)
4) The resulting core is evenly coated with magnetic material and topped with a resin coating and the Cougar logo. Sure, we could have them use a completely blank core but recycling finish-flawed balls helps to reduce waste for Aramith, and cost for us, and we can keep the cost of the ball down for you.
5) Either by accident from one good hard break too many, or on purpose (Usually just after "Hold my beer and watch me do this") by slamming the ball on a concrete floor or pounding it with a hammer, someone occasionally cracks the outer coating of a Valley Cougar Cue Ball revealing the “dirty secret” inside for all the world to see. Not a surprise, we’re aware of this. It’s part of the manufacturing process. Now, if you crack open a cue ball to find something like feathers, raisin bran, a Flux Capacitor, red pepper hummus or a Titleist golf ball – we want to know about it.
They're reliable, they are balanced, they separate, but they're not indestructible. (and if we said they were, some would make it their mission in life to try to destroy them)
There are two ways a company can increase profits: spend less or earn more. You spend less by focusing on the bottom line – the expense line – and trying to find ways to make it go down. You earn more by focusing on the top line – the revenue line – and trying to find ways to make it go up.
Spend less on the bottom line. You can do this by getting more efficient in your operations or by doing fewer things. As companies grow larger they can get more efficient by doing things at a larger scale. For example, Wal-Mart can reduce its cost per item by buying things in huge quantities. Companies also gain efficiency over time. As they do things over and over, they learn to do them more efficiently. This is known as the experience curve, first noted in 1930s airplane manufacturing. These scale and learning effects combined are known as economies of scale. Over time these economies get harder and harder to achieve. Each subsequent increase in efficiency requires more effort than the last. This phenomenon is known as the Law of Diminishing Returns.
Earn more on the top line. You can do this by getting more customers or by getting your current customers to spend more. There are lots of ways to achieve this. You can get more customers by entering new markets, by launching new products and services, or by better promotion. You can induce them to spend more by offering them more things, or increasing the value you deliver enough to justify higher prices. To stick with the Wal-Mart example: the company has grown not only by opening new stores but by continually offering customers more things inside the store, like groceries and prescription pharmaceuticals. And it’s paid off: Although Wal-Mart is a recent entrant in the grocery business, it is already the top grocery store in the US today.
Reducing the bottom line is about gaining efficiencies and economies. You get there by doing things efficiently and consistently. It’s about doing the things you are already doing, but doing them better and better.
Growing the top line is about moving into new markets, developing new product and service lines, and discovering new, sometimes breakthrough opportunities. You get there by being creative and thinking differently. It’s not about doing old things better, it’s about doing new things.
As many companies have discovered, these two approaches – consistency and creativity – are in fundamental conflict. Innovation leader 3M learned this painful lesson when they tried to implement six-sigma quality controls in the early 2000s. As they implemented new controls to improve efficiency, they found themselves systematically squeezing the creativity out of the business. “We all came to the conclusion that there was no way in the world that anything like a Post-it note would ever emerge from this new system,” said Michael Mucci, who worked at 3M for 27 years.
Six sigma gets its name from manufacturing process controls. A six-sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of products are defect-free. That translates to 3.4 defects per million. Great for quality and cost control, but not so great for creativity and innovation. The problem is that you can’t cut your way to growth.
Motorola, who invented Six Sigma in 1986, has fallen on hard times. In an ironic demonstration of service logic eating product logic, Google is acquiring Motorola’s mobile phones group for $12.5 billion.
500 Fifth Avenue (aka 500-506 Fifth
Avenue; 1-9 West 42nd Street), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Built in 1929-31, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s 500 Fifth Avenue Building is a soaring 59-story Art Deco skyscraper, located at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed concurrently with the Empire State Building. Because the site was so valuable and so small, measuring only 100 feet by 208 feet, the building was designed to the maximum height and floor area allowable under the 1916 zoning code. Located in two zoning districts with differing setback requirements, it is asymmetrically massed with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on Fifth Avenue and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on West 42nd Street. Sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality.
On Fifth Avenue the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical relief by sculptor Edmond Amateis “symbolizing the genius of the modern skyscraper.” Capping the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline. When it opened in March 1931, 500 Fifth Avenue was the crowning achievement of real estate developer Walter J. Salmon, who was responsible for rebuilding the north side of West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the first decades of the 20th century. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon was one of the leading architectural firms in the country specializing in skyscraper design. In addition to 500 Fifth Avenue, Shreve Lamb & Harmon designed the Empire State Building (1929-31, 350 Fifth Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark). 500 Fifth Avenue continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History and Development of Midtown and the 500 Fifth Avenue Site
The area surrounding Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and the southern end of Central Park remained rural in character until the second half of the nineteenth century, when speculative residences and mansions began to be constructed on lots newly mapped by the city. By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings. By 1923, so many banks and trust companies had established uptown branches near the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street and on the blocks of Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street, that Rider’s New York City guide reported the area was popularly known as “Little Wall Street.” 42nd Street, which linked this business district to Times Square, became one of the busiest thoroughfares in New York while Fifth Avenue remained the most fashionable shopping street in the city, leading Real Estate Record & Guide to declare the parcel at 500 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 42nd Street, as “the most valuable building site on Manhattan Island north of Wall Street.”
In 1903 a young and ambitious real estate entrepreneur named Walter J. Salomon (18711953), who later changed his surname to Salmon, leased the corner lot and the adjacent L-shaped lot, which fronted on Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street. Salmon then converted the existing building, the eight-story Hotel Bristol, into a commercial and office building and renamed it the Bristol Building. This property was to form the core of Salmon’s redevelopment plan for 500 Fifth Avenue, his crowning achievement as a real estate man and the final puzzle piece in the transformation of the entire block front into an imposing wall of modern commercial structures.
New York’s Art Deco Skyscrapers
America’s involvement in World War I, followed by a recession in the early 1920s, caused a construction lull in New York City, as in other parts of the country. By the mid 1920s, the economy had bounced back, and demand for new and larger commercial buildings was booming. Fifteen new office skyscrapers were erected in New York in 1925, and 1926 saw the construction of 30 more. This building frenzy lasted through the 1929 stock market crash, as construction went forward in the early 1930s on buildings that had already been planned and financed; although largely finished by 1932, the boom left behind a “rich array of towers,” many of them executed in what is known today as the Art Deco style. Indeed, several of New York’s most spectacular skyscrapers from this period—including the Chanin Building (Sloan & Robertson, 1927-29), the Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1928-30), the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1929-31) and the General Electric Building (Cross & Cross, 1929-31), all designated New York City Landmarks, are among the country’s most significant examples of Art Deco design.
Into the 1910s, no limits on building height or bulk existed in New York City. In 1916, New York implemented the nation’s first zoning regulations, which permitted unrestricted height on one quarter of a building site, but required skyscrapers to taper as they rose to allow light and air to reach the street. Six years later, architect and critic Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) and architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published a group of influential renderings that explored zoning’s impact on the shape of tall buildings. Presented as a series of illustrations progressing from the abstract, pyramidal shape of the zoning envelope to a stepped-back practicable building form, these drawings catalyzed a trend in which “buildings endeavored to take on the feeling of sculpted mountains, their shape suddenly more important than their historical detail or even their style.” So pervasive were the new stepped-back skyscrapers that by the mid-1920s, architects and critics spoke of an emerging “setback style”.
