Manufacturing_process photos on Flickr

130 West 30th Street Building by Emilio Guerra

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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

Historical Structural Steel by Electron Microscopy & Spectroscopy

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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

Salmon Tower Building (500 Fifth Avenue) by Emilio Guerra

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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

Lung - Kaolinosis by Rosen & Meseguer Atlas of Medical Foreign Bodies

1

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

Crackers! by Steven Brandist

5 2

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.

www.cartwright-group.co.uk

Vandenberg Ed Center opens by Los Angeles District USACE

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 Building by Emilio Guerra

500 Fifth Avenue (aka 500-506 Fifth

Avenue; 1-9 West 42nd Street), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States