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This abridgement of Universal's 12-episode serial Buck Rogers stars Buster Crabbe as Dick Calkins' famed comic-strip space adventurer. Buck and Buddy (Jackie Moran) and are recruited to battle against modernistic gangster Killer Kane (Anthony Warde), by Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) and Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw). The duo travels to Saturn to get help in their mission, and after Buck and Buddy quell the internal struggles of the Saturnians, Buck triumphs over Killer Kane and his cosmic thugs.
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Link to all 12 Serial Episodes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTtc-u3zFGk&feature=share&...
Starring Buster Crabbe, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran, Jack Mulhall, Anthony Warde, C. Montague Shaw, Guy Usher, William Gould, Philson Ahn. Directed by Ford Beebe, Saul A. Goodkind.
Buck Rogers and Buddy Wade are in the middle of a trans-polar dirigible flight when they are caught in a blizzard and crash. Buddy then releases a special gas to keep them in suspended animation until a rescue party can arrive. However, an avalanche covers the craft and the two are in suspended animation for 500 years. When they are found, they awake to find out that the world has been taken over by the outlaw army of Killer Kane. Along with Lieutenant Wilma Deering, Buck and Buddy join in the fight to overthrow Kane and with the help of Prince Tallen of Saturn and his forces, they eventually do and Earth is free of Kane's grip.
This is actually a pretty enjoyable serial, but it seems doomed to be forever overshadowed by the much superior Flash Gordon trilogy. Universal brought BUCK ROGERS out in 1939, in between their own chapterplays FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS and FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE; it also starred Buster Crabbe (but with his natural dark hair instead of Flash's golden curls) and although it is filled with space ships and weird gadgets, BUCK ROGERS lacks most of the elements that gave the Flash serials their intense emotional draw.
For one thing, there is none of the strong sexual charge that the Flash series had. Instead of nubile Dale Arden and sultry Princess Aura both competing for the hero's attention while the villain openly lusted for the heroine, Buck's epic featured Constance Moore as Col. Wilma Deering. Now, Moore is perfectly fine in her role, but she is after all a soldier in the resistance army and not a fair damsel in distress. She has a nice moment when she wrests a ray gun away from a guard and blasts her way out of her cell, but she and Buck seem to be merely chums on the same side.
Also, although BUCK ROGERS has plenty of futuristic gadgets (rayguns and buzzing spaceships which shoot sparks from their backs, teleportation tubes and invisibility rays), there are no grotesque monsters or nonhuman alien races on view. Prisoners have remarkably goofy metal helmets strapped on which turn them into docile zombies, and there are these homely goons called Zuggs moping around, but that's hardly as fascinating as Lion Men and Clay People and horned apes (that Orangapoid critter).
What's ironic about all this is that the comic strip BUCK ROGERS by Philip Nolan and Richard Calkins started in 1929, was immensely popular for many years and it success inspired the creation of Flash. Yet the Flash strip benefitted from the genius of Alex Raymond, one of the all-time great cartoon artists, and it produced stunning visual images (from the samples of Buck's strip I've seen, it was imaginative enough but pretty crude and drab). This contrast carried over to the serials.
Buck Rogers and his sidekick Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran) are pilots who crash in the Arctic in1938 and survive for 500 years because the 'Nirvano' gas they were carrying put them in a state of suspended animation. They both seem to adapt to waking up in the year 2424 pretty well, where I would think most people would be so traumatized it would take a while to adjust. In this dystopic future, the Earth is ruled by a mega-gangster called Killer Kane (another setback; Anthony Warde would be okay as a crimelord but he just doesn't have the imposing presence to convince me this guy can dominate an entire planet).
Luckily, Buck and Buddy have been found by the small resistance movement hopelessly trying to overthrow Kane from their hidden city. Here is Dr Huer (C. Montague Shaw, who I just saw in the UNDERSEA KINGDOM doing the same gig with his wild inventions) and Wilma Deering leading the good fight. For some reason I missed, everyone immediately puts all their trust in Buck and he pretty much takes over. (Maybe he's just one of those charismatic alpha males or something.) Most of the serial involves desperate trips back and forth to Saturn to enlist the aid of the isolationist Saturnians, and this means running the blockade of Kane's ships. The usual fistfights and explosions and captures and escapes normal for this sort of situation ensue. It's a lot of fun if you take it on its own terms, with a strong linear plot and likeable heroes, but it really never kicks into high gear and seems a bit drab.
It's interesting that some (but not all) of the Saturnians are played by Asian actors. Prince Tallen, who gets caught up in most of the fun, was portrayed by a very young Philson Ahn, and I thought for years this was the same guy who in 1972 impressed us as the head of the Shaolin Temple in TV's KUNG FU (he taught all the styles, really amazing if you think about it). Turns out that was Phiip Ahn, Philson's brother.
Dir: Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind - 12 Chapters
BUCK ROGERS (1939): Director Ford Beebe, who also worked on Flash Gordon (1938), came straight from The Phantom Creeps (1939) and then went back to finish Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (1940). Buck Rogers stars Buster Crabbe or, as his family knew him, Lawrence. Now, Lawrence ‘Larry’ ‘Buster’ Crabbe had previously starred in two Flash Gordon serials, a couple of Tarzan movies and a long string of westerns, so it was only natural for Universal to decide he was perfect as the heroic Buck Rogers, aka that blonde guy who saves the universe but isn’t Flash Gordon. Actually, Buster Crabbe wasn’t the first actor to play Buck Rogers in-the-flesh, so to speak.
That honour goes to an unknown man who played Buck in a Virginia department store, instead of their regular Santa Claus. Santa was off conquering Martians at the time, I think it was an exchange program of sorts. It strikes me that Buck Rogers is not unlike a male fantasy come to life. Just think of it – Buck gets to take a nice five-hundred-year-long sleep-in. With my busy schedule, I’m ecstatic if I can get twenty minutes nap on the weekend. Then, when he wakes up, Buck is the smartest, most dynamic guy around. In reality he’d be treated like something that’s escaped from the zoo. And finally, everyone needs Buck to go on exciting missions, fight the bad guys, test exotic equipment and crash rocket ships – out of the half-dozen flights Buck makes, he only lands successfully once. It’s easy to see the bullet cars used in the movie are the same ones from Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (1938), and even the script is rather suspect.
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This film is actually a compilation of the Buck Rogers serials that ran originally in 1939. The cliffhanger endings and recap beginnings have been edited out to make it flow better -- with partial success. Some new footage was shot for the introduction and summary. At the opening, there are some newspaper headlines about jets chasing flying discs, and the obligatory checkered V2 launch, etc. to add a modern segue. After that, it's pure 1939.
Sci-fi movie technology had come a long way in the 14 years since Buck's debut. Audiences had grown accustomed to sleek and pointy rockets, flying saucers, strange aliens, etc. The Buck Rogers style world-of-the-future must have looked oddly quaint. (if not laughable) Just why Universal Pictures thought re-releasing Buck Rogers was a good idea is a bit of a mystery. Kids who were 8 or so back in 1939 would be young adults in '53. Perhaps Universal was banking on those young adults would buy tickets for a trip down memory lane.
Plot Synopsis
After a bit of modern ('53) footage about the wonders of modern progress and "flying disks," the old serial begins. Rogers and Buddy crashed in the arctic while on a transpolar flight. They were in suspended animation due to the cold and a vague gas. A patrol finds them in the year 2500 and revives them. In the world of 2500, a despot named Killer Kane is trying to take over the world. The forces of good are holed up in the "hidden city." Buck arranges a decoy maneuver to elude Kane's patrol ships. They fly to the planet Saturn in hopes of finding help. On Saturn, the Council sees Rogers and party as the rebels, and Kane as the rule of law. Rogers et al, escape Saturn, return to earth and seek to disrupt Kane's bamboozling of Prince Tallen, the Saturnian representative. Rogers sneaks into Kane's city, interrupts the treaty signing and convinces Tallen of Kane's evil by revealing Kane's "robot battalion" (slaves wearing mind-control helmets). Rogers and Tallen get to Saturn and the treaty is signed. Rogers escapes Kane's patrols via the Dissolvo Ray which rendered them invisible. Rogers and the war council plan for war. Rogers enlists the Saturnians to help. Meanwhile, Rogers sneaks into Kane's city and de-zombies Minister Krenco to lead an uprising of freed robot-slave-prisoners. Rogers storms Kane's palace and puts one of the robo-slave helmets on Kane. The End
The industrial vision of the future is delightful to watch. The heavily mechanical look of everything is so radically different from the sleek rockets and glowing acrylic audiences were growing accustomed to. The space ships look like they were built at locomotive factories or steamship yards. They spew roman-candle sparks and smoke and buzz as they fly. There are no computers, no radar or electronics. It's a fascinating snapshot of what pre-electronic-age people thought the future would be like.
When originally released in 1939, the Killer Kane character was a thinly disguised allusion to Hitler. In 1953, Kane was intended to represent a communist despot. It wasn't as tidy a fit. The narrator sums it up voicing a hope that scientists will develop the means for men to stand up to today's dictators and make the world safe for democracy. In the early 50s, there's little question of who they meant.
Simple Colors -- One endearing trait of Buck Rogers is the simplicity of the characterizations. The good guys do nothing but good. The bad guys are pure bad. The good guys are crack pilots and sharp shooters and tough as nails. The bad guys do nothing but bad, have trouble hitting a flying barn and are easily knocked out with one punch.
Industrial Baroque -- Somewhat like the baroque era's compulsion to decorate every square inch with swirls and filigree, Industrial Baroque sought to fill every space with heavy-duty hardware. The sets, and especially the rocket interiors are like flying boiler rooms. Valves, pipes, levers, dials, wheels, large flashing light bulbs. To look more "high tech" in the 30s meant cramming in more industrial hardware. Buck Rogers' ships show more affinity for Captain Nemo "steampunk" than the proto-space-age of the 50s.
Family Resemblance -- There is a noticeable similarity in the sets and costumes of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers. Even serials of the early 50s, like Captain Video and the various Rocketman serials, look more like Flash and Buck than George Pal. The industrial baroque look and costuming are distinctive, making them almost a sub-genre of their own. In that regard, Buck has a timelessness.
Another take on the story and additional background info.
A round-the-world dirigible flight commanded by US Air Force officer Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) encounters dangerously stormy weather above the Himalayas; said weather, along with disastrous panic on the part of Rogers’ crewmen, causes the aircraft to crash. The cowardly crewmen ditch the ship and meet quick ends, but Rogers and young Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran), son of the aircraft’s designer, survive the crash. The pair use a cylinder of “Nirvano” gas to place themselves into suspended animation until a rescue party can reach them, but an avalanche buries the ship and all searches prove fruitless; the dirigible and its two dormant inhabitants remain beneath rocks and snow for five hundred years.
Finally, in the year 2440, a spaceship unearths the wreck, and its pilots restore Buck and Buddy to consciousness. The holdovers from the 20th century soon learn that their rescuers are soldiers from the “Hidden City,” a pocket of resistance to the super-criminal who is ruling the 24th-century Earth–one “Killer” Kane (Anthony Warde). Rogers immediately pledges his support to Air Marshal Kragg (William Gould) and Scientist-General Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw), the leaders of the Hidden City exiles, and is soon en route to Saturn, hoping to convince that planet’s rulers to aid the Hidden City in freeing the Earth from Kane’s tyranny. To cement the Saturian alliance, Buck must battle Kane’s legions at every step of the way, with able assistance from Buddy and from Dr. Huer’s trusted aide Lieutenant Wilma Deering (Constance Moore).
Ever since its original release, Buck Rogers has stood in the shadow of Universal’s Flash Gordon serials; the studio encouraged such association by casting Flash Gordon star Buster Crabbe as a different sci-fi hero, obviously hoping that the chapterplay would capitalize on the goodwill generated by Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars. The serial did succeed in reminding audiences of the Flash outings–but it reminded them of how much they had liked those serials and forced inevitable comparisons that were not in Rogers’ favor. Universal’s plans for a second Buck Rogers serial were quickly scrapped when the first outing failed to please matinee audiences; the intended Buck sequel was then replaced on the studio’s production schedule by–what else?–a third Flash Gordon chapterplay. Even today, Buck is typically dismissed by fans as a pale echo of the great Gordon serials.
It’s easy to see why Buck Rogers came as a disappointment to audiences expecting an outing in the Flash Gordon tradition. Its production design, while futuristic, is less quirky and more uniform than that of the Gordons; there are no monsters and no weird semi-human races besides the rather uninteresting Zuggs; there are also no supporting characters as developed or as interesting as Dr. Zarkov, Ming, King Vultan, the Clay King, Princess Aura, Prince Barin, and other major figures in the Flash Gordon chapterplays. And yet, taken on its own terms, Buck Rogers is far from a failure; it does not approach the Flash Gordon trilogy in quality, but then few serials do.