Another important influence on 1920s skyscraper design was Eliel Saarinen’s 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune’s new tower. With its straightforward shape, vertical emphasis, and limited ornament, Saarinen’s ahistorical design was “taken to be style-less and was thought in the twenties to have freed architects from what seemed the inevitable alternatives in skyscraper design, Gothic solutions on the one hand and vertically stretched Classicism on the other.”
The issue of what constituted “modern” design was expounded upon in the press and occupied many architects, who sought an appropriate means of expressing the societal changes brought about by new technology and manufacturing processes. A dichotomy existed, according to Ada Louise Huxtable, between the “modern” architecture of Europe and the “modernistic” new skyscrapers of New York:
‘Modern’ was radical, reductive, and reformist; ‘modernistic’ was richly decorative and attached to conservative and hedonistic values. ‘Modern’ was the austere, abstract, elite, avant-garde work of … [Walter] Gropius, Mies [van der Rohe], and Le Corbusier, united in its early days under the rubric of the International Style. ‘Modernistic’ was neither pure nor revolutionary; it fused the ornamental and the exotic for what was really the last great decorative style.
Only a handful of International Style skyscrapers were constructed in the United States before World War II. Far more popular was the “modernistic” style, which was later termed “Art Deco” based on its debt to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Flamboyant, dynamic, and dazzling to the eye, Art Deco’s primary characteristic was its “sumptuous ornament, and the lush textures and colors achieved by combining several materials, such as stone, brick, terra cotta, and metal.” Gilding and shiny materials were frequently used, and favorite decorative motifs, drawn from the natural world and geometric forms, included “spirals, sunflowers, steps, zigzags, triangles, double triangles, hexagons, fragmented circles, and seashells.” Frequently, facades were given a woven fabric treatment, in buildings including One Wall Street (Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark) and the 21 West Street Building (Starrett & Van Vleck, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark). Wall surfaces read as thin decorative veneers, as “stage sets” to a public infatuated with movies and the theater.
As Art Deco was conquering New York, a new skyscraper form, the slab, emerged. Into the 1920s, the city’s tallest skyscrapers were typically constructed on enormous lots. These sites were big enough, as with the Chrysler Building, to allow for “geometrically pure” square, needle-like towers that broke free of their bases and pierced the sky. But as large lots became rarer and developers sought to construct tall office buildings on narrow lots, this approach became unfeasible; the square tower, if made too small, lost too much of its internal space to elevators. As a result, new skyscrapers on narrower lots took on a slab-like form, their long and rectangular upper stories seemingly extruded from their bases. The pioneering slab skyscraper was H. Douglas Ives’ and Sloan & Robertson’s 38-story Fred F. French Building (1927, a designated New York City Landmark) at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, which was constructed on a relatively small lot.
But the master of the slab at the end of the 1920s was Raymond Hood, whose Daily News Building marked the most radical departure of any tall building from previous skyscraper form. Despite the rich Art Deco bas-relief over its main entrance, Hood’s building, with its artfully planned setbacks and flat, unornamented roofline, came closer to abstract sculpture than any skyscraper before; falling, in style, “between modern and modernistic,” it forsook the decorated crown of the Art Deco skyscraper and approached the purity of the International Style. Hood built upon his experience with the Daily News Building in designing another of the city’s great slab skyscrapers, the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (a designated New York City Landmark), which was completed in 1933.
Located just three blocks from the French Building, and similar in design and materials to the Daily News Building, 500 Fifth Avenue’s slender, slab-form tower situated the building within this group of transitional skyscrapers, precursors to the postwar office building. But with the Depression remaining entrenched and money for office buildings drying up, few Art Deco skyscrapers were completed in New York after Rockefeller Center, and the style, increasingly employed for government and institutional buildings, became considerably more restrained.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
Richmond Harold Shreve (1877-1946)
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1958
Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958)
The architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, formed in 1929, was one of New York City’s premier design teams, known primarily for their modern office buildings and especially the Empire State Building (completed 1931, a designated New York City Landmark). The three principal designers had traditional architectural educations and experience with important New York firms before they joined together and created buildings specifically adapted to the design requirements and technological advances of the modern era.
Richmond Harold Shreve was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduating in 1902, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the School of Architecture there. While at Cornell, he supervised the construction of Goldwin Smith Hall, designed by the New York firm of Carrère & Hastings, and at the conclusion of the project he joined the firm. William Frederick Lamb, son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. Graduating from Williams College in 1904, Shreve subsequently studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. After receiving his diploma from the École des Beaux Arts in 1911, Lamb returned to New York and joined the firm of Carrère & Hastings where he met Shreve. In 1920, Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrère & Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
By 1924, they decided to establish their own partnership, and five years later they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Harmon, who had been born in Chicago, studied at the Art Institute there and graduated from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1901. He worked as a designer in the firm of McKim, Mead & White between 1902 and 1911. From 1912 to 1913, he was an associate in the firm of Wallis & Goodwillie, and then practiced alone until joining Shreve and Lamb. His works from that period include 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. For the Empire State Building, the firm’s most famous work, Lamb was the designer, but Shreve’s organizational skills were generally credited with enabling the building to be constructed in just one year. Shreve was also active as a planner beyond 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 (such as No. 130 East 57th Street and No. 30 East 76th Street, located within the Upper East Side Historic District). Their residential work was largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular historical styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux Arts ornament for which Carrère & Hastings had been famous. Their other buildings in New York included the L.P. Hollander & Company Building at 3 East 57th Street (1929-30, a designated New York City Landmark), a 1931-33 addition to 14 Wall Street (a designated New York City Landmark), the Best & Company store at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street (demolished), an addition to the New York Times Annex on West 43rd Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building. Outside of New York City, their work includes the Standard Oil Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Chimes Building in Syracuse, NY. These tend to be similar to their New York City work, with unadorned limestone cladding, metal-framed windows and simple, set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
Edmond R. Amateis
Edmond R. Amateis (1897-1981) was an American sculptor born in Rome and trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. Working in the U.S. and Europe, Amateis created monumental public sculpture of a heroic-classical nature. Early in his career he won recognition with his award of the Prix de Rome (1921), the Avery Prize of the Architectural League of New York (1929), and the McCleese Prize of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1933). For the New York World’s Fair of 1939, Amateis sculpted a monumental allegorical group based on American folklore, with figures depicting Johnny Appleseed as Benevolence, Paul Bunyan as Efficiency, and Strap Buckner as Humility. Amateis’s other major commissions included a sculptural frieze for the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, completed in 1938, and a memorial to American soldiers who died in France during World War II, located in Draguignan, France.
Design and Construction of the 500 Fifth Avenue Building
With his acquisition of the properties at nos. 3, 5, 7, and 9 West 42nd Street in 1915, Walter J. Salmon had assembled a parcel of 20,900 square feet at 500 Fifth Avenue, about the minimum size necessary for profitable redevelopment. In 1922, Gerry Estates, Inc. entered into an agreement with Salmon to redevelop the site. With other projects in the works, including the adjacent Salmon Tower at 11-27 West 42nd Street, Salmon delayed beginning work on the corner site until the summer of 1929. At that time he announced plans for a fifty-eight story building with frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 208 feet on 42nd Street to be built to the design of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Given its status as the second most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan, redevelopment of this site was greatly anticipated among the real estate community and by the public at large. An article in the Real Estate Record & Guide described the high-profile nature of the project:
For years residents of the city and out-of-town visitors alike have speculated as to the future of this corner, wondering that so prominent a location—at “the crossroads of the world”—should have been neglected in the modern development of Fifth Avenue as the leading shopping street of the world and of the Grand Central area as the midtown financial and business district…With the fashionable shopping district definitely extending its limits above Forty-second Street; with the north and south flow of automobile and pedestrian traffic and the cross flow between Grand Central Station and Times Square making the intersection one of the busiest in the world, and with other building under way, the time appeared ripe for an improvement on this corner.