Buck Rogers’ script, by former Mascot writers Norman Hall and Ray Trampe, is fast-moving and manages to avoid repetition for most of its length. The trip to Saturn, the attempts to convince Saturnian leader Prince Tallen (Philson Ahn) of the justice of the Hidden City’s cause, the subsequent rescue of Tallen from Kane’s city, the second journey to Saturn to cement the alliance, and the attempts of Kane’s henchman Laska (Henry Brandon) to sabotage it–all these incidents keep the narrative flowing very nicely for the serial’s first eight chapters. As in many of Trampe and Hall’s Mascot scripts, however, the writers seem to run out of plot before the serial’s end. While Chapters Nine and Ten remain interesting (with Buck being converted into a hypnotized robot, Buddy’s rescue of the hero, and an infiltration of the Hidden City by one of Kane’s men), the last two chapters have a definite wheel-spinning feel to them, throwing in a redundant third trip to Saturn and an unneeded flashback sequence.
The last-chapter climax is also something of a disappointment, with Kane being overthrown quickly and undramatically instead of being definitively crushed. Here, Trampe and Hall seem to have been leaving room for the sequel that never came and trying to avoid duplicating the dramatic but very final destruction of MIng which closed the first Flash Gordon serial (and which needed to be explained away in the second). The other weak spot of the scripting is Buck and Buddy’s rather calm reaction when they realize that their old world (and everyone in it) is dead–and their extraordinarily quick adjustment to their new one. One wouldn’t have wanted the writers to dwell on our heroes’ plight (which would be absolutely crushing in real life), but I do wish Trampe or Hall could have given Buck and Buddy a few emotional lines about their displacement before getting on to the main action; Hall in his scripts for other serials (Hawk of the Wilderness, Adventures of Red Ryder), showed himself capable of far more dramatic moments.
As already mentioned, the serial’s visuals are less varied than those of the Flash Gordon serials, but that’s not to say they aren’t impressive by serial standards. Pains seem to have been taken to avoid duplicating too much of Gordon’s “look;” the spaceship miniatures are completely different than the ships in the Gordon trilogy, while Kane’s stronghold–probably the best miniature in the serial–is not the quasi-Gothic palace of Ming but rather an ominous, futuristic-looking version of New York City, complete with towering skyscrapers. The Hidden City’s great rock gates are also nifty, and the massive Saturnian Forum (a life-size set, not a miniature) is very visually impressive. The barren Red Rock Canyon area works well as the Saturnian landscape, but I think it was a mistake to also use the Canyon as the area between the Hidden City and Kane’s capital; Saturn and Earth shouldn’t look so similar.
The only major prop or set reused from the Gordon serials are the “bullet cars” from Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars; they’re just as fun to watch in action here as in the earlier serial. Other incidental props and sets–Kane’s robot room, his mind-control helmets, the various televiewing devices, the anti-gravity belts, Dr. Huer’s invisibility ray, and the Star-Trek-like molecular transportation chamber–add further colorful touches to the serial., and are respectably represented by Universal’s always above-average array of sets and props. The Zuggs, the “primitive race” ruled by the Saturnians, are somewhat disappointing, however; while suitably grotesque-looking, they’re nowhere near as menacing or memorable–in appearance or demeanor–as their obvious inspiration, the Clay People in Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars.
The serial’s action scenes are brisk and energetic, suffering not at all from a general lack of fistfights–thanks to the swift-moving direction of Ford Beebe (a Mascot veteran like writers Trampe and Hall) and his co-director Saul Goodkind (usually an editor). The few hand-to-hand tussles–most of them on the rocky hills of Saturn–are executed routinely but skillfully by Dave Sharpe, Tom Steele, Eddie Parker, and other stuntmen; the best of the bunch is the fight between Buck and a Kane man in the control room of the Hidden City, although this is more exciting for the suspenseful situation (Buck trying to close the gates that the henchman has opened to Kane’s oncoming armada) than for any particular flair in the staging.
Most of the action sequences consist of protracted chases and pursuits (both on foot and in rocketships), with occasional quick combats thrown in. Many of these lengthy chases are very exciting–particularly the long incursion into Kane’s city that occupies most of Chapters Three and Four, a great combination of action and suspense. Buddy’s later stealthy visit into Kane’s fortress to rescue Buck from the robot room, and the following escape, is also good, as are Buck’s skillful and repeated elusions of the rebellious Zuggs in Chapter Eight and the bullet car getaway in Chapter Six.
The cliffhanger endings are generally well-staged, with proper build-ups, but too many of them involve spaceship crashes that our heroes rather implausibly live through. The impressive collapsing forum at the end of Chapter Eleven and the bullet car crash at the end of Chapter Six provide nice variety amid the spaceship wrecks, but (alas) are also resolved by mere survival. Still, this is preferable to the blatantly cheating resolution of what is otherwise one the best chapter endings–Killer Kane’s pursuit of Buddy in a darkened council chamber and his apparently lethal zapping of the young hero. At least the resolution features a good stunt bit by Dave Sharpe.
The leading performances in Buck Rogers are all excellent (although most other critics would make a single exception; see below). Buster Crabbe, as always, makes a perfect serial hero–both genially cheerful and grimly serious, unassumingly polite and aggressively tough. As in the Flash Gordon trilogy, his down-to-earth attitude also helps to make the wild sci-fi happenings seem perfectly normal.
Jackie Moran (oddly “reduced” to serial acting only a year after playing Huck Finn in David O. Selznick’s big-budget classic Adventures of Tom Sawyer) does a fine job as Buddy Wade, handling his character’s frequent “golly, gee-whiz” lines in a low-key fashion that keeps Buddy from coming off as too naïve; his chipper but calm demeanor complements Crabbe’s well, and he has no problems carrying an entire chapter and part of another on his own.
Constance Moore, despite being saddled with perhaps the most unflattering costume ever worn by a serial leading lady (basically coveralls and a bathing cap), manages to come off as charming. Her Wilma Deering is self-possessed and capable-seeming but never too coldly efficient; she remains warmly likable even when piloting spaceships or explaining technology to Crabbe.
Henry Brandon is very good as Killer Kane’s chief henchman Captain Laska–suave and sly when acting as Kane’s ambassador to Saturn, haughtily arrogant when threatening people, and nervously jittery in the presence of his overbearing leader. Hard-bitten tough guys Wheeler Oakman and Reed Howes, along with the slicker Carleton Young , form Brandon’s backup squad.
As Killer Kane himself, perennial henchman actor Anthony Warde has been almost universally panned by critics as “miscast.” I have to dissent strongly, however; Warde does a fine job in the part and plays Kane with a memorable combination of viciousness and uncontrollable anger. The character is not a diabolical schemer like Ming, but rather a super-gangster who’s blasted and bullied his way to the top–and Warde’s bad-tempered, aggressive, and thuggish screen personality fits the part perfectly. He veers between intimidating ranting and harshly sinister sarcasm–as when he describes himself as a “kindly ruler” just after wrathfully sending a formerly trusted councilor to the robot room–but is quite menacing in both aspects.
Philson Ahn, brother of frequent serial and feature actor Phillip Ahn, does a good job as Prince Tallen of Saturn; he possesses his sibling’s deep and distinctive voice, which serves him well as a planetary dignitary. His manner also has a slightly tougher edge to it than his refined brother’s, which helps to keep the viewer in uncertainty in the earlier chapters as to whether Tallen will turn out to be friend or foe. Guy Usher plays Aldar, the head of Saturn’s ”Council of the Wise,” and does his best to seem suitably imposing and dignified, despite the almost comical way in which the “Wise” continually change their opinions–backing Kane, opposing him, giving into his demands, defying him, etc. Cyril Delevanti is enjoyable as a grumpy subordinate member of the Council.*
C. Montague Shaw has limited screen time, but is very good as Dr. Huer, balancing statesmanlike dignity with shrewdness and a touch of enjoyable scientific eccentricity (the last is particularly noticeable during his demonstration of his invisibility gas in Chapter Five). Energetic Jack Mulhall is typically affable and enthusiastic as Captain Rankin of the Hidden City, while Kenne Duncan has a rare good guy role as Mulhall’s fellow-officer Lieutenant Lacy. Perennial screen “underworld rat” John Harmon also plays against type as a Hidden City soldier, as does Stanley Price as a Hidden City pilot rescued from existence as a human robot. The dignified but stolid William Gould is good enough as Air Marshal Kragg, but I would have preferred a more dynamic actor in the role–Kragg is, after all, the top military leader of Kane’s enemies. Mulhall could have handled it well, as could Wade Boteler–who does an excellent job as the grim and concerned Professor Morgan in the first chapter, intensely instructing Buddy and Buck in the use of the Nirvano gas.
Lane Chandler also appears in the first chapter, as a military officer who demonstrates the Nirvano gas to a reporter played by another old pro, Kenneth Harlan. An unusually subdued Theodore Lorch is one of Kane’s councilors, while Karl Hackett has a good part as another councilor who gets into an argument with Kane that leads to Hackett’s being converted into a human robot (his terrified pleas as he’s dragged out of the council chamber are quite chilling). Al Bridge has some memorably sinister lines (“when this helmet is in place, you’ll never think or speak again”) in his periodic scenes as the slave-master of Kane’s human robots.
Unusually for Universal, several bit roles are filled by stuntmen; Eddie Parker and Tom Steele pop in as various soldiers and officers, but aren’t as noticeable as Dave Sharpe, who’s given multiple speaking roles as a Kane soldier, a Hidden City soldier, a Saturnian officer, and a Saturnian soldier. His ubiquity can get a little distracting at times, particularly since some of his appearances follow right on the previous one’s heels; he also seems to have a bit of trouble with the formal-sounding Saturnian dialogue, coming off as much more stiff and affected than in his co-starring turn in Daredevils of the Red Circle.
The serial’s music score, like most other Universals of the period, is an eclectic but usually effective array of stock music, some of it cues from the Flash Gordon serials but the majority of it culled from Universal’s horror features, including (most notably) Franz Waxman’s score for Bride of Frankenstein, which furnishes some memorable opening-titles music.
All in all, though Buck Rogers has its share of flaws, it also has more than enough virtues (the acting, the fast pace, the interesting sci-fi trappings) to make it a good chapterplay. Despite its similar themes, it shouldn’t be pitted against the Flash Gordon trilogy–a match it’s bound to lose–but rather judged against the field of competition in general. When judged in this fashion, it’s just as entertaining–and often more entertaining–than many serials with less shabby reputations.
*One has to wonder, though, why some Saturnians are Orientals like Ahn and others Occidentals like Usher and Delevanti; my own theory is that men from various countries emigrated from Earth to Saturn sometime before the bulk of the serial took place; this would explain the racial assortment and also explain why the Hidden City chooses Saturn in particular as an ally (as usual, I’m probably putting too much thought into this).
This abridgement of Universal's 12-episode serial Buck Rogers stars Buster Crabbe as Dick Calkins' famed comic-strip space adventurer. Buck and Buddy (Jackie Moran) and are recruited to battle against modernistic gangster Killer Kane (Anthony Warde), by Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) and Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw). The duo travels to Saturn to get help in their mission, and after Buck and Buddy quell the internal struggles of the Saturnians, Buck triumphs over Killer Kane and his cosmic thugs.
Planet Outlaws Feature link: youtu.be/UD3xKy42KUY
Link to all 12 Serial Episodes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTtc-u3zFGk&feature=share&...
Starring Buster Crabbe, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran, Jack Mulhall, Anthony Warde, C. Montague Shaw, Guy Usher, William Gould, Philson Ahn. Directed by Ford Beebe, Saul A. Goodkind.
Buck Rogers and Buddy Wade are in the middle of a trans-polar dirigible flight when they are caught in a blizzard and crash. Buddy then releases a special gas to keep them in suspended animation until a rescue party can arrive. However, an avalanche covers the craft and the two are in suspended animation for 500 years. When they are found, they awake to find out that the world has been taken over by the outlaw army of Killer Kane. Along with Lieutenant Wilma Deering, Buck and Buddy join in the fight to overthrow Kane and with the help of Prince Tallen of Saturn and his forces, they eventually do and Earth is free of Kane's grip.
This is actually a pretty enjoyable serial, but it seems doomed to be forever overshadowed by the much superior Flash Gordon trilogy. Universal brought BUCK ROGERS out in 1939, in between their own chapterplays FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS and FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE; it also starred Buster Crabbe (but with his natural dark hair instead of Flash's golden curls) and although it is filled with space ships and weird gadgets, BUCK ROGERS lacks most of the elements that gave the Flash serials their intense emotional draw.