The construction of the office building at 500 Fifth Avenue had a significant impact on the eventual development of the adjacent parcels, because its planning affected the zoning of the entire Fifth Avenue block front. The zoning code permitted a taller building on 42nd Street than on Fifth Avenue, so Salmon acquired a long-term lease on the adjacent four-story converted dwelling at 508 Fifth Avenue in 1927; by merging the zoning lots of this 25 by 102-foot building and that of 500 Fifth Avenue, he was able to build a higher tower than would have otherwise been possible.
The program for 500 Fifth Avenue called for street-level stores, banking facilities on the second and third floors, and office units on the floors above, totaling approximately 450,000 square feet of rentable area. Plans were submitted to the Buildings Department in October 1929, and excavation began in February of 1930; the estimated cost of the project was $4,000,000. Charles T. Wills, Inc. was the general contractor, and McClintic-Marshall Co. the steel contractor. Erection of the skyscraper’s steel skeleton began at the end of March, and was completed in a mere four months owing to a highly efficient system whereby the steel arrived on site and was hoisted by derricks to the 36th floor, where it was assembled and continuously distributed by a relay derrick to other floors. The exterior brickwork was completed in early September 1930, and the general contract for the building was completed in January 1931. At the height of the building project nearly 2,200 workers were employed.
The construction of 500 Fifth Avenue and its sister skyscraper the Empire State Building (constructed concurrently from January 1930 to May 1931) set a new standard for speed and efficiency in building construction. Each component of 500 Fifth Avenue’s structure was planned, mapped, and measured in advance, in what historian Christopher Gray called a “tight ballet of scheduling.” This strategic approach to construction planning and oversight was successfully realized at 500 Fifth Avenue through the close collaboration of the architect, building owner, real estate advisers, operating managers, and builder throughout the entire process of planning and construction. Architect Richmond Shreve was a great proponent of rationalized building construction, and expounded on his ideas in an essay titled “The Economic Design of Office Buildings”:
To set up properly an income-producing building the control of its design and construction should be in the hands of a Board on which sit Owner, Banker, Builder, Architect, Engineers, and Real Estate Men. The record of their decisions finds place in plans, specifications and contracts, financial transactions and leases, and the outcome of their work, if it is to be successful, must have been foreseen far in advance of its realization.
500 Fifth Avenue was completed in just over a year without accident or serious injury, and opened in March 1931 in time for the traditional renewal date for business leases of May 1. William F. Lamb called 500 Fifth Avenue “a thoroughly frank expression of the requirements of an up-to-date office building.” These requirements included modern, well lit and properly ventilated office units near elevators and bathrooms; fast and efficient elevator service; and maximum rentable floor space. Despite its relatively small lot (less than a quarter of the size of the Empire State Building lot) and constricted building envelope, 500 Fifth Avenue offered all of these things; moreover, its unusually advantageous corner location across from the New York Public Library and Bryant Park afforded ample natural light, cross-ventilation, and unobstructed views for two blocks to the south.
Effectively, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed 500 Fifth Avenue from the top down, determining the placement of the building’s service core within the tower and then the base, and from the inside out, determining the ideal office unit as a basis for formulating the overall plan and circulation. The building’s set-back configuration, which allowed for an unusually high window-to-wall ratio, as well as a 25-foot wide light court on the west side of the building beginning at the sixth floor, ensured that no office unit would be more than 30 feet from natural light; a distance of 28 feet or less was considered optimal for modern office buildings before the development of air-conditioning. Floor areas ranged from 2,150 to 18,000 square feet, with office units as small as 9 feet in width and as large as an entire floor. The typical floor plan for the building’s base had 21 office units, while the typical floor plan for the tower had nine office units.
The main entrance to the building was placed on the Fifth Avenue facade, about 70 feet from 42nd Street and on center with the sheer tower rising above the setbacks, and the remainder of the ground floor on both the east and south facades was dominated by an unbroken line of bronze-framed, plate-glass storefronts. The main entrance was framed dramatically by pylons and crowned with the highly stylized bas-relief figure of a Grecian woman holding a staff with a winged sun disc and kneeling beside a model of the building itself, an allegorical representation of the “genius of the modern skyscraper,” sculpted from a single block of limestone by Edward Amateis.
The dramatically massed exterior of 500 Fifth Avenue expressed the constraints of the zoning code, which allowed more bulk on the 42nd Street side than on the Fifth Avenue side and thus determined the positioning of the tower on the base. The building’s tight footprint, which limited the size of the base, and the imperative of maximizing profits with top-quality office and retail space in a relatively small building envelope, resulted in the complex geometry of setbacks stepping up asymmetrically to the slender tower. With regards to the height of office buildings in a competitive real estate market, “…there is 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.” At 500 Fifth Avenue, the projected height of 58 stories (plus a penthouse, making the total 59 stories), or 697 feet, was considered the limit of economic feasibility for a 100- by 208-foot lot. In his essay on tall office buildings, Shreve summed up the design problem inherent in the 1916 zoning ordinance, describing the modern tall office building as
“a geometrical form consisting of a base enclosed by vertical walls, an intermediate section defined by sloping limits, and a tower…[and]…practical usable office floor area, supported and enclosed by structural forms, served by mechanical equipment, and reached through public spaces which are not directly sources of revenue.”
Shreve went on to offer this thought:
The demands of time, cost, and practicability need not be hostile to the aesthetic side of the work. Indeed, may it not be fairly said that character is improved and greater success of pure design assured if sound reasoning as to value, and honest recognition of function, accompany and guide our struggle to attain architectural beauty?
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s completed building was noted in the press for its height, its zoning conditions, and its real estate value; it was among the city’s notable tall buildings of the time and remains a distinguished example of Art Deco skyscraper design. Stylized geometrical ornament, a restrained color palette, and the “vertical accent” created by spandrels and channeling all contributed to the building’s “modern architectural treatment”, in the words of partner William Lamb. On the second, third, and fourth stories, limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and light-green metal spandrels decorated with folds and chevrons reflect Art Deco’s affinity for stylized geometric forms. Around the main entrance the carved limestone pylons and allegorical bas-relief are picked out in gilding, and on the 42nd Street facade a pair of eagles carved in profile enhance the figural quality of the ornamental scheme. Rising above the base is 500 Fifth Avenue’s flat-roofed, slab-form tower.
The tower’s vertical buff-brick stripes are likely inspired by Hood’s Daily News Building, which bridged Art Deco and the emerging International Style when it opened in 1930. As with the Daily News Building—where Hood sought to conceal the windows to avoid the effect of a wall “shot full of holes”—these stripes alternate with dark window bands. In the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, 500 Fifth Avenue’s terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward. Seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline. This striped effect is continued on the north elevation, where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta.