For one thing, there is none of the strong sexual charge that the Flash series had. Instead of nubile Dale Arden and sultry Princess Aura both competing for the hero's attention while the villain openly lusted for the heroine, Buck's epic featured Constance Moore as Col. Wilma Deering. Now, Moore is perfectly fine in her role, but she is after all a soldier in the resistance army and not a fair damsel in distress. She has a nice moment when she wrests a ray gun away from a guard and blasts her way out of her cell, but she and Buck seem to be merely chums on the same side.
Also, although BUCK ROGERS has plenty of futuristic gadgets (rayguns and buzzing spaceships which shoot sparks from their backs, teleportation tubes and invisibility rays), there are no grotesque monsters or nonhuman alien races on view. Prisoners have remarkably goofy metal helmets strapped on which turn them into docile zombies, and there are these homely goons called Zuggs moping around, but that's hardly as fascinating as Lion Men and Clay People and horned apes (that Orangapoid critter).
What's ironic about all this is that the comic strip BUCK ROGERS by Philip Nolan and Richard Calkins started in 1929, was immensely popular for many years and it success inspired the creation of Flash. Yet the Flash strip benefitted from the genius of Alex Raymond, one of the all-time great cartoon artists, and it produced stunning visual images (from the samples of Buck's strip I've seen, it was imaginative enough but pretty crude and drab). This contrast carried over to the serials.
Buck Rogers and his sidekick Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran) are pilots who crash in the Arctic in1938 and survive for 500 years because the 'Nirvano' gas they were carrying put them in a state of suspended animation. They both seem to adapt to waking up in the year 2424 pretty well, where I would think most people would be so traumatized it would take a while to adjust. In this dystopic future, the Earth is ruled by a mega-gangster called Killer Kane (another setback; Anthony Warde would be okay as a crimelord but he just doesn't have the imposing presence to convince me this guy can dominate an entire planet).
Luckily, Buck and Buddy have been found by the small resistance movement hopelessly trying to overthrow Kane from their hidden city. Here is Dr Huer (C. Montague Shaw, who I just saw in the UNDERSEA KINGDOM doing the same gig with his wild inventions) and Wilma Deering leading the good fight. For some reason I missed, everyone immediately puts all their trust in Buck and he pretty much takes over. (Maybe he's just one of those charismatic alpha males or something.) Most of the serial involves desperate trips back and forth to Saturn to enlist the aid of the isolationist Saturnians, and this means running the blockade of Kane's ships. The usual fistfights and explosions and captures and escapes normal for this sort of situation ensue. It's a lot of fun if you take it on its own terms, with a strong linear plot and likeable heroes, but it really never kicks into high gear and seems a bit drab.
It's interesting that some (but not all) of the Saturnians are played by Asian actors. Prince Tallen, who gets caught up in most of the fun, was portrayed by a very young Philson Ahn, and I thought for years this was the same guy who in 1972 impressed us as the head of the Shaolin Temple in TV's KUNG FU (he taught all the styles, really amazing if you think about it). Turns out that was Phiip Ahn, Philson's brother.
Dir: Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind - 12 Chapters
BUCK ROGERS (1939): Director Ford Beebe, who also worked on Flash Gordon (1938), came straight from The Phantom Creeps (1939) and then went back to finish Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (1940). Buck Rogers stars Buster Crabbe or, as his family knew him, Lawrence. Now, Lawrence ‘Larry’ ‘Buster’ Crabbe had previously starred in two Flash Gordon serials, a couple of Tarzan movies and a long string of westerns, so it was only natural for Universal to decide he was perfect as the heroic Buck Rogers, aka that blonde guy who saves the universe but isn’t Flash Gordon. Actually, Buster Crabbe wasn’t the first actor to play Buck Rogers in-the-flesh, so to speak.
That honour goes to an unknown man who played Buck in a Virginia department store, instead of their regular Santa Claus. Santa was off conquering Martians at the time, I think it was an exchange program of sorts. It strikes me that Buck Rogers is not unlike a male fantasy come to life. Just think of it – Buck gets to take a nice five-hundred-year-long sleep-in. With my busy schedule, I’m ecstatic if I can get twenty minutes nap on the weekend. Then, when he wakes up, Buck is the smartest, most dynamic guy around. In reality he’d be treated like something that’s escaped from the zoo. And finally, everyone needs Buck to go on exciting missions, fight the bad guys, test exotic equipment and crash rocket ships – out of the half-dozen flights Buck makes, he only lands successfully once. It’s easy to see the bullet cars used in the movie are the same ones from Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (1938), and even the script is rather suspect.
Planet Outlaws
This film is actually a compilation of the Buck Rogers serials that ran originally in 1939. The cliffhanger endings and recap beginnings have been edited out to make it flow better -- with partial success. Some new footage was shot for the introduction and summary. At the opening, there are some newspaper headlines about jets chasing flying discs, and the obligatory checkered V2 launch, etc. to add a modern segue. After that, it's pure 1939.
Sci-fi movie technology had come a long way in the 14 years since Buck's debut. Audiences had grown accustomed to sleek and pointy rockets, flying saucers, strange aliens, etc. The Buck Rogers style world-of-the-future must have looked oddly quaint. (if not laughable) Just why Universal Pictures thought re-releasing Buck Rogers was a good idea is a bit of a mystery. Kids who were 8 or so back in 1939 would be young adults in '53. Perhaps Universal was banking on those young adults would buy tickets for a trip down memory lane.
Plot Synopsis
After a bit of modern ('53) footage about the wonders of modern progress and "flying disks," the old serial begins. Rogers and Buddy crashed in the arctic while on a transpolar flight. They were in suspended animation due to the cold and a vague gas. A patrol finds them in the year 2500 and revives them. In the world of 2500, a despot named Killer Kane is trying to take over the world. The forces of good are holed up in the "hidden city." Buck arranges a decoy maneuver to elude Kane's patrol ships. They fly to the planet Saturn in hopes of finding help. On Saturn, the Council sees Rogers and party as the rebels, and Kane as the rule of law. Rogers et al, escape Saturn, return to earth and seek to disrupt Kane's bamboozling of Prince Tallen, the Saturnian representative. Rogers sneaks into Kane's city, interrupts the treaty signing and convinces Tallen of Kane's evil by revealing Kane's "robot battalion" (slaves wearing mind-control helmets). Rogers and Tallen get to Saturn and the treaty is signed. Rogers escapes Kane's patrols via the Dissolvo Ray which rendered them invisible. Rogers and the war council plan for war. Rogers enlists the Saturnians to help. Meanwhile, Rogers sneaks into Kane's city and de-zombies Minister Krenco to lead an uprising of freed robot-slave-prisoners. Rogers storms Kane's palace and puts one of the robo-slave helmets on Kane. The End
The industrial vision of the future is delightful to watch. The heavily mechanical look of everything is so radically different from the sleek rockets and glowing acrylic audiences were growing accustomed to. The space ships look like they were built at locomotive factories or steamship yards. They spew roman-candle sparks and smoke and buzz as they fly. There are no computers, no radar or electronics. It's a fascinating snapshot of what pre-electronic-age people thought the future would be like.
When originally released in 1939, the Killer Kane character was a thinly disguised allusion to Hitler. In 1953, Kane was intended to represent a communist despot. It wasn't as tidy a fit. The narrator sums it up voicing a hope that scientists will develop the means for men to stand up to today's dictators and make the world safe for democracy. In the early 50s, there's little question of who they meant.
Simple Colors -- One endearing trait of Buck Rogers is the simplicity of the characterizations. The good guys do nothing but good. The bad guys are pure bad. The good guys are crack pilots and sharp shooters and tough as nails. The bad guys do nothing but bad, have trouble hitting a flying barn and are easily knocked out with one punch.
Industrial Baroque -- Somewhat like the baroque era's compulsion to decorate every square inch with swirls and filigree, Industrial Baroque sought to fill every space with heavy-duty hardware. The sets, and especially the rocket interiors are like flying boiler rooms. Valves, pipes, levers, dials, wheels, large flashing light bulbs. To look more "high tech" in the 30s meant cramming in more industrial hardware. Buck Rogers' ships show more affinity for Captain Nemo "steampunk" than the proto-space-age of the 50s.
Family Resemblance -- There is a noticeable similarity in the sets and costumes of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers. Even serials of the early 50s, like Captain Video and the various Rocketman serials, look more like Flash and Buck than George Pal. The industrial baroque look and costuming are distinctive, making them almost a sub-genre of their own. In that regard, Buck has a timelessness.
Another take on the story and additional background info.
A round-the-world dirigible flight commanded by US Air Force officer Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) encounters dangerously stormy weather above the Himalayas; said weather, along with disastrous panic on the part of Rogers’ crewmen, causes the aircraft to crash. The cowardly crewmen ditch the ship and meet quick ends, but Rogers and young Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran), son of the aircraft’s designer, survive the crash. The pair use a cylinder of “Nirvano” gas to place themselves into suspended animation until a rescue party can reach them, but an avalanche buries the ship and all searches prove fruitless; the dirigible and its two dormant inhabitants remain beneath rocks and snow for five hundred years.
Finally, in the year 2440, a spaceship unearths the wreck, and its pilots restore Buck and Buddy to consciousness. The holdovers from the 20th century soon learn that their rescuers are soldiers from the “Hidden City,” a pocket of resistance to the super-criminal who is ruling the 24th-century Earth–one “Killer” Kane (Anthony Warde). Rogers immediately pledges his support to Air Marshal Kragg (William Gould) and Scientist-General Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw), the leaders of the Hidden City exiles, and is soon en route to Saturn, hoping to convince that planet’s rulers to aid the Hidden City in freeing the Earth from Kane’s tyranny. To cement the Saturian alliance, Buck must battle Kane’s legions at every step of the way, with able assistance from Buddy and from Dr. Huer’s trusted aide Lieutenant Wilma Deering (Constance Moore).
Ever since its original release, Buck Rogers has stood in the shadow of Universal’s Flash Gordon serials; the studio encouraged such association by casting Flash Gordon star Buster Crabbe as a different sci-fi hero, obviously hoping that the chapterplay would capitalize on the goodwill generated by Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars. The serial did succeed in reminding audiences of the Flash outings–but it reminded them of how much they had liked those serials and forced inevitable comparisons that were not in Rogers’ favor. Universal’s plans for a second Buck Rogers serial were quickly scrapped when the first outing failed to please matinee audiences; the intended Buck sequel was then replaced on the studio’s production schedule by–what else?–a third Flash Gordon chapterplay. Even today, Buck is typically dismissed by fans as a pale echo of the great Gordon serials.
It’s easy to see why Buck Rogers came as a disappointment to audiences expecting an outing in the Flash Gordon tradition. Its production design, while futuristic, is less quirky and more uniform than that of the Gordons; there are no monsters and no weird semi-human races besides the rather uninteresting Zuggs; there are also no supporting characters as developed or as interesting as Dr. Zarkov, Ming, King Vultan, the Clay King, Princess Aura, Prince Barin, and other major figures in the Flash Gordon chapterplays. And yet, taken on its own terms, Buck Rogers is far from a failure; it does not approach the Flash Gordon trilogy in quality, but then few serials do.
Buck Rogers’ script, by former Mascot writers Norman Hall and Ray Trampe, is fast-moving and manages to avoid repetition for most of its length. The trip to Saturn, the attempts to convince Saturnian leader Prince Tallen (Philson Ahn) of the justice of the Hidden City’s cause, the subsequent rescue of Tallen from Kane’s city, the second journey to Saturn to cement the alliance, and the attempts of Kane’s henchman Laska (Henry Brandon) to sabotage it–all these incidents keep the narrative flowing very nicely for the serial’s first eight chapters. As in many of Trampe and Hall’s Mascot scripts, however, the writers seem to run out of plot before the serial’s end. While Chapters Nine and Ten remain interesting (with Buck being converted into a hypnotized robot, Buddy’s rescue of the hero, and an infiltration of the Hidden City by one of Kane’s men), the last two chapters have a definite wheel-spinning feel to them, throwing in a redundant third trip to Saturn and an unneeded flashback sequence.
The last-chapter climax is also something of a disappointment, with Kane being overthrown quickly and undramatically instead of being definitively crushed. Here, Trampe and Hall seem to have been leaving room for the sequel that never came and trying to avoid duplicating the dramatic but very final destruction of MIng which closed the first Flash Gordon serial (and which needed to be explained away in the second). The other weak spot of the scripting is Buck and Buddy’s rather calm reaction when they realize that their old world (and everyone in it) is dead–and their extraordinarily quick adjustment to their new one. One wouldn’t have wanted the writers to dwell on our heroes’ plight (which would be absolutely crushing in real life), but I do wish Trampe or Hall could have given Buck and Buddy a few emotional lines about their displacement before getting on to the main action; Hall in his scripts for other serials (Hawk of the Wilderness, Adventures of Red Ryder), showed himself capable of far more dramatic moments.
As already mentioned, the serial’s visuals are less varied than those of the Flash Gordon serials, but that’s not to say they aren’t impressive by serial standards. Pains seem to have been taken to avoid duplicating too much of Gordon’s “look;” the spaceship miniatures are completely different than the ships in the Gordon trilogy, while Kane’s stronghold–probably the best miniature in the serial–is not the quasi-Gothic palace of Ming but rather an ominous, futuristic-looking version of New York City, complete with towering skyscrapers. The Hidden City’s great rock gates are also nifty, and the massive Saturnian Forum (a life-size set, not a miniature) is very visually impressive. The barren Red Rock Canyon area works well as the Saturnian landscape, but I think it was a mistake to also use the Canyon as the area between the Hidden City and Kane’s capital; Saturn and Earth shouldn’t look so similar.
The only major prop or set reused from the Gordon serials are the “bullet cars” from Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars; they’re just as fun to watch in action here as in the earlier serial. Other incidental props and sets–Kane’s robot room, his mind-control helmets, the various televiewing devices, the anti-gravity belts, Dr. Huer’s invisibility ray, and the Star-Trek-like molecular transportation chamber–add further colorful touches to the serial., and are respectably represented by Universal’s always above-average array of sets and props. The Zuggs, the “primitive race” ruled by the Saturnians, are somewhat disappointing, however; while suitably grotesque-looking, they’re nowhere near as menacing or memorable–in appearance or demeanor–as their obvious inspiration, the Clay People in Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars.
The serial’s action scenes are brisk and energetic, suffering not at all from a general lack of fistfights–thanks to the swift-moving direction of Ford Beebe (a Mascot veteran like writers Trampe and Hall) and his co-director Saul Goodkind (usually an editor). The few hand-to-hand tussles–most of them on the rocky hills of Saturn–are executed routinely but skillfully by Dave Sharpe, Tom Steele, Eddie Parker, and other stuntmen; the best of the bunch is the fight between Buck and a Kane man in the control room of the Hidden City, although this is more exciting for the suspenseful situation (Buck trying to close the gates that the henchman has opened to Kane’s oncoming armada) than for any particular flair in the staging.
Most of the action sequences consist of protracted chases and pursuits (both on foot and in rocketships), with occasional quick combats thrown in. Many of these lengthy chases are very exciting–particularly the long incursion into Kane’s city that occupies most of Chapters Three and Four, a great combination of action and suspense. Buddy’s later stealthy visit into Kane’s fortress to rescue Buck from the robot room, and the following escape, is also good, as are Buck’s skillful and repeated elusions of the rebellious Zuggs in Chapter Eight and the bullet car getaway in Chapter Six.
The cliffhanger endings are generally well-staged, with proper build-ups, but too many of them involve spaceship crashes that our heroes rather implausibly live through. The impressive collapsing forum at the end of Chapter Eleven and the bullet car crash at the end of Chapter Six provide nice variety amid the spaceship wrecks, but (alas) are also resolved by mere survival. Still, this is preferable to the blatantly cheating resolution of what is otherwise one the best chapter endings–Killer Kane’s pursuit of Buddy in a darkened council chamber and his apparently lethal zapping of the young hero. At least the resolution features a good stunt bit by Dave Sharpe.
The leading performances in Buck Rogers are all excellent (although most other critics would make a single exception; see below). Buster Crabbe, as always, makes a perfect serial hero–both genially cheerful and grimly serious, unassumingly polite and aggressively tough. As in the Flash Gordon trilogy, his down-to-earth attitude also helps to make the wild sci-fi happenings seem perfectly normal.
Jackie Moran (oddly “reduced” to serial acting only a year after playing Huck Finn in David O. Selznick’s big-budget classic Adventures of Tom Sawyer) does a fine job as Buddy Wade, handling his character’s frequent “golly, gee-whiz” lines in a low-key fashion that keeps Buddy from coming off as too naïve; his chipper but calm demeanor complements Crabbe’s well, and he has no problems carrying an entire chapter and part of another on his own.
Constance Moore, despite being saddled with perhaps the most unflattering costume ever worn by a serial leading lady (basically coveralls and a bathing cap), manages to come off as charming. Her Wilma Deering is self-possessed and capable-seeming but never too coldly efficient; she remains warmly likable even when piloting spaceships or explaining technology to Crabbe.
Henry Brandon is very good as Killer Kane’s chief henchman Captain Laska–suave and sly when acting as Kane’s ambassador to Saturn, haughtily arrogant when threatening people, and nervously jittery in the presence of his overbearing leader. Hard-bitten tough guys Wheeler Oakman and Reed Howes, along with the slicker Carleton Young , form Brandon’s backup squad.
As Killer Kane himself, perennial henchman actor Anthony Warde has been almost universally panned by critics as “miscast.” I have to dissent strongly, however; Warde does a fine job in the part and plays Kane with a memorable combination of viciousness and uncontrollable anger. The character is not a diabolical schemer like Ming, but rather a super-gangster who’s blasted and bullied his way to the top–and Warde’s bad-tempered, aggressive, and thuggish screen personality fits the part perfectly. He veers between intimidating ranting and harshly sinister sarcasm–as when he describes himself as a “kindly ruler” just after wrathfully sending a formerly trusted councilor to the robot room–but is quite menacing in both aspects.
Philson Ahn, brother of frequent serial and feature actor Phillip Ahn, does a good job as Prince Tallen of Saturn; he possesses his sibling’s deep and distinctive voice, which serves him well as a planetary dignitary. His manner also has a slightly tougher edge to it than his refined brother’s, which helps to keep the viewer in uncertainty in the earlier chapters as to whether Tallen will turn out to be friend or foe. Guy Usher plays Aldar, the head of Saturn’s ”Council of the Wise,” and does his best to seem suitably imposing and dignified, despite the almost comical way in which the “Wise” continually change their opinions–backing Kane, opposing him, giving into his demands, defying him, etc. Cyril Delevanti is enjoyable as a grumpy subordinate member of the Council.*
C. Montague Shaw has limited screen time, but is very good as Dr. Huer, balancing statesmanlike dignity with shrewdness and a touch of enjoyable scientific eccentricity (the last is particularly noticeable during his demonstration of his invisibility gas in Chapter Five). Energetic Jack Mulhall is typically affable and enthusiastic as Captain Rankin of the Hidden City, while Kenne Duncan has a rare good guy role as Mulhall’s fellow-officer Lieutenant Lacy. Perennial screen “underworld rat” John Harmon also plays against type as a Hidden City soldier, as does Stanley Price as a Hidden City pilot rescued from existence as a human robot. The dignified but stolid William Gould is good enough as Air Marshal Kragg, but I would have preferred a more dynamic actor in the role–Kragg is, after all, the top military leader of Kane’s enemies. Mulhall could have handled it well, as could Wade Boteler–who does an excellent job as the grim and concerned Professor Morgan in the first chapter, intensely instructing Buddy and Buck in the use of the Nirvano gas.
Lane Chandler also appears in the first chapter, as a military officer who demonstrates the Nirvano gas to a reporter played by another old pro, Kenneth Harlan. An unusually subdued Theodore Lorch is one of Kane’s councilors, while Karl Hackett has a good part as another councilor who gets into an argument with Kane that leads to Hackett’s being converted into a human robot (his terrified pleas as he’s dragged out of the council chamber are quite chilling). Al Bridge has some memorably sinister lines (“when this helmet is in place, you’ll never think or speak again”) in his periodic scenes as the slave-master of Kane’s human robots.
Unusually for Universal, several bit roles are filled by stuntmen; Eddie Parker and Tom Steele pop in as various soldiers and officers, but aren’t as noticeable as Dave Sharpe, who’s given multiple speaking roles as a Kane soldier, a Hidden City soldier, a Saturnian officer, and a Saturnian soldier. His ubiquity can get a little distracting at times, particularly since some of his appearances follow right on the previous one’s heels; he also seems to have a bit of trouble with the formal-sounding Saturnian dialogue, coming off as much more stiff and affected than in his co-starring turn in Daredevils of the Red Circle.
The serial’s music score, like most other Universals of the period, is an eclectic but usually effective array of stock music, some of it cues from the Flash Gordon serials but the majority of it culled from Universal’s horror features, including (most notably) Franz Waxman’s score for Bride of Frankenstein, which furnishes some memorable opening-titles music.
All in all, though Buck Rogers has its share of flaws, it also has more than enough virtues (the acting, the fast pace, the interesting sci-fi trappings) to make it a good chapterplay. Despite its similar themes, it shouldn’t be pitted against the Flash Gordon trilogy–a match it’s bound to lose–but rather judged against the field of competition in general. When judged in this fashion, it’s just as entertaining–and often more entertaining–than many serials with less shabby reputations.
*One has to wonder, though, why some Saturnians are Orientals like Ahn and others Occidentals like Usher and Delevanti; my own theory is that men from various countries emigrated from Earth to Saturn sometime before the bulk of the serial took place; this would explain the racial assortment and also explain why the Hidden City chooses Saturn in particular as an ally (as usual, I’m probably putting too much thought into this).
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard published by L. Jonas & Co. Inc., Woolworth Building, New York.
The card was printed in England.
The Term 'Skyscraper'
Incidentally, the word 'skyscraper' originally didn't apply to buildings at all - it was originally a nautical term referring to the small triangular sail at the top of the tallest mast of a sailing ship.
The term was first applied to buildings in the late 19th. century as a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in New York City and Chicago.
The Woolworth Building
The Woolworth Building is a residential building and early skyscraper at 233 Broadway in the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in NYC.
Designed by Cass Gilbert, it was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1930, with a height of 792 feet (241 m). More than a century after its construction, it remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the U.S..
The Woolworth Building consists of a 30-story base topped by a 30-story tower. Its façade is mostly decorated with architectural terracotta, though the lower portions are limestone, and it features thousands of windows.
The ornate lobby contains various sculptures, mosaics, and architectural touches. The structure was designed with several amenities and attractions, including a now-closed observatory on the 57th. floor and a private swimming pool in the basement.
F. W. Woolworth, the founder of a brand of popular five-and-ten-cent stores, conceived the skyscraper as a headquarters for his company. Woolworth planned the skyscraper jointly with the Irving National Exchange Bank, which also agreed to use the structure as its headquarters.
The Woolworth Building had originally been planned as a 12- to 16-story commercial building, but it underwent several revisions during its planning process. Construction started in 1910, although the building's final height was not decided upon until January 1911. The building officially opened on the 24th. April 1913.
The Woolworth Building has undergone several changes throughout its history. The façade was cleaned in 1932, and the building received an extensive renovation between 1977 and 1981.
The Irving National Exchange Bank moved its headquarters to 1 Wall Street in 1931, but the Woolworth Company (later Venator Group) continued to own the Woolworth Building for most of the 20th. century.
The structure was sold to the Witkoff Group in 1998. The top 30 floors were sold to a developer in 2012 and converted into residences.
Office and commercial tenants use the rest of the building.
-- Architecture of the Woolworth Building
Cass Gilbert designed the Woolworth Building in the neo-Gothic style. The building resembles European Gothic cathedrals; Reverend S. Parkes Cadman dubbed it "The Cathedral of Commerce" in a booklet published in 1916.
F. W. Woolworth, who had devised the idea for the Woolworth Building, had proposed using the Victoria Tower as a model for the building; he reportedly also admired the design of Palace of Westminster.
Gilbert, by contrast, disliked the comparison to religious imagery. The architect ultimately used 15th.- and 16th.-century Gothic ornament on the Woolworth Building, along with a complementary color scheme.
The Woolworth Building was designed to be 420 feet (130 m) high, but was eventually raised to 792 feet (241 m).
The Woolworth Building was 60 stories tall when completed in 1913, though this consisted of 53 usable floors topped by several mechanical floors.
The building's ceiling heights, ranging from 11 to 20 feet (3.4 to 6.1 m), make it the equivalent of an 80-story building. It remained the tallest building in the world until the construction of 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building in 1930, both in New York City.
The building is assigned its own ZIP Code; it was one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that had their own ZIP Codes as of 2019.
-- The Form of the Woolworth Building
The building's tower, flush with the main frontage on Broadway, joins an office block base with a narrow interior court for light. The base occupies the entire lot between Park Place to the north, Broadway to the east, and Barclay Street to the south.
The site measures 155 feet (47 m) wide on Broadway and 200 feet (61 m) wide on both Park Place and Barclay Street. The base contains two "wings" extending westward, one each on the Park Place and Barclay Street frontages, which form a rough U-shape when combined with the Broadway frontage.
This ensured that all offices had outside views. The U-shaped base is approximately 30 stories tall. All four elevations of the base are decorated, since the building has frontage on all sides.