Above its base, 500 Fifth Avenue is virtually free of ornament, except at the tower, where a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Subsequent History
A year after the stock market crash and three months before the opening of 500 Fifth Avenue, Walter J. Salmon was quoted in the papers on the subject of his prospects for an immediate return on his investment: “We feel that it will take some time to absorb the approximately 500,000 square feet of office space in the building, but the enterprise was undertaken with the greatest faith in the future of midtown expansion and development.” By May 1931, three months after its opening, the 15th, 16th and 20th floors of the building had been fully rented ; by the end of the year, several prestigious tenants had signed leases, including the Electrolux Corporation, no less than ten railroad corporations, and the Western Universities Club, which used the penthouse and the three floors below for its club facilities. An article in the New York Times from January 1932 reported a consistent demand for business space in the midtown area, calling business renting “brisk.”
Later tenants of 500 Fifth Avenue included the Austrian and Japanese consulates, and in the mid-1930s the building became the target of Communist protests directed at the Japanese consulate, which had offices on the 40th floor.
In 1944, when the Manufacturers Trust Company—then located at 513 Fifth Avenue–and the Mutual Insurance Company entered into a lease in which Mutual Life agreed to construct a new bank building on the property at nos. 508 and 510-514 Fifth Avenue, a corollary agreement with Walter Salmon permitted Manufacturers Trust Company to sublease, and ultimately redevelop, 508 Fifth Avenue. An important stipulation in this agreement was that during the time Salmon’s lease remained in effect (1944-65), any building erected on the portion of the lot at No. 508 would not exceed the height of the then-existing building (63 feet) or otherwise interfere with 500 Fifth Avenue. Thus, the height of the new bank building was effectively limited to four or five stories, and light and ventilation levels on the north wall of 500 Fifth Avenue were preserved.
In 1955, the land under 500 Fifth Avenue was sold by Gerry Brothers & Co., whose principals were descendents of the original ownership, to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 500 Fifth Avenue was again the site of political disturbance in 1980, when Croatian nationalists bombed a Yugoslavian bank located on the 30th floor of the building; there were no injuries, and only minor damage to the interior spaces. In the mid-1990s, the facade of 500 Fifth Avenue was repaired, ornament was restored or selectively refabricated, and replacement windows were installed. The building continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
Description
500 Fifth Avenue is an asymmetrically massed skyscraper with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on the Fifth Avenue (east) facade and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on the 42nd Street (south) facade; the side (west) facade is partially visible from street; sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality; on the Fifth Avenue facade the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical bas-relief; the metal-and-glass main entrance door is deeply recessed and has returns of polished stone or metal; possibly historic pendant and wall-mounted light fixtures within recess of main entrance; possibly historic light fixtures and flag poles flank the main entrance; freight entrance in seventh bay of ground floor on 42nd Street facade; ground-floor storefronts on the Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades retain the original patinated metal cornice with chevron motifs; the three commercial stories above the storefronts have large show-window openings set between limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and patinated metal spandrels decorated with stylized folds and chevrons; the majority of the show windows on the 2nd Street facade are historic multi-pane metal sash; on the Fifth Avenue facade only a few of these historic show windows remain; on the buff-brick mid-section and tower the windows are arranged into paired and triple groups separated by projecting piers, with the major piers enhanced by vertical channeling; in the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, the terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward; seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline; this striped effect is continued on the back (north) elevation where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta; crowning the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Alterations: non-historic metal-and-glass storefront infill on ground story; several non-historic plate-glass windows with metal frames on second through fourth stories of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; metal plaques and security lights at main entrance on Fifth Avenue facade; four utility boxes affixed to southeast corner of building above fifth story; double-hung metal replacement windows in all openings above the fourth story; louvers or vents in several window openings or as replacement window panes on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; brick replaced at corners of building; dunnage/cooling tower and antennas visible on roof.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second.
Films, games competitions, and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 the business began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, invented by Hilary Page in 1939 and patented in the United Kingdom in 1940 before being displayed at the 1947 Earl's Court Toy Fair. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" (Danish: det bedste er ikke for godt, literally "the best isn't excessively good") was created in 1936. Christiansen created the motto, still used today, to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, wrote that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: Their locking ability was still limited, and they were not yet versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958 and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children. In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program. In May 2013, the largest model ever created, made of over 5 million bricks, was displayed in New York City; a one-to-one scale model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter. Other record breakers include a 34-metre (112 ft) tower and a 4 km (2.5 mi) railway.
In February 2015, marketing consulting company Brand Finance ranked Lego as the "world's most powerful brand", overtaking Ferrari.
Lego bricks have acquired a reputation for causing extreme pain when stepped on.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made presently, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based on the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Manufacturing
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C (450 °F) until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds using forces of between 25 and 150 tonnes and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required.
Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego, in 2018, set a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico; and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could also be considered the world's number-one tyre manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tyres a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's More or Less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons. Since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of 1.152 grams (0.0406 oz), according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack 3,591 metres (11,781 ft) in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees). The New York Times reported the company's footprint that year was "about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year" and that it was investing about 1 billion kroner and hiring 100 people to work on changes. The paper reported that Lego's researchers "have already experimented with around 200 alternatives." In 2020, Lego announced that it would cease packaging its products in single-use plastic bags and would instead be using recyclable paper bags. In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil, by using recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles, but in 2023 it reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Set themes
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, pirates, trains, (European) castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west, as well as wholly original themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, the company has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and Minecraft. Although some of these themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, the company expressed in 2015 a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes and less upon such licensed themes. Some sets include references to other themes such as a Bionicle mask in one of the Harry Potter sets. Discontinued sets may become a collectable and command value on the black market.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest commercially produced Lego sets was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded by the Lego Art World Map at 11,695 pieces, the Lego Titanic at 9,090 pieces, and the Lego Architect Colosseum at 9,036 pieces.
In 2022, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower. The set consists of 10,000 parts and reaches a height of 149 cm, which makes it the tallest set and tower but the second in number of parts after the World Map.
Robotics themes
Main articles: Lego Mindstorms, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, and Lego Mindstorms EV3
The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include FIRST LEGO League Discover for children ages 4–6, FIRST LEGO League Explore for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League Challenge for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). These programs offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FIRST LEGO League Challenge uses LEGO-based robots to complete tasks, FIRST LEGO League Explore participants build models out of Lego elements, and FIRST LEGO League Discover participants use Duplo. In its 2019–2020 season, there were 38,609 FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams and 21,703 FIRST LEGO League Explore teams around the world. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
In popular culture
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
"Lego" is commonly used as a mass noun ("some Lego") or, in American English, as a countable noun with plural "Legos", to refer to the bricks themselves, but as is common for trademarks, Lego group insists on the name being used as an adjective when referring to a product (as in "LEGO bricks").
Grade II listed historic building constructed as the House and Cotton Manufactory. It was divided into dwellings in the early-to-mid 1800's. John Wakefield's Bank was established here in 1788.
"Kendal, once Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England. Historically in Westmorland, it lies 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Windermere, 19 miles (31 km) north of Lancaster, 23 miles (37 km) north-east of Barrow-in-Furness and 38 miles (61 km) north-west of Skipton, in the dale of the River Kent, from which comes its name. The 2011 census found a population of 28,586. making it the third largest town in Cumbria after Carlisle and Barrow. It is known today mainly as a centre for tourism, as the home of Kendal mint cake, and as a producer of pipe tobacco and snuff. Its local grey limestone buildings have earned it the nickname "Auld Grey Town".