The tower rises an additional 30 stories above the eastern side of the base, abutting Broadway. Above the 30th. floor are setbacks on the north and south elevations. There are additional setbacks along the north, south, and west elevations on the 45th. and 50th. floors.
The 30th. through 45th. floors measure 84 by 86 feet (26 by 26 m); the 46th. through 50th. floors, 69 by 71 feet (21 by 22 m); and the 51st. through 53rd. floors, 69 by 61 feet (21 by 19 m).
The tower has a square plan below the 50th.-story setback and an octagonal plan above. Though the structure is physically 60 stories tall, the 53rd. floor is the top floor that can be occupied. Above the 53rd. floor, the tower tapers into a pyramidal roof.
-- The Façade of the Woolworth Building
The lowest four stories are clad in limestone. Above that, the exterior of the Woolworth Building was cast in limestone-colored, glazed architectural terracotta panels.
F. W. Woolworth initially wanted to clad the skyscraper in granite, while Gilbert wanted to use limestone. The decision to use terracotta for the façade was based on both aesthetic and functional concerns.
Terracotta was not only fireproof but also, in Gilbert's mind, a purely ornamental addition clarifying the Woolworth Building's steel construction. Each panel was of a slightly different color, creating a polychrome effect.
The façade appeared to have a uniform tone, but the upper floors were actually darker and more dense. Behind the terracotta panels were brick walls; the terracotta pieces are attached to the brick walls by metal rods and hangers.
The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company provided the original terracotta cladding. The panels were manufactured in shades of blue, green, sienna, and rose. The terracotta panels were partially vitrified, allowing them to bear large loads.
Gilbert also asked that John Donnelly and Eliseo V. Ricci create full-size designs based on Atlantic Terra Cotta's models.
In 1932, Atlantic Terra Cotta carried out a comprehensive cleaning campaign of the Woolworth's façade in order to remove blackening caused by the city's soot and pollution.
The Ehrenkrantz Group restored the building's façade between 1977 and 1981. During the renovation, much of the terracotta was replaced with concrete and Gothic ornament was removed.
The building has several thousand windows: the exact number is disputed, but various sources state that the Woolworth Building has 2,843, 4,400, or 5,000 windows.
Windows were included for lighting and comfort; because the Woolworth Building was built before air conditioning became common, every office is within 10 feet (3.0 m) of a window.
Some of the Woolworth Building's windows are set within arch-shaped openings. Most of the building's spandrels, or triangles between the top corners of the window and the top of the arch, have golden Gothic tracery against a bright blue backdrop.
On the 25th., 39th., and 40th. stories, the spandrels consist of iconography found in the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom.
Gold-on-blue tracery is also found on the 26th., 27th., and 42nd. floors.
-- The Base of the Woolworth Building
The main entrance on Broadway is a three-story Tudor arch, surrounded on either side by two bays: one narrower than the main arch, the other wider. The five bays form a triumphal arch overhung by a balcony and stone motifs of Gothic design.
The intrados of the arch contains 23 niches. The topmost niche depicts an owl; the lowest niches on both sides depict tree trunks; and the other twenty niches depict animated figures.
The spandrel above the left side of the arch depicts Mercury, classical god of commerce, while that above the right side depicts Ceres, classical goddess of agriculture.
Above all of this is an ogee arch with more niches, as well as two carvings of owls hovering above a "W" monogram. There are salamanders within niches on either side of the main entrance.
Inside the triumphal arch, there is a smaller arch with a revolving door and a Tudor window; it is flanked by standard doors and framed with decorations. There is a pelican above this smaller arch.
-- The Tower Section of the Woolworth Building
At the 45th.- and 50th.-story setbacks, there are turrets at each corner of the tower. The northeast corner turret concealed a smokestack.
There is a pyramidal roof above the 53rd. floor, as well as four ornamental tourelles at the four corners of the tower. The roof was originally gilt but is now green. The pyramidal roof, as well as the smaller roofs below, used 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) of gold leaf.
The main roof is interspersed with small dormers, which contain windows into the maintenance levels inside. The pyramidal roof is topped by another pyramid with an octagonal base and tall pointed-arch windows. In turn, the octagonal pyramid is capped by a spire.
The three layers of pyramids are about 62 feet (19 m), or five stories tall. An observation deck was located at the 55th. floor, about 730 feet (220 m) above ground level. The deck, which was octagonal in plan, measuring 65 feet (20 m) across, was accessed by a glass-walled elevator.
It was patronized by an estimated 300,000 visitors per year, but was closed as a security measure in 1941 after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Strongly articulated piers, which carry right to the pyramidal cap without intermediate cornices, give the building its upward thrust. This was influenced by Aus's belief that:
"From an engineering point of view,
no structure is beautiful where the
lines of strength are not apparent."
The copper roof is connected to the Woolworth Building's steel superstructure, which serves to ground the roof electrically. The Gothic detailing concentrated at the highly visible crown is over-scaled, and the building's silhouette could be made out from several miles away.
Gilbert's choice of the Gothic style was described as "an expression of the verticality of the tower form", and as Gilbert himself later wrote, the style was "light, graceful, delicate and flame-like".
Gilbert considered several proposals for exterior lighting, including four powerful searchlights atop nearby buildings and a constantly rotating lamp at the apex of the Woolworth Building's roof.
Ultimately, the builders decided to erect nitrogen lamps and reflectors above the 31st. floor, and have the intensity of the lighting increase with height.
-- Structural Features of the Woolworth Building
-- The Substructure
In contrast to other parts of Manhattan, the bedrock beneath the site is relatively deep, descending to between 110 and 115 feet (34 and 35 m) on average. The site also has a high water table, which is as shallow as 15 feet (4.6 m) below ground level.
Due to the geology of the area, the building is supported on 69 massive caissons that descend to the bedrock. The caissons range in depth from 100 to 120 feet (30 to 37 m).
To give the structure a sturdy foundation, the builders used metal tubes 19 feet (5.8 m) in diameter filled with concrete. These tubes were driven into the ground with a pneumatic caisson process to anchor the foundations to the bedrock.
Because the slope of the bedrock was so sharp, steps had to be carved into the rock before the caissons could be sunk into the ground. The caissons were both round and rectangular, with the rectangular caissons located mainly on the southern and western lot lines.
The caissons are irregularly distributed across the site, being more densely concentrated at the northeastern corner. This is because the building was originally planned to occupy a smaller site at the corner of Broadway and Park Place; when the site was enlarged, the caissons that had already been installed were left in place.
The two basement levels, descending 55 feet (17 m), are constructed of reinforced concrete.
-- The Superstructure
Whereas many earlier buildings had been constructed with load-bearing walls, which by necessity were extremely thick, the Woolworth Building's steel superstructure was relatively thin, which enabled Gilbert to maximize the building's interior area.
Engineers Gunvald Aus and Kort Berle designed the steel frame. Each column carries a load of 24 tons per square foot, supporting the building's overall weight of 233,000 tons.
Where the columns of the superstructure did not match up with the caissons, they were cantilevered above on plate girders between two adjoining caissons. These girders are extremely large; one such girder measures 8 feet (2.4 m) deep, 6.75 feet (2 m) wide, and 23 feet (7.0 m) long.
For the wind bracing, the entire Woolworth Building was considered as a vertical cantilever, and correspondingly large girders and columns were used in the construction.
-- Interior
Upon completion, the Woolworth Building contained seven water systems — one each for the power plant, the hot-water plant, the fire-protection system, the communal restrooms, the offices with restrooms, the basement swimming pool, and the basement restaurant.
Although the water is obtained from the New York City water supply system, much of it is filtered and reused. A dedicated water system, separate from the city's, was proposed during construction, but workers abandoned the plan after unsuccessfully digging 1,500 feet (460 m) into Manhattan's bedrock.
The Woolworth Building was the first structure to have its own power plant, with four Corliss steam engine generators totaling a capacity of 1,500 kilowatt-hours; the plant could support 50,000 people.
The building also had a dedicated heating plant with six boilers producing 2,500 horsepower. The boilers were fed from subterranean coal bunkers capable of holding over 2,000 tons of anthracite coal.
-- Lobby
The ornate, cruciform lobby, known as the "arcade", was characterized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as:
"One of the most spectacular of
the early 20th. century in New
York City".
It consists of two perpendicular, double-height passageways with barrel-vaulted ceilings. Where the passageways intersect, there is a domed ceiling. The dome contains pendentives that may have been patterned after those of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.
Veined marble from the island of Skyros in Greece covers the lobby. Patterned glass mosaics that contain blue, green, and gold tiling with red accents decorate the ceilings.
There are other Gothic-style decorations in the lobby, including on the cornice and the bronze fittings. Twelve plaster brackets, which carry grotesques depicting major figures in the building's construction, are placed where the arcade and the mezzanine intersect.
These ornaments include Gilbert with a model of the building, Aus taking a girder's measurements, and Woolworth holding nickels and dimes. Two ceiling murals by C. Paul Jennewein, titled Labor and Commerce, are located above the mezzanine where it crosses the south and north wings, respectively.
The staircase hall is a two-story room located to the west of the arcade. It consists of the ground level, which contains former storefronts, as well as a mezzanine level above it. The ground floor originally contained 18 storefronts.
A 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) marble staircase leads westward from the arcade to a mezzanine, where the entrance to the Irving National Exchange Bank office was formerly located. The mezzanine contains a stained-glass skylight surrounded by the names of several nations. The skylight contains the dates 1879 and 1913, which respectively signify the years of the Woolworth Company's founding and the building's opening.
The skylight is also surrounded by sculpted grotesques, which depict merchandising activities in the five-and-dime industry.
There is a smaller space west of the staircase hall with a one-story-high ceiling. This room contains a coffered ceiling with a blue-green background. The crossbeams contain Roman portrait heads, while the cornice contains generic sculpted grotesques.
-- Basement
The basement of the Woolworth Building contains an unused bank vault, restaurant, and barbershop. The bank vault was initially intended to be used for safe-deposit boxes, though it was used by the Irving National Exchange Bank in practice.
In 1931, Irving moved some $3 billion of deposits to a vault in its new headquarters at 1 Wall Street, and the Woolworth Building's vault was converted into a storage area for maintenance workers.
There is also a basement storage room, known as the "bone yard", which contains replacement terracotta decorations for the facade.
The basement also contains closed entrances to two New York City Subway stations. There was an entrance to the Park Place station directly adjacent to the building's north elevation, served by the 2 and 3 trains. This entrance was closed after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Another entrance led to the City Hall station one block north, now served by the R and W trains, but this was closed in 1982 because of concerns over crime.
A private pool, originally intended for F. W. Woolworth, exists in the basement. Proposed as early as 1910, the pool measured 15 by 55 feet (4.6 by 16.8 m) and had a marble perimeter.
The pool was later drained, but was restored in the mid-2010's as part of the conversion of the Woolworth Building's upper floors into residential units.
-- Offices
At the time of construction, the Woolworth Building had over 2,000 offices. Each office had ceilings ranging from 11 to 20 feet (3.4 to 6.1 m) high. Gilbert had designed the interior to maximize the amount of usable office space, and correspondingly, minimize the amount of space taken up by the elevator shafts.
The usable-space consideration affected the placement of the columns in the wings, as the columns in the main tower were positioned around the elevator shafts and facade piers.
Each of the lowest 30 stories had 31 offices, of which ten faced the light court, eight faced Park Place, eight faced Barclay Street, and five faced Broadway. Above the 30th.-story setback, each story had 14 offices.
For reasons that are unknown, floor numbers 42, 48, and 52 are skipped.
Woolworth's private office on the 24th. floor, revetted in green marble in the French Empire style, is preserved in its original condition. His office included a mahogany desk with a leather top measuring 7.5 by 3.75 feet (2.29 by 1.14 m).
That desk contained a hidden console with four buttons to request various members of his staff.
The marble columns in the office are capped by gilded Corinthian capitals. Woolworth's reception room contained objects that were inspired by a visit to the Château de Compiègne shortly after the building opened.
These included a bronze bust of Napoleon, a set of French Empire-style lamps with gold figures, and an inkwell with a depiction of Napoleon on horseback.
The walls of the office contained portraits of Napoleon, and gold-and-scarlet chairs were arranged around the room. At some point, Woolworth replaced the portrait of Napoleon with a portrait of himself.
-- Elevators
The Woolworth Building contains a system of high-speed elevators capable of traveling 650 feet (200 m) or 700 feet (210 m) per minute. The Otis Elevator Company supplied the units, which were innovative in that there were "express" elevators, stopping only at certain floors, and "local" elevators, stopping at every floor between a certain range.
There were 26 Otis electric elevators with gearless traction, as well as an electric-drum shuttle elevator within the tower once construction was complete. Of these, 24 were passenger elevators. Two freight elevators and two emergency staircases were placed at the rear of the building.