A chartered market town, the centre of Kendal has formed round a high street with fortified alleyways, known locally as yards, off to either side, which allowed local people to shelter from the Anglo-Scottish raiders known as Border Reivers. The main industry in those times was the manufacture of woollen goods, whose importance is reflected in the town's coat of arms and in its Latin motto Pannus mihi panis (Cloth is my bread.) "Kendal Green" was a hard-wearing, wool-based fabric specific to the local manufacturing process. It was supposedly sported by the Kendalian archers instrumental in the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Kendal Green was also worn by slaves in the Americas and appears in songs and literature from that time. Shakespeare notes it as the colour of clothing worn by foresters (Henry IV, Part 1).
Kendal Castle has a long history as a stronghold, built on the site of several successive castles. The earliest was a Norman motte and bailey (now located on the west side of the town), when the settlement went under the name of Kirkbie Strickland. The most recent is from the late 12th century, as the castle of the Barony of Kendal, the part of Westmorland ruled from here. The castle is best known as the home of the Parr family, as heirs of these barons. They inherited it through marriage in the reign of Edward III of England. Rumours still circulate that King Henry VIII's sixth wife Catherine Parr was born at Kendal Castle, but the evidence available leaves this unlikely: by her time the castle was beyond repair and her father was already based in Blackfriars, London, at the court of King Henry VIII." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
Become a patron to my photography on Patreon.
500 Fifth Avenue (aka 500-506 Fifth
Avenue; 1-9 West 42nd Street), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Built in 1929-31, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s 500 Fifth Avenue Building is a soaring 59-story Art Deco skyscraper, located at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed concurrently with the Empire State Building. Because the site was so valuable and so small, measuring only 100 feet by 208 feet, the building was designed to the maximum height and floor area allowable under the 1916 zoning code. Located in two zoning districts with differing setback requirements, it is asymmetrically massed with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on Fifth Avenue and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on West 42nd Street. Sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality.
On Fifth Avenue the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical relief by sculptor Edmond Amateis “symbolizing the genius of the modern skyscraper.” Capping the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline. When it opened in March 1931, 500 Fifth Avenue was the crowning achievement of real estate developer Walter J. Salmon, who was responsible for rebuilding the north side of West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the first decades of the 20th century. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon was one of the leading architectural firms in the country specializing in skyscraper design. In addition to 500 Fifth Avenue, Shreve Lamb & Harmon designed the Empire State Building (1929-31, 350 Fifth Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark). 500 Fifth Avenue continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History and Development of Midtown and the 500 Fifth Avenue Site
The area surrounding Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and the southern end of Central Park remained rural in character until the second half of the nineteenth century, when speculative residences and mansions began to be constructed on lots newly mapped by the city. By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings. By 1923, so many banks and trust companies had established uptown branches near the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street and on the blocks of Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street, that Rider’s New York City guide reported the area was popularly known as “Little Wall Street.” 42nd Street, which linked this business district to Times Square, became one of the busiest thoroughfares in New York while Fifth Avenue remained the most fashionable shopping street in the city, leading Real Estate Record & Guide to declare the parcel at 500 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 42nd Street, as “the most valuable building site on Manhattan Island north of Wall Street.”
In 1903 a young and ambitious real estate entrepreneur named Walter J. Salomon (18711953), who later changed his surname to Salmon, leased the corner lot and the adjacent L-shaped lot, which fronted on Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street. Salmon then converted the existing building, the eight-story Hotel Bristol, into a commercial and office building and renamed it the Bristol Building. This property was to form the core of Salmon’s redevelopment plan for 500 Fifth Avenue, his crowning achievement as a real estate man and the final puzzle piece in the transformation of the entire block front into an imposing wall of modern commercial structures.
New York’s Art Deco Skyscrapers
America’s involvement in World War I, followed by a recession in the early 1920s, caused a construction lull in New York City, as in other parts of the country. By the mid 1920s, the economy had bounced back, and demand for new and larger commercial buildings was booming. Fifteen new office skyscrapers were erected in New York in 1925, and 1926 saw the construction of 30 more. This building frenzy lasted through the 1929 stock market crash, as construction went forward in the early 1930s on buildings that had already been planned and financed; although largely finished by 1932, the boom left behind a “rich array of towers,” many of them executed in what is known today as the Art Deco style. Indeed, several of New York’s most spectacular skyscrapers from this period—including the Chanin Building (Sloan & Robertson, 1927-29), the Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1928-30), the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1929-31) and the General Electric Building (Cross & Cross, 1929-31), all designated New York City Landmarks, are among the country’s most significant examples of Art Deco design.
Into the 1910s, no limits on building height or bulk existed in New York City. In 1916, New York implemented the nation’s first zoning regulations, which permitted unrestricted height on one quarter of a building site, but required skyscrapers to taper as they rose to allow light and air to reach the street. Six years later, architect and critic Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) and architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) published a group of influential renderings that explored zoning’s impact on the shape of tall buildings. Presented as a series of illustrations progressing from the abstract, pyramidal shape of the zoning envelope to a stepped-back practicable building form, these drawings catalyzed a trend in which “buildings endeavored to take on the feeling of sculpted mountains, their shape suddenly more important than their historical detail or even their style.” So pervasive were the new stepped-back skyscrapers that by the mid-1920s, architects and critics spoke of an emerging “setback style”.
Another important influence on 1920s skyscraper design was Eliel Saarinen’s 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune’s new tower. With its straightforward shape, vertical emphasis, and limited ornament, Saarinen’s ahistorical design was “taken to be style-less and was thought in the twenties to have freed architects from what seemed the inevitable alternatives in skyscraper design, Gothic solutions on the one hand and vertically stretched Classicism on the other.”
The issue of what constituted “modern” design was expounded upon in the press and occupied many architects, who sought an appropriate means of expressing the societal changes brought about by new technology and manufacturing processes. A dichotomy existed, according to Ada Louise Huxtable, between the “modern” architecture of Europe and the “modernistic” new skyscrapers of New York:
‘Modern’ was radical, reductive, and reformist; ‘modernistic’ was richly decorative and attached to conservative and hedonistic values. ‘Modern’ was the austere, abstract, elite, avant-garde work of … [Walter] Gropius, Mies [van der Rohe], and Le Corbusier, united in its early days under the rubric of the International Style. ‘Modernistic’ was neither pure nor revolutionary; it fused the ornamental and the exotic for what was really the last great decorative style.
Only a handful of International Style skyscrapers were constructed in the United States before World War II. Far more popular was the “modernistic” style, which was later termed “Art Deco” based on its debt to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Flamboyant, dynamic, and dazzling to the eye, Art Deco’s primary characteristic was its “sumptuous ornament, and the lush textures and colors achieved by combining several materials, such as stone, brick, terra cotta, and metal.” Gilding and shiny materials were frequently used, and favorite decorative motifs, drawn from the natural world and geometric forms, included “spirals, sunflowers, steps, zigzags, triangles, double triangles, hexagons, fragmented circles, and seashells.” Frequently, facades were given a woven fabric treatment, in buildings including One Wall Street (Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark) and the 21 West Street Building (Starrett & Van Vleck, 1929-31, a designated New York City Landmark). Wall surfaces read as thin decorative veneers, as “stage sets” to a public infatuated with movies and the theater.