The elevator doors in the lobby were designed by Tiffany Studios. The patterns on the doors are arabesque tracery patterns in etched steel set off against a gold-plated background.
-- History of the Woolworth Building
-- Planning
F. W. Woolworth, an entrepreneur who had become successful because of his "Five-and-Dime" (5- and 10-cent stores), began planning a new headquarters for the F. W. Woolworth Company in 1910.
Around the same time, Woolworth's friend Lewis Pierson was having difficulty getting shareholder approval for the merger of his Irving National Bank and the rival New York Exchange Bank.
Woolworth offered to acquire shares in New York Exchange Bank and vote in favor of the merger if Pierson agreed to move the combined banks' headquarters to a new building he was planning as the F. W. Woolworth Company's headquarters.
Having received a commitment from the banks, Woolworth acquired a corner site on Broadway and Park Place in Lower Manhattan, opposite City Hall.
Woolworth and the Irving National Exchange Bank then set up the Broadway-Park Place Company to construct and finance the proposed structure. Initially, the bank was supposed to purchase the company's stock gradually until it owned the entire company, and thus, the Woolworth Building.
Irving would be able to manage the 18 floors of rentable space on a 25-year lease. While negotiations to create the Broadway-Park Place Company were ongoing, Woolworth and his real estate agent Edward J. Hogan purchased several parcels from the Trenor Luther Park estate and other owners.
The entire footprint of the current building, a rectangular lot, had been acquired by the 15th. April 1910, at a total cost of $1.65 million (about $37.7 million in 2022).
-- Original designs
Woolworth commissioned Cass Gilbert to design the new building. Gilbert later mentioned that he had received the commission for the Woolworth Building after getting a phone call from Woolworth one day.
Woolworth wanted his new structure to be of similar design to the Palace of Westminster in London, which was designed in the Gothic style. At the time, Gilbert was well known for constructing modern skyscrapers with historicizing design elements.
Gilbert was originally retained to design a standard 12- to 16-story commercial building for Woolworth, who later said:
"I have no desire to erect a monument
that would cause posterity to remember
me".
However, Woolworth then wanted to surpass the nearby New York World Building, which sat on the other side of City Hall Park and stood 20 stories and 350 feet (110 m).
A drawing by Thomas R. Johnson, dated April 22 1910, shows a 30-story building rising from the site. Because of the change in plans, the organization of the Broadway-Park Place Company was rearranged.
Woolworth would now be the major partner, contributing $1 million of the planned $1.5 million cost. The Irving Bank would pay the balance, and it would take up a 25-year lease for the ground floor, fourth floor, and basement.
By September 1910, Gilbert had designed an even taller structure, with a 40-story tower on Park Place adjacent to a shorter 25-story annex, yielding a 550-foot (170 m)-tall building.
The next month, Gilbert's latest design had evolved into a 45-story tower roughly the height of the nearby Singer Building. After the latest design, Woolworth wrote to Gilbert in November 1910 and asked for the building's height to be increased to 620 feet (190 m), which was 8 feet (2.4 m) taller than the Singer Building, Lower Manhattan's tallest building.
Woolworth was inspired by his travels in Europe, where he would constantly be asked about the Singer Building. He decided that housing his company in an even taller building would provide invaluable advertising for the F. W. Woolworth Company and make it renowned worldwide.
This design, unveiled to the public the same month, was a 45-story tower rising 625 feet (191 m), sitting on a lot by 105 by 197 feet (32 by 60 m). Referring to the revised plans, Woolworth said:
"I do not want a mere building.
I want something that will be an
ornament to the city."
He later said that he wanted visitors to brag that they had visited the world's tallest building.
Louis J. Horowitz, president of the building's main contractor Thompson-Starrett Company, said of Woolworth:
"Beyond a doubt his ego was a thing
of extraordinary size; whoever tried to
find a reason for his tall building and
did not take that fact into account would
reach a false conclusion."
Even after the revised height was unveiled, Woolworth still yearned to make the building even taller, as it was now close to the 700-foot (210 m) height of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, then the tallest building in New York City and the world.
On the 20th. December 1910, Woolworth sent a team of surveyors to measure the Metropolitan Life Tower's height and come up with a precise measurement, so that he could make his skyscraper 50 feet (15 m) taller.
He then ordered Gilbert to revise the building's design to reach 710 or 712 feet (216 or 217 m), despite ongoing worries over whether the additional height would be worth the increased cost.
In order to fit the larger base that a taller tower necessitated, Woolworth bought the remainder of the frontage on Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street. He also purchased two lots to the west, one on Park Place and one on Barclay Street; these lots would not be developed, but would retain their low-rise buildings and preserve the proposed tower's views.
Such a tall building would produce the largest income of any building globally.
On the 1st. January 1911, the New York Times reported that Woolworth was planning a 625 feet (191 m) building at a cost of $5 million.
By the 18th. January 1911, Woolworth and Hogan had acquired the final site for the project at a total cost of $4.5 million; (about $103 million in 2022) the lot measured 152 feet (46 m) on Broadway, 192.5 feet (58.7 m) on Barclay Street, and 197.8 feet (60 m) on Park Place.
In a New York Times article two days later, Woolworth said that his building would rise 750 feet (230 m) to its tip. In order to fit the correct architectural proportions, Gilbert redesigned the building to its current 792-foot (241 m) height.
Renderings by the illustrator Hughson Hawley, completed in April 1911, are the first official materials that reflect this final height.
Gilbert had to reconcile both Woolworth's and Pierson's strict requirements for the design of the structure. The architect's notes describe late-night conversations that he had with both men. The current design of the lobby, with its arcade, reflected these conflicting pressures.
Sometimes Gilbert also faced practical conundrums, such as Woolworth's requirement that:
There must be many windows so divided
that all of the offices should be well lighted,
and so that tenants could erect partitions to
fit their needs."
Gilbert wrote that:
"This requirement naturally
prevented any broad wall
space".
Woolworth and Gilbert sometimes clashed during the design process, especially because of the constantly changing designs and the architect's fees. Nevertheless, Gilbert commended Woolworth's devotion to the details and beauty of the building's design, as well as the entrepreneur's enthusiasm for the project.
Such was the scale of the building that Gilbert noted:
"For several years my sense of scale was
destroyed because of the unprecedented
attuning of detail to, for these days, such
an excessive height".
-- Construction of the Woolworth Building
In September 1910, wrecking crews demolished the five and six-story structures which previously occupied the site. Construction officially began on the 4th. November 1910, with excavation by The Foundation Company, using a contract negotiated personally by Frank Woolworth.
The start of construction instantly raised the site's value from $2.25 million to $3.2 million. The contract of over $1 million was described as the largest contract for foundation construction ever awarded in the world.
It took months for Woolworth to decide upon the general construction company. George A. Fuller's Fuller Company was well experienced and had practically invented skyscraper construction.
However Louis Horowitz's Thompson-Starrett Company was local to New York, and despite being newer, Horowitz had worked for Fuller before, and thus had a similar knowledge base.
On the 20th. April 1911, Thompson-Starrett won the contract with a guaranteed construction price of $4,308,500 for the building's frame and structural elements.
The company was paid $300,000 for their oversight and management work, despite Woolworth's attempts to get the company to do the job for free due to the prestige of the project.
On the 12th. June 1911, the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company received a $250,000 contract to manufacture the terracotta.
The next month, Donnelly and Ricci received the $11,500 contract for the terracotta work and some of the interior design work. Gilbert requested Atlantic Terra Cotta use an office next to his while they drew several hundred designs.
The construction process involved hundreds of workers, and daily wages ranged from $1.50 for laborers (equivalent to $44 in 2022) to $4.50 for skilled workers (equivalent to $133 in 2022).
By August 1911, the building's foundations were completed ahead of the target date of the 15th. September; construction of the skyscraper's steel frame began on the 15th. August.
The steel beams and girders used in the framework weighed so much that, to prevent the streets from caving in, a group of surveyors examined them on the route along which the beams would be transported.
The American Bridge Company provided steel for the building from their foundries in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; manufacturing took over 45 weeks.
The first above-ground steel had been erected by October 1911, and installation of the building's terracotta began on the 1st. February 1912.
The building rose at the rate of 1½ stories a week, and the steelworkers set a speed record for assembling 1,153 tons of steel in six consecutive eight-hour days.
By the 18th. February 1912, work on the steel frame had reached the building's 18th. floor. By the 6th. April 1912, the steel frame had reached the top of the base at the 30th. floor, and work then began on constructing the tower of the Woolworth Building.
Steel reached the 47th. floor by the 30th. May, and the official topping out ceremony took place two weeks ahead of schedule on the 1st. July 1912, as the last rivet was driven into the summit of the tower.
The skyscraper was substantially completed by the end of that year. The final estimated construction cost was US$13.5 million (equivalent to $400,000,000 in 2022), up from the initial estimates of US$5 million for the shorter versions of the skyscraper (equivalent to $148,000,000 in 2022).
Woolworth provided $5 million, while investors provided the remainder, and financing was completed by August 1911.
-- Opening and the 1910's
The building opened on the 24th. April 1913. Woolworth held a grand dinner on the building's 27th. floor for over 900 guests, and at exactly 7:30 p.m. EST, President Woodrow Wilson pushed a button in Washington, D.C., to turn on the building's lights. Additional congratulations were sent via letter from former President William Howard Taft, Governor of New Jersey James Fairman Fielder and United States Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels.
The building was declared ready for occupancy on the 1st. May 1913, and Woolworth began advertising the offices for rent beginning at $4.00 per square foot.
To attract tenants, Woolworth hired architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler to write a 56-page brochure outlining the building's features. Schuyler later described the Woolworth Building as the "noblest offspring" of buildings erected with steel skeletons.
On completion, the Woolworth Building topped the record set by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower as the world's tallest building, a distinction it held until 1930.
Woolworth had purchased all of the Broadway-Park Place Company's shares from the Irving National Exchange Bank by May 1914; his company held no ownership stake in the building.
The building contained offices for as many as 14,000 employees. By the end of 1914, the building was 70% occupied and generating over $1.3 million a year in rents for the F. W. Woolworth Company.
-- The Woolworth Building in the 1920's to 1960's
During the Great War, only one of the Woolworth Building's then-14 elevators was turned on, and many lighting fixtures in hallways and offices were turned off. This resulted in about a 70% energy reduction compared to peacetime requirements.
The building had more than a thousand tenants by the 1920's, who generally occupied suites of one or two rooms. These tenants reportedly collectively employed over 12,000 people in the building.
In 1920, after F. W. Woolworth died, his heirs obtained a $3 million mortgage loan on the Woolworth Building from Prudential Life Insurance Company in order to pay off $8 million in inheritance tax.
By this point, the building was worth $10 million and grossed $1.55 million per year in rental income. The Broadway-Park Place Corporation agreed to sell the building to Woolco Realty Co., a subsidiary of the F. W. Woolworth Company, in January 1924 at an assessed valuation of $11.25 million (about $153 million in 2022).
The company paid $4 million in cash and obtained a five-year, $11 million mortgage from Prudential Life Insurance Company at an annual interest rate of 5.5%. The sale was finalized in April 1924, after which F. W. Woolworth's heirs no longer had any stake in the building.
In 1927, the building's pinnacle was painted green, and the observation tower was re-gilded for over $25,000 (about $340,647 in 2022). The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company cleaned the Woolworth Building's façade in 1932.
Prudential extended its $3.7 million mortgage on the building by ten years in 1939, and the observation deck was closed after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Ten of the building's 24 elevators were temporarily disabled in 1944 because of a shortage of coal. The next year, the building's owners replaced the elevators and closed off the building above the 54th. story.
By 1953, a new chilled water air conditioning system had been installed, bringing individual room temperature control to a third of the building.
The old car-switch-control elevators had been replaced with a new automatic dispatching systems and new elevator cars. The structure was still profitable by then, although it was now only the sixth-tallest building, and tourists no longer frequented the Woolworth Building.
The building's terracotta façade deteriorated easily, and, by 1962, repairs to the terracotta tiles were occurring year-round.
The Woolworth Company had considered selling the building as early as the 1960's, though the planned sale never happened.
-- Restoration and Landmark Status
The National Park Service designated the Woolworth Building as a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) considered giving the Woolworth Building official city-landmark status in 1970. The F. W. Woolworth Company called the landmark law "onerous" since it would restrict the company from making modifications to many aspects of the building.
The commission ultimately declined to give the Woolworth Building a designated-landmark status because of the company's opposition to such a measure, as well as the increased costs and scrutiny.
The lobby was cleaned in 1974.
The F. W. Woolworth Company commissioned an appraisal of the building's façade in 1975 and found serious deterioration in the building's terracotta. Many of the blocks of terracotta had loosened or cracked from the constant thermal expansion and contraction caused by New York's climate.