As Art Deco was conquering New York, a new skyscraper form, the slab, emerged. Into the 1920s, the city’s tallest skyscrapers were typically constructed on enormous lots. These sites were big enough, as with the Chrysler Building, to allow for “geometrically pure” square, needle-like towers that broke free of their bases and pierced the sky. But as large lots became rarer and developers sought to construct tall office buildings on narrow lots, this approach became unfeasible; the square tower, if made too small, lost too much of its internal space to elevators. As a result, new skyscrapers on narrower lots took on a slab-like form, their long and rectangular upper stories seemingly extruded from their bases. The pioneering slab skyscraper was H. Douglas Ives’ and Sloan & Robertson’s 38-story Fred F. French Building (1927, a designated New York City Landmark) at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, which was constructed on a relatively small lot.
But the master of the slab at the end of the 1920s was Raymond Hood, whose Daily News Building marked the most radical departure of any tall building from previous skyscraper form. Despite the rich Art Deco bas-relief over its main entrance, Hood’s building, with its artfully planned setbacks and flat, unornamented roofline, came closer to abstract sculpture than any skyscraper before; falling, in style, “between modern and modernistic,” it forsook the decorated crown of the Art Deco skyscraper and approached the purity of the International Style. Hood built upon his experience with the Daily News Building in designing another of the city’s great slab skyscrapers, the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (a designated New York City Landmark), which was completed in 1933.
Located just three blocks from the French Building, and similar in design and materials to the Daily News Building, 500 Fifth Avenue’s slender, slab-form tower situated the building within this group of transitional skyscrapers, precursors to the postwar office building. But with the Depression remaining entrenched and money for office buildings drying up, few Art Deco skyscrapers were completed in New York after Rockefeller Center, and the style, increasingly employed for government and institutional buildings, became considerably more restrained.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
Richmond Harold Shreve (1877-1946)
William Frederick Lamb (1883-1958
Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958)
The architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, formed in 1929, was one of New York City’s premier design teams, known primarily for their modern office buildings and especially the Empire State Building (completed 1931, a designated New York City Landmark). The three principal designers had traditional architectural educations and experience with important New York firms before they joined together and created buildings specifically adapted to the design requirements and technological advances of the modern era.
Richmond Harold Shreve was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He studied architecture at Cornell University, graduating in 1902, and spent the next four years on the faculty of the School of Architecture there. While at Cornell, he supervised the construction of Goldwin Smith Hall, designed by the New York firm of Carrère & Hastings, and at the conclusion of the project he joined the firm. William Frederick Lamb, son of New York builder William Lamb, was born in Brooklyn. Graduating from Williams College in 1904, Shreve subsequently studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture, and then went to Paris to study at the Atelier Deglane. After receiving his diploma from the École des Beaux Arts in 1911, Lamb returned to New York and joined the firm of Carrère & Hastings where he met Shreve. In 1920, Shreve and Lamb became partners in the new firm of Carrère & Hastings, Shreve & Lamb.
By 1924, they decided to establish their own partnership, and five years later they were joined by Arthur Loomis Harmon to form Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Harmon, who had been born in Chicago, studied at the Art Institute there and graduated from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1901. He worked as a designer in the firm of McKim, Mead & White between 1902 and 1911. From 1912 to 1913, he was an associate in the firm of Wallis & Goodwillie, and then practiced alone until joining Shreve and Lamb. His works from that period include 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. For the Empire State Building, the firm’s most famous work, Lamb was the designer, but Shreve’s organizational skills were generally credited with enabling the building to be constructed in just one year. Shreve was also active as a planner beyond 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 (such as No. 130 East 57th Street and No. 30 East 76th Street, located within the Upper East Side Historic District). Their residential work was largely in the neo-Tudor and other popular historical styles of the 1920s, while their commercial work tended to be spare and functional, reflecting little of the Beaux Arts ornament for which Carrère & Hastings had been famous. Their other buildings in New York included the L.P. Hollander & Company Building at 3 East 57th Street (1929-30, a designated New York City Landmark), a 1931-33 addition to 14 Wall Street (a designated New York City Landmark), the Best & Company store at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street (demolished), an addition to the New York Times Annex on West 43rd Street, the Lefcourt National Building, and the Mutual of New York Building. Outside of New York City, their work includes the Standard Oil Building in Albany, the Reynolds Tobacco Company building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Chimes Building in Syracuse, NY. These tend to be similar to their New York City work, with unadorned limestone cladding, metal-framed windows and simple, set-back massing, occasionally with Art Deco or Streamlined ornamental motifs.
Edmond R. Amateis
Edmond R. Amateis (1897-1981) was an American sculptor born in Rome and trained at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. Working in the U.S. and Europe, Amateis created monumental public sculpture of a heroic-classical nature. Early in his career he won recognition with his award of the Prix de Rome (1921), the Avery Prize of the Architectural League of New York (1929), and the McCleese Prize of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1933). For the New York World’s Fair of 1939, Amateis sculpted a monumental allegorical group based on American folklore, with figures depicting Johnny Appleseed as Benevolence, Paul Bunyan as Efficiency, and Strap Buckner as Humility. Amateis’s other major commissions included a sculptural frieze for the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, completed in 1938, and a memorial to American soldiers who died in France during World War II, located in Draguignan, France.
Design and Construction of the 500 Fifth Avenue Building
With his acquisition of the properties at nos. 3, 5, 7, and 9 West 42nd Street in 1915, Walter J. Salmon had assembled a parcel of 20,900 square feet at 500 Fifth Avenue, about the minimum size necessary for profitable redevelopment. In 1922, Gerry Estates, Inc. entered into an agreement with Salmon to redevelop the site. With other projects in the works, including the adjacent Salmon Tower at 11-27 West 42nd Street, Salmon delayed beginning work on the corner site until the summer of 1929. At that time he announced plans for a fifty-eight story building with frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 208 feet on 42nd Street to be built to the design of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Given its status as the second most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan, redevelopment of this site was greatly anticipated among the real estate community and by the public at large. An article in the Real Estate Record & Guide described the high-profile nature of the project:
For years residents of the city and out-of-town visitors alike have speculated as to the future of this corner, wondering that so prominent a location—at “the crossroads of the world”—should have been neglected in the modern development of Fifth Avenue as the leading shopping street of the world and of the Grand Central area as the midtown financial and business district…With the fashionable shopping district definitely extending its limits above Forty-second Street; with the north and south flow of automobile and pedestrian traffic and the cross flow between Grand Central Station and Times Square making the intersection one of the busiest in the world, and with other building under way, the time appeared ripe for an improvement on this corner.
The construction of the office building at 500 Fifth Avenue had a significant impact on the eventual development of the adjacent parcels, because its planning affected the zoning of the entire Fifth Avenue block front. The zoning code permitted a taller building on 42nd Street than on Fifth Avenue, so Salmon acquired a long-term lease on the adjacent four-story converted dwelling at 508 Fifth Avenue in 1927; by merging the zoning lots of this 25 by 102-foot building and that of 500 Fifth Avenue, he was able to build a higher tower than would have otherwise been possible.
The program for 500 Fifth Avenue called for street-level stores, banking facilities on the second and third floors, and office units on the floors above, totaling approximately 450,000 square feet of rentable area. Plans were submitted to the Buildings Department in October 1929, and excavation began in February of 1930; the estimated cost of the project was $4,000,000. Charles T. Wills, Inc. was the general contractor, and McClintic-Marshall Co. the steel contractor. Erection of the skyscraper’s steel skeleton began at the end of March, and was completed in a mere four months owing to a highly efficient system whereby the steel arrived on site and was hoisted by derricks to the 36th floor, where it was assembled and continuously distributed by a relay derrick to other floors. The exterior brickwork was completed in early September 1930, and the general contract for the building was completed in January 1931. At the height of the building project nearly 2,200 workers were employed.
The construction of 500 Fifth Avenue and its sister skyscraper the Empire State Building (constructed concurrently from January 1930 to May 1931) set a new standard for speed and efficiency in building construction. Each component of 500 Fifth Avenue’s structure was planned, mapped, and measured in advance, in what historian Christopher Gray called a “tight ballet of scheduling.” This strategic approach to construction planning and oversight was successfully realized at 500 Fifth Avenue through the close collaboration of the architect, building owner, real estate advisers, operating managers, and builder throughout the entire process of planning and construction. Architect Richmond Shreve was a great proponent of rationalized building construction, and expounded on his ideas in an essay titled “The Economic Design of Office Buildings”:
To set up properly an income-producing building the control of its design and construction should be in the hands of a Board on which sit Owner, Banker, Builder, Architect, Engineers, and Real Estate Men. The record of their decisions finds place in plans, specifications and contracts, financial transactions and leases, and the outcome of their work, if it is to be successful, must have been foreseen far in advance of its realization.
500 Fifth Avenue was completed in just over a year without accident or serious injury, and opened in March 1931 in time for the traditional renewal date for business leases of May 1. William F. Lamb called 500 Fifth Avenue “a thoroughly frank expression of the requirements of an up-to-date office building.” These requirements included modern, well lit and properly ventilated office units near elevators and bathrooms; fast and efficient elevator service; and maximum rentable floor space. Despite its relatively small lot (less than a quarter of the size of the Empire State Building lot) and constricted building envelope, 500 Fifth Avenue offered all of these things; moreover, its unusually advantageous corner location across from the New York Public Library and Bryant Park afforded ample natural light, cross-ventilation, and unobstructed views for two blocks to the south.
Effectively, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed 500 Fifth Avenue from the top down, determining the placement of the building’s service core within the tower and then the base, and from the inside out, determining the ideal office unit as a basis for formulating the overall plan and circulation. The building’s set-back configuration, which allowed for an unusually high window-to-wall ratio, as well as a 25-foot wide light court on the west side of the building beginning at the sixth floor, ensured that no office unit would be more than 30 feet from natural light; a distance of 28 feet or less was considered optimal for modern office buildings before the development of air-conditioning. Floor areas ranged from 2,150 to 18,000 square feet, with office units as small as 9 feet in width and as large as an entire floor. The typical floor plan for the building’s base had 21 office units, while the typical floor plan for the tower had nine office units.
The main entrance to the building was placed on the Fifth Avenue facade, about 70 feet from 42nd Street and on center with the sheer tower rising above the setbacks, and the remainder of the ground floor on both the east and south facades was dominated by an unbroken line of bronze-framed, plate-glass storefronts. The main entrance was framed dramatically by pylons and crowned with the highly stylized bas-relief figure of a Grecian woman holding a staff with a winged sun disc and kneeling beside a model of the building itself, an allegorical representation of the “genius of the modern skyscraper,” sculpted from a single block of limestone by Edward Amateis.
The dramatically massed exterior of 500 Fifth Avenue expressed the constraints of the zoning code, which allowed more bulk on the 42nd Street side than on the Fifth Avenue side and thus determined the positioning of the tower on the base. The building’s tight footprint, which limited the size of the base, and the imperative of maximizing profits with top-quality office and retail space in a relatively small building envelope, resulted in the complex geometry of setbacks stepping up asymmetrically to the slender tower. With regards to the height of office buildings in a competitive real estate market, “…there is 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.” At 500 Fifth Avenue, the projected height of 58 stories (plus a penthouse, making the total 59 stories), or 697 feet, was considered the limit of economic feasibility for a 100- by 208-foot lot. In his essay on tall office buildings, Shreve summed up the design problem inherent in the 1916 zoning ordinance, describing the modern tall office building as
“a geometrical form consisting of a base enclosed by vertical walls, an intermediate section defined by sloping limits, and a tower…[and]…practical usable office floor area, supported and enclosed by structural forms, served by mechanical equipment, and reached through public spaces which are not directly sources of revenue.”
Shreve went on to offer this thought:
The demands of time, cost, and practicability need not be hostile to the aesthetic side of the work. Indeed, may it not be fairly said that character is improved and greater success of pure design assured if sound reasoning as to value, and honest recognition of function, accompany and guide our struggle to attain architectural beauty?
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s completed building was noted in the press for its height, its zoning conditions, and its real estate value; it was among the city’s notable tall buildings of the time and remains a distinguished example of Art Deco skyscraper design. Stylized geometrical ornament, a restrained color palette, and the “vertical accent” created by spandrels and channeling all contributed to the building’s “modern architectural treatment”, in the words of partner William Lamb. On the second, third, and fourth stories, limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and light-green metal spandrels decorated with folds and chevrons reflect Art Deco’s affinity for stylized geometric forms. Around the main entrance the carved limestone pylons and allegorical bas-relief are picked out in gilding, and on the 42nd Street facade a pair of eagles carved in profile enhance the figural quality of the ornamental scheme. Rising above the base is 500 Fifth Avenue’s flat-roofed, slab-form tower.
The tower’s vertical buff-brick stripes are likely inspired by Hood’s Daily News Building, which bridged Art Deco and the emerging International Style when it opened in 1930. As with the Daily News Building—where Hood sought to conceal the windows to avoid the effect of a wall “shot full of holes”—these stripes alternate with dark window bands. In the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, 500 Fifth Avenue’s terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward. Seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline. This striped effect is continued on the north elevation, where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta.
Above its base, 500 Fifth Avenue is virtually free of ornament, except at the tower, where a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Subsequent History
A year after the stock market crash and three months before the opening of 500 Fifth Avenue, Walter J. Salmon was quoted in the papers on the subject of his prospects for an immediate return on his investment: “We feel that it will take some time to absorb the approximately 500,000 square feet of office space in the building, but the enterprise was undertaken with the greatest faith in the future of midtown expansion and development.” By May 1931, three months after its opening, the 15th, 16th and 20th floors of the building had been fully rented ; by the end of the year, several prestigious tenants had signed leases, including the Electrolux Corporation, no less than ten railroad corporations, and the Western Universities Club, which used the penthouse and the three floors below for its club facilities. An article in the New York Times from January 1932 reported a consistent demand for business space in the midtown area, calling business renting “brisk.”
Later tenants of 500 Fifth Avenue included the Austrian and Japanese consulates, and in the mid-1930s the building became the target of Communist protests directed at the Japanese consulate, which had offices on the 40th floor.
In 1944, when the Manufacturers Trust Company—then located at 513 Fifth Avenue–and the Mutual Insurance Company entered into a lease in which Mutual Life agreed to construct a new bank building on the property at nos. 508 and 510-514 Fifth Avenue, a corollary agreement with Walter Salmon permitted Manufacturers Trust Company to sublease, and ultimately redevelop, 508 Fifth Avenue. An important stipulation in this agreement was that during the time Salmon’s lease remained in effect (1944-65), any building erected on the portion of the lot at No. 508 would not exceed the height of the then-existing building (63 feet) or otherwise interfere with 500 Fifth Avenue. Thus, the height of the new bank building was effectively limited to four or five stories, and light and ventilation levels on the north wall of 500 Fifth Avenue were preserved.
In 1955, the land under 500 Fifth Avenue was sold by Gerry Brothers & Co., whose principals were descendents of the original ownership, to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 500 Fifth Avenue was again the site of political disturbance in 1980, when Croatian nationalists bombed a Yugoslavian bank located on the 30th floor of the building; there were no injuries, and only minor damage to the interior spaces. In the mid-1990s, the facade of 500 Fifth Avenue was repaired, ornament was restored or selectively refabricated, and replacement windows were installed. The building continues to be used as an office building with street-level stores.
Description
500 Fifth Avenue is an asymmetrically massed skyscraper with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on the Fifth Avenue (east) facade and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on the 42nd Street (south) facade; the side (west) facade is partially visible from street; sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality; on the Fifth Avenue facade the limestone and black granite main entrance is treated as a pylon framed by stylized gilded palmettos and capped by an allegorical bas-relief; the metal-and-glass main entrance door is deeply recessed and has returns of polished stone or metal; possibly historic pendant and wall-mounted light fixtures within recess of main entrance; possibly historic light fixtures and flag poles flank the main entrance; freight entrance in seventh bay of ground floor on 42nd Street facade; ground-floor storefronts on the Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades retain the original patinated metal cornice with chevron motifs; the three commercial stories above the storefronts have large show-window openings set between limestone piers decorated with channeling and abstracted frond and scroll motifs and patinated metal spandrels decorated with stylized folds and chevrons; the majority of the show windows on the 2nd Street facade are historic multi-pane metal sash; on the Fifth Avenue facade only a few of these historic show windows remain; on the buff-brick mid-section and tower the windows are arranged into paired and triple groups separated by projecting piers, with the major piers enhanced by vertical channeling; in the center bays on 42nd Street and in the two window bays over the main entry, the terra-cotta spandrel panels are dark gray in color and angle forward; seen from a distance the dark color of the spandrels merges with the dark color of the window frames to create a series of vertical stripes that rise unbroken to the roofline; this striped effect is continued on the back (north) elevation where the large expanse of brick wall enclosing the elevators and utilities is articulated with three uninterrupted channels filled with strips of dark gray terra cotta; crowning the setbacks and tower are a series of angled brick and terra-cotta panels decorated with chevrons that read as pleated cresting against the skyline.
Alterations: non-historic metal-and-glass storefront infill on ground story; several non-historic plate-glass windows with metal frames on second through fourth stories of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; metal plaques and security lights at main entrance on Fifth Avenue facade; four utility boxes affixed to southeast corner of building above fifth story; double-hung metal replacement windows in all openings above the fourth story; louvers or vents in several window openings or as replacement window panes on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street facades; brick replaced at corners of building; dunnage/cooling tower and antennas visible on roof.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second.
Films, games competitions, and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 the business began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, invented by Hilary Page in 1939 and patented in the United Kingdom in 1940 before being displayed at the 1947 Earl's Court Toy Fair. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" (Danish: det bedste er ikke for godt, literally "the best isn't excessively good") was created in 1936. Christiansen created the motto, still used today, to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, wrote that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: Their locking ability was still limited, and they were not yet versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958 and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children. In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program. In May 2013, the largest model ever created, made of over 5 million bricks, was displayed in New York City; a one-to-one scale model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter. Other record breakers include a 34-metre (112 ft) tower and a 4 km (2.5 mi) railway.
In February 2015, marketing consulting company Brand Finance ranked Lego as the "world's most powerful brand", overtaking Ferrari.
Lego bricks have acquired a reputation for causing extreme pain when stepped on.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made presently, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based on the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Manufacturing
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C (450 °F) until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds using forces of between 25 and 150 tonnes and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required.
Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego, in 2018, set a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico; and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could also be considered the world's number-one tyre manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tyres a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's More or Less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons. Since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of 1.152 grams (0.0406 oz), according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack 3,591 metres (11,781 ft) in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees). The New York Times reported the company's footprint that year was "about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year" and that it was investing about 1 billion kroner and hiring 100 people to work on changes. The paper reported that Lego's researchers "have already experimented with around 200 alternatives." In 2020, Lego announced that it would cease packaging its products in single-use plastic bags and would instead be using recyclable paper bags. In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil, by using recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles, but in 2023 it reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Set themes
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, pirates, trains, (European) castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west, as well as wholly original themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, the company has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and Minecraft. Although some of these themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, the company expressed in 2015 a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes and less upon such licensed themes. Some sets include references to other themes such as a Bionicle mask in one of the Harry Potter sets. Discontinued sets may become a collectable and command value on the black market.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest commercially produced Lego sets was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded by the Lego Art World Map at 11,695 pieces, the Lego Titanic at 9,090 pieces, and the Lego Architect Colosseum at 9,036 pieces.
In 2022, Lego introduced its Eiffel Tower. The set consists of 10,000 parts and reaches a height of 149 cm, which makes it the tallest set and tower but the second in number of parts after the World Map.
Robotics themes
Main articles: Lego Mindstorms, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, and Lego Mindstorms EV3
The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include FIRST LEGO League Discover for children ages 4–6, FIRST LEGO League Explore for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League Challenge for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). These programs offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FIRST LEGO League Challenge uses LEGO-based robots to complete tasks, FIRST LEGO League Explore participants build models out of Lego elements, and FIRST LEGO League Discover participants use Duplo. In its 2019–2020 season, there were 38,609 FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams and 21,703 FIRST LEGO League Explore teams around the world. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
In popular culture
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
"Lego" is commonly used as a mass noun ("some Lego") or, in American English, as a countable noun with plural "Legos", to refer to the bricks themselves, but as is common for trademarks, Lego group insists on the name being used as an adjective when referring to a product (as in "LEGO bricks").
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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasts off from Space Launch Complex-41 with NASAs Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-K) payload. This was the first of 13 ULA launches scheduled for 2013, the 35th Atlas V mission, and the 67th ULA launch.
Photo courtesy United Launch Alliance
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The first of NASA's three next-generation
Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), known as TDRS-K, launched
at 8:48 p.m. EST Wednesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in
Florida.
"TDRS-K bolsters our network of satellites that provides essential
communications to support space exploration," said Badri Younes,
deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and
Navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It will improve the
overall health and longevity of our system."
The TDRS system provides tracking, telemetry, command and
high-bandwidth data return services for numerous science and human
exploration missions orbiting Earth. These include the International
Space Station and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
"With this launch, NASA has begun the replenishment of our aging space
network," said Jeffrey Gramling, TDRS project manager. "This addition
to our current fleet of seven will provide even greater capabilities
to a network that has become key to enabling many of NASA's
scientific discoveries."
TDRS-K was lifted into orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V
rocket from Space Launch Complex-41. After a three-month test phase,
NASA will accept the spacecraft for additional evaluation before
putting the satellite into service.
The TDRS-K spacecraft includes several modifications from older
satellites in the TDRS system, including redesigned
telecommunications payload electronics and a high-performance solar
panel designed for more spacecraft power to meet growing S-band
requirements. Another significant design change, the return to
ground-based processing of data, will allow the system to service
more customers with evolving communication requirements.
The next TDRS spacecraft, TDRS-L, is scheduled for launch in 2014.
TDRS-M's manufacturing process will be completed in 2015.
NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Program, part of the Human
Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at the agency's
Headquarters in Washington, is responsible for the space network. The
TDRS Project Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md., manages the TDRS development program. Launch services
were provided by United Launch Alliance. NASA's Launch Services
Program at the Kennedy Space Center was responsible for acquisition
of launch services.
For more information about TDRS, visit:
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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