The cracks in the façade had let rain in, which had caused the steel superstructure to rust. By 1976, the Woolworth Company had placed metal netting around the façade in order to prevent terracotta pieces from dislodging and hitting pedestrians.
The issues with the façade were exacerbated by the fact that very few terracotta manufacturers remained in business, making it difficult for the company to procure replacements.
The New York City Industrial and Commercial Incentives Board approved a $8.5 million tax abatement in September 1977, which was to fund a proposed renovation of the Woolworth Building.
The Woolworth Company still occupied half the building; its vice president for construction said:
"We think the building merits
the investment, in part because
F. W. Woolworth had used his
own wealth to fund the building's
construction."
Much of the remaining space was occupied by lawyers who paid rentals of between $7 to $12 per square foot ($75 to $129/m2).
The F. W. Woolworth Company began a five-year restoration of the building's terracotta and limestone façade, as well as replacement of all the building's windows, in 1977.
Initially, the company had considered replacing the entire terracotta façade with concrete; however this was canceled due to its high cost and potential backlash from preservationists.
The renovation, carried out by Turner Construction to plans by the New York architectural firm Ehrenkrantz Group, involved the replacement of roughly one-fifth of the building's terracotta.
Since there were so few remaining terracotta manufacturers, Woolworth's replaced 26,000 of the tiles with concrete lookalikes; many of those tiles had to be custom-cut. The concrete was coated with a surface that was meant to be replaced every five years, like the glazing on the terracotta blocks.
Similarly, the original copper windows were replaced with aluminum frames which allowed them to be opened, whereas the originals were sealed in place.
The company also removed some decorative flying buttresses near the tower's crown and refaced four tourelles in aluminum because of damage.
The building's renovation was completed without fanfare in 1982. The estimated cost of the project had risen from $8 million to over $22 million. Much of the renovation was financed through the city government's tax break, which had increased to $11.4 million.
The LPC again considered the Woolworth Building for landmark designation in early 1982, shortly after the renovation was completed. However upon the request of the building's lawyers, the LPC postponed a public hearing for the proposed landmark designation to April 1982.
That year, the building's entrance to the City Hall subway station was closed because of fears over crime. The LPC granted landmark protection to the building's façade and the interior of its lobby in April 1983.
The Woolworth Company (later Venator Group) continued to own the building for a decade and a half. After struggling financially for years, and with no need for a trophy office building, Venator Group began discussing a sale of the building in 1996.
To raise capital for its other operations, Venator formally placed the Woolworth Building for sale in April 1998.
-- Witkoff Group Ownership
Venator Group agreed to sell the building in June 1998 to Steve Witkoff's Witkoff Group and Lehman Brothers for $155 million (about $261 million in 2022). However before the sale was finalized in December 1998, Witkoff renegotiated the purchase price to $137.5 million (about $231 million in 2022), citing a declining debt market.
Venator shrunk its space in the building from eight floors to four; this was a sharp contrast to the 25 floors the company had occupied just before the sale.
Witkoff also agreed to license the Woolworth name and invest $30 million in renovating the exterior and interior of the building.
After purchasing the building, the Witkoff Group rebranded it in an attempt to attract entertainment and technology companies. In April 2000, the Venator Group officially moved their headquarters to 112 West 34th. Street, and Witkoff indicated that he would sell the upper half of the building as residential condominiums.
That October, the company proposed a two-story addition to the 29th.-floor setbacks on the north and south elevations of the tower, to be designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who were also leading the renovation of the building. The LPC denied the proposal.
The company unveiled an ambitious plan in November 2000 that would have converted the top 27 floors of the building into 75 condominiums, including a five-story penthouse. The plan would have included a new residential lobby on Park Place, a 100-space garage, a 75-seat underground screening room, and a spa in the basement.
The developers planned to spend $60 to $70 million on the conversion which would be ready for occupancy by August 2002. However the LPC opposed the plan because it would have required exterior changes to the roof.
The commission eventually approved a modified version of the plan. Following the September 11 attacks and the subsequent collapse of the nearby World Trade Center, the proposal was later canceled.
-- Security Increases and New Plan
Prior to the September 11 attacks, the World Trade Center was often photographed in such a way that the Woolworth Building could be seen between the complex's twin towers.
After the attacks occurred only a few blocks away, the Woolworth Building was without electricity, water and a telephone service for a few weeks; its windows were broken, and falling rubble damaged a top turret.
Increased post-attack security restricted access to most of the ornate lobby, previously a tourist attraction. New York Times reporter David W. Dunlap wrote in 2006 that a security guard had asked him to leave within twelve seconds of entering the Woolworth Building.
However, there was renewed interest in restoring public access to the Woolworth Building during planning for its centennial celebrations. The lobby reopened to public tours in 2014, when Woolworth Tours started accommodating groups for 30- to 90-minute tours.
The tours were part of a partnership between Cass Gilbert's great-granddaughter, Helen Post Curry, and Witkoff's vice president for development, Roy A. Suskin.
By 2007, the concrete blocks on the Woolworth Building's façade had deteriorated because of neglect. A lack of regular re-surfacing had led to water and dirt absorption, which had stained the concrete blocks.
Though terracotta's popularity had increased since the 1970's, Suskin had declined to say whether the façade would be modified, if at all.
Around the same time, Witkoff planned to partner with Rubin Schron to create an "office club" on the top 25 floors building to attract high-end tenants like hedge funds and private equity firms. The plan would have restored the 58th. floor observatory as a private amenity for "office club" tenants, in addition to amenities like a private dining room, meeting rooms, and a new dedicated lobby.
The partners planned to complete the project by the end of 2008, but the financial crisis of 2007–2008 derailed the plans, leaving the top floors gutted and vacant.
-- Residential Conversion
On the 31st. July 2012, an investment group led by New York developer Alchemy Properties which included Adam Neumann and Joel Schreiber, bought the top 30 floors of the skyscraper for $68 million (about $86.1 million in 2022) from the Witkoff Group and Cammeby's International.
The firm planned to renovate the space into 33 luxury apartments and convert the penthouse into a five-level living space. The lower 28 floors are still owned by the Witkoff Group and Cammeby's International, who planned to maintain them as office space.
The project was expected to cost approximately $150 million including the $68 million purchase price. The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the changes to the building in October 2013.
When the sale was first announced in 2012, the developers expected the building's conversion to be complete by 2015. However, construction took longer than expected.
Workers could not attach a construction hoist to the building's façade without damaging it, and they were prohibited from using the elevators because of the active office tenants on the lower floors and the regular public tours of the landmarked lobby.
The renovation included many restorations and changes to the building's interior. Two of the elevator shafts only went to the 29th. floor, allowing extra floor space for the residents above.
A new private lobby was also built for residents, and the coffered ceiling from F. W. Woolworth's personal 40th. floor office was relocated to the entryway. Each unit received space in a wine cellar, along with access to the restored private pool in the basement.
The 29th. floor was converted to an amenity floor named the "Gilbert Lounge" after the structure's architect, while the 30th. floor hosts a fitness facility.
In August 2014, the New York Attorney General's office approved Alchemy's plan to sell 34 condos at the newly branded Woolworth Tower Residences for a combined total of $443.7 million. After a soft launch in late 2014, units at the building were officially listed for sale in mid-2015.
Alchemy initially intended to leverage an in-house sales staff, and hired a director from Corcoran Sunshine to lead the effort. However, the new sales director left at the end of 2015 amid rumors of slow sales. Following his departure, the company hired Sotheby's International Realty to market the units.
The building's penthouse unit, dubbed "The Pinnacle", was listed at $110 million, the highest asking price ever for an apartment in downtown Manhattan. If it had sold at that price, the unit would have surpassed the record $50.9 million penthouse at Ralph Thomas Walker's Walker Tower, and even the $100.5 million record price for a Manhattan penthouse set by Michael Dell at Extell's One57 in 2014.
Due to delays, the conversion was expected to be completed by February or March 2019, about six and a half years after Alchemy bought the property. However by February 2019, only three of the building's 31 condos had been sold, since the developers had refused to discount prices, despite a glut of new luxury apartments in NYC.
The still-vacant penthouse's asking price was reduced to $79 million. By 2021, Alchemy had sold 22 condominiums to tenants such as the entrepreneur Rudra Pandey.
-- Corporate Tenants
On the building's original completion, the F. W. Woolworth Company occupied only one and a half floors. However, as the owner, the Woolworth Company profited from renting space out to others.
The Woolworth Building was almost always fully occupied because of its central location in Lower Manhattan, as well as its direct connections to two subway stations.
The Irving Trust Company occupied the first four floors when the building opened. It had a large banking room on the second floor accessible directly from a grand staircase in the lobby, vaults in the basement, offices on the third-floor mezzanine, and a boardroom on the fourth floor.
In 1931, the company relocated their general, out-of-town, and foreign offices from the Woolworth Building after building their own headquarters at 1 Wall Street.
Columbia Records was one of the Woolworth Building's tenants on opening day and housed a recording studio in the skyscraper. In 1917, Columbia made what are considered the first jazz recordings, by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, in this studio.
Shortly after the building opened, several railroad companies rented space. The Union Pacific Railroad and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad occupied the ground floor retail space with ticket offices.
The inventor Nikola Tesla also occupied an office in the Woolworth Building beginning in 1914; he was evicted after a year because he could not pay his rent.
Scientific American moved into the building in 1915 before departing for Midtown Manhattan in 1926. The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America was present at the building's opening, occupying the southern half of the 18th. floor.
By the 1920's, the building also hosted Newport News Shipbuilding and Nestlé.
In the 1930's, prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey maintained his offices in the building while investigating racketeering and organized crime in Manhattan. His office took up the entire fourteenth floor, and was heavily guarded.
During World War II, the Kellex Corporation, part of the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons, was based here.
During the early 1960's, public relations expert Howard J. Rubenstein opened an office in the building. In 1975, the city signed a lease for state judge Jacob D. Fuchsberg's offices in the Woolworth Building.
-- Educational Tenants
The structure has a long association with higher education, housing a number of Fordham University schools in the early 20th. century. In 1916, Fordham created "Fordham Downtown" at the Woolworth Building by moving the School of Sociology and Social Service and the School of Law to the building.
The Fordham University Graduate School was founded on the building's 28th. floor in the same year, and a new Teachers' College quickly followed on the seventh floor.
In September 1920, the Business School was also established on the seventh floor, originally as the School of Accounting. By 1929, the school's combined programs at the Woolworth Building had over 3,000 enrolled students.
Between 1916 and 1943 the building was also home at various times to the Fordham College (Manhattan Division), a summer school, and the short-lived School of Irish Studies.
In 1943, the Graduate School relocated to Keating Hall at Fordham's Rose Hill campus in Fordham, Bronx, and the rest of the schools moved to nearby 302 Broadway because of reduced attendance due to World War II.
The New York University School of Professional Studies' Center for Global Affairs leased 94,000 square feet (8,700 m2) on the second, third, and fourth floors in 2002 from defunct dot-com startup FrontLine Capital Group.
The American Institute of Graphic Arts also moved its headquarters to the Woolworth Building.
-- 21st-Century Tenants
By the early 2000's, the Woolworth Building was home to numerous technology tenants. Digital advertising firm Xceed occupied 65,000 square feet (6,000 m2) across four floors as its headquarters. Organic, Inc. took 112,000 square feet (10,400 m2), and advertising agency Fallon Worldwide used two floors.
Xceed terminated its lease in April 2001 during the midst of the Dot-com bubble collapse in order to move to smaller offices in the Starrett–Lehigh Building.
One month after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) Northeast Regional Office at 7 World Trade Center was destroyed in the September 11 attacks, the commission's 334 employees moved into 140,000 square feet (13,000 m2) across five floors of the Woolworth Building. The SEC left for a larger space in Brookfield Place in early 2005.
The General Services Administration took over the commission's space on the 1st. November 2005 and used it as offices for approximately 200 staff of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System.
The New York City Police Department pension fund signed a lease for 56,000 square feet (5,200 m2) on the 19th. and 25th. floors in April 2002.
Starbucks opened a 1,500-square-foot (140 m2) location on the ground floor in the spring of 2003. In 2006, Levitz Furniture moved its headquarters to the 23rd. floor from Woodbury, Long Island, after declaring bankruptcy a second time.
In May 2013, SHoP Architects moved the company's headquarters to the entire 11th. floor, occupying 30,500 square feet (2,830 m2) of space. In February 2016, the New York City Law Department leased the entire 32,000 square feet (3,000 m2) fifth floor for the Department's tort office.
Joseph Altuzarra's namesake fashion brand, Altuzarra, signed on to occupy the 14th. floor in June 2016. In 2017, the New York Shipping Exchange moved into the 21st floor. In May 2018, architecture and design firm CallisonRTKL signed a lease for the entire 28,100 square feet (2,610 m2) 16th. floor.
-- Impact of the Woolworth Building
Before construction, Woolworth hired New York photographer Irving Underhill to document the building's construction. These photographs were distributed to Woolworth's stores nationwide to generate enthusiasm for the project.
During construction, Underhill, Wurts Brothers, and Tebbs-Hymans each took photographs to document the structure's progression. These photos were often taken from close-up views, or from far away to provide contrast against the surrounding structures.
They were part of a media promotion for the Woolworth Building. Both contemporary and modern figures criticized the photos as:
"Standard solutions at best and
architectural eye candy at worst".
Later critics praised the building. Amei Wallach of Newsday wrote in 1978 that the building resembled:
"A giant cathedral absurdly
stretched in a gigantic fun
mirror. The lobby certainly
looks like a farmboy's dream
of glory".
A writer for The Baltimore Sun wrote in 1984 that:
"The lobby's lighting, ceiling mosaic,
and gold-leaf decorations combine
for a church-like atmosphere, yet the
grotesques provide a touch of
irreverence".
Richard Berenholtz wrote in his 1988 book Manhattan Architecture that:
"At the Woolworth Building, Gilbert
succeeded in uniting the respected
traditions of architecture and
decoration with modern technology".
In a 2001 book about Cass Gilbert, Mary N. Woods wrote that:
"The rich and varied afterlife of
the Woolworth Building enhances
Gilbert's accomplishment".
Dirk Stichweh described the building in 2005 as being:
"The Mozart of skyscrapers".
In 2007, the building ranked 44th. among 150 buildings in the AIA's List of America's Favorite Architecture.
In recognition of Gilbert's role as the building's architect, the Society of Arts and Sciences gave Gilbert its gold medal in 1930, calling it:
"An epochal landmark in the
history of architecture".
On the 40th. anniversary of the building's opening in 1953, one news source called the building:
"A substantial middle-aged lady, with
a good income, unconcern over years—
and lots of friends".
A one-third-scale replica of the Woolworth Building, the Lincoln American Tower in Memphis, Tennessee, was also built in 1924.
-- The Woolworth Building in the Media
The Woolworth Building has had a large impact in architectural spheres, and has been featured in many works of popular culture, including photographs, prints, films, and literature.
One of the earliest films to feature the skyscraper was Manhatta (1921), a short documentary film directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand.
Since then, the building has made cameo appearances in several films, such as the 1929 film Applause. It was also the setting of several film climaxes, such as in Enchanted (2007), as well as the setting of major organizations, such as in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016).
The television show Ugly Betty used the Woolworth Building as the 'Meade Publications' building, a major location in the series, while one of the vacant condominiums was used in filming the TV series Succession in 2021.
The building has also appeared in literature, such as Langston Hughes's 1926 poem "Negro" and the 2007 novel Peak.
A southern view March 20, 2015, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District’s completed setback levee, which also functions as South River Road in West Sacramento, California. The work is part of the Sacramento River Bank Protection Project, a joint effort between the Corps and the California Central Valley Flood Protection Board to repair riverbank erosion along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. (U.S. Army photos and illustration by Todd Plain/Released)
My Ikaruga Project continues, after some setbacks. Still a lot of work to be done, but I've accomplished a ton too.
Please ignore the battery box, it's only there as a counterweight for now. The colors are still incorrect, and I still have yet to BL any of the parts needed to finish.
Reference:
homepage.ntlworld.com/stureek/Ikaruga/
Mostly accurate series of renders
NEWARK, Del. (Nov. 22, 2008) -- Villanova ran up 317 yards on the ground led by Aaron's Ball's 105 yards and two touchdowns as the Wildcats downed Delaware 21-7 Saturday afternoon at Delaware Stadium in the Blue Hens' final football game of the 2008 season. Delaware, which got its only points on a 34-yard scoring strike from Robby Schoenhoft to Martwain Johnston (above) in the final quarter, closed out a disappointing, injury-plagued season with a record of 4-8.
A northern view March 20, 2015, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District’s completed setback levee, now functioning as South River Road in West Sacramento California. The work is part of the Sacramento River Bank Protection Project, a joint effort between the Corps and the California Central Valley Flood Protection Board to repair riverbank erosion along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. (U.S. Army photo by Todd Plain/Released)
Today found both me and the crew of CP 633 suffering a major setback. Upon intercepting the train at Stockton, I drove ahead to set up for photos. While parking at Dutchman's crossing a well concealed drop off along the shoulder attempted to swallow the passenger side of the car, rendering it bottomed out and hopelessly stuck.
Meanwhile, the train had made it as far as milepost 14 before stalling on Stockton hill. The steep grade, snow covered railheads, 4 loads and 75 empties had proved too much for the single DASH-9 assigned to bring the train west over the Waseca sub.
1 1/2 hours, a destroyed cheap plastic shovel, and a passerby with a chain and 4X4 pickup later I was back on the road.
Seen here, 633 has cut off the first 9 cars of their train to bring up to Lewiston, with an ill-fated plan to double the hill...
My first outing of the year, January 25th, 2014.
Corps completes new paved setback levee in West Sacramento
Ed Stewart (right), a construction representative with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District, talks with University of California Davis professor Brett Milligan while touring a new paved setback levee near South River Road in West Sacramento, California, Oct. 15, 2014. The levee is part of the Sacramento River Bank Protection Project, a joint flood risk reduction effort between the Corps and the California Central Valley Flood Protection Board to repair riverbank erosion along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. (U.S. Army photo by Todd Plain/Released)
Exterior Flag Pole
Upon its completion in 1928, the Penobscot became the eighth-tallest building in the world and the tallest outside New York and Chicago. Like many of the city's other Roaring Twenties buildings, it displays Art Deco influences, including its "H" shape (designed to allow maximum sunlight into the building) and the sculptural setbacks that cause the upper floors to progressively "erode". The building's architect, Wirt C. Rowland, also designed such Detroit skyscrapers as the Guardian Building and the Buhl Building in the same decade. At night, the building's upper floors are lit in floodlight fashion, topped with a red sphere.
Detroit Financial District #09001067 US National Historic
Datalog began...
After our little setback, we planed a ambush. We would wait behind a ice rock, and if the droids passed us, they totally walked into a trap!
Then we´ve got them!
Next, we want to destroy the Artifacts.
Mission completed...
First...
Datalog save...
_______________________________________
Hope you like my entry for the 457th Corps !
NEWARK, Del. (Nov. 22, 2008) -- Villanova ran up 317 yards on the ground led by Aaron's Ball's 105 yards and two touchdowns as the Wildcats downed Delaware 21-7 Saturday afternoon at Delaware Stadium in the Blue Hens' final football game of the 2008 season. Delaware, which got its only points on a 34-yard scoring strike from Robby Schoenhoft to Martwain Johnston (above) in the final quarter, closed out a disappointing, injury-plagued season with a record of 4-8.
NEWARK, Del. (Nov. 22, 2008) -- Villanova ran up 317 yards on the ground led by Aaron's Ball's 105 yards and two touchdowns as the Wildcats downed Delaware 21-7 Saturday afternoon at Delaware Stadium in the Blue Hens' final football game of the 2008 season. Delaware, which got its only points on a 34-yard scoring strike from Robby Schoenhoft to Martwain Johnston (above) in the final quarter, closed out a disappointing, injury-plagued season with a record of 4-8.
Named for British essayist Thomas Carlyle, the 35-story hotel, designed by the architectural firm of Bien & Prince, was completed in 1930. Moses Ginsberg, a millionaire construction magnate, built the Carlyle Hotel.
A newspaper account of the time described the design as a "diversified setback style," which provides private terraces for some guest rooms and suites. The Carlyle dominates the Upper East Side skyline over which it presides.
The Carlyle was planned as a hotel and as a group of individual residences, some large, other small assembled under one roof. Bien & Prince also designed the apartment house 140 E. 40 St.
The strong Art Deco influence, introduced by the hotel's first decorator Dorothy Draper, has been maintained, from the black and white marbled lobby to Art Deco motifs of the hotel's specialty suites. In 2002, interior designer Thierry Despont restored Bemelmans Bar and the Lobby while the Café Carlyle, restored by Scott Salvator, and the Banquet Space, were renovated by Matthew White and Frank Webb, in 2007.
According to Wikipedia the hotel went into receivership in 1931 and was sold to the Lyleson Corporation in 1932. In 1948, the Carlyle was purchased by New York businessman Robert Whittle Downing who began to transform it from a respectable address to a "downright fashionable" one, frequented by elegant Europeans.
President John F. Kennedy owned an apartment on the 34th floor for ten years. The hotel's Café Carlyle hosted jazz performer Bobby Short from 1968-2004 and Woody Allen and his jazz band have played regularly.
Bought by Maritz, Wolff & Company 2001 for $130 million, the Carlyle is a cooperative with 180 rental rooms and suites and 60 privately owned residences.
On July 29, 2011 Maritz, Wolff sold the Carlyle to the family of Hong Kong billionaire Cheng Yu-tung along with Rosewood Little Dix Bay Resort in Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands; Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek and Rosewood Crescent Hotels both located in Dallas, TX; and the Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe, NM. The five hotel portfolio was sold for about $570 million.
Rosewood will continue to manage the five hotels under a long-term agreement with the new owner.
The Chengs also own the Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, and had a former interest in the Four Seasons Hotel New York and Regent Hotel Hong Kong. In a related 2011 transaction the Cheng's New World Hospitality hotel management company acquired Rosewood Hotel Management Company for $229.5 million.
From Wikipedia:
Pointe du Hoc is a clifftop location on the coast of Normandy in northern France. It lies 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Omaha Beach, and stands on 100 ft (30 m) tall cliffs overlooking the sea. It was a point of attack by the United States Army during the Battle of Normandy in World War II.
At Pointe du Hoc (often spelled as its Parisian French name "Pointe du Hoe" in official Army documents), the Germans had built, as part of the Atlantic Wall, six casemates to house a battery of captured French 155mm guns. With Pointe Du Hoc situated between Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east, these guns threatened Allied landings on both beaches, risking heavy casualties in the landing forces. Although there were several bombardments from the air and by naval guns, intelligence reports assumed that the fortifications were too strong, and would also require attack by ground forces. The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion was therefore given the task of destroying the strongpoint early on D-Day.
Prior to the attack, the guns were moved approximately 1 mile away. However, the concrete fortifications were intact, and would still present a major threat to the landings if they were occupied by artillery forward observers. The Ranger Battalion commanders and executive officers knew the guns had moved, but the rest of the Rangers were not informed prior to the attack.[citation needed] The myth that the guns were "missing" on D-Day may be attributed to this decision not to inform the troops prior to the attack.
The Ranger battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder. The plan called for the three companies of Rangers to be landed by sea at the foot of the cliffs, scale them using ropes, ladders, and grapples under enemy fire, and engage the enemy at the top of the cliff. This was to be carried out before the main landings. The Rangers trained for the cliff assault on the Isle of Wight, under the direction of British Commandos.
Despite initial setbacks because of weather and navigational problems, resulting in a 40-minute delay and loss of surprise, the cliffs were scaled and the strongpoint was assaulted successfully, with relatively light casualties. Fire support was provided during the attack by several nearby Allied destroyers. Upon reaching the fortifications, most of the Rangers learned for the first time that the main objective of the assault, the artillery battery, had been moved out of position, possibly as a result of air attacks during the buildup to the invasion. It is said that German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel gave the order to move the battery since he had recently been placed in charge of the coastal defenses of Normandy.
Removal of the guns had actually been completed on June 4, 1944, but poor weather conditions prior to the invasion limited a final reconnaissance effort which would have revealed the guns' removal. The Rangers regrouped at the top of the cliffs, and a small patrol went off in search of the guns. This patrol found the guns nearby and destroyed them with thermite grenades. The new battery location inland was sighted solely for Utah beach.
The costliest part of the battle for the Rangers came after the cliff assault. Determined to hold the vital ground, yet isolated from other assault forces, they fended off several German counterattacks over the next two days, until reinforced from Omaha Beach. The original plans called for an additional, larger Ranger force of eight companies to follow the first attack, if successful. Flares from the clifftops were to signal this second wave to join the attack, but because of the delayed landing, the signal came too late, and the other Rangers, mostly of the U.S. 5th Ranger Battalion, landed on Omaha instead of Pointe du Hoc.
The added impetus these 500+ Rangers provided on the stalled Omaha Beach landing has been conjectured to have averted a disastrous failure there, since they carried the assault beyond the beach, into the overlooking bluffs and outflanked the German defenses. At the end of the 2-day action, the initial Ranger landing force of 225+ was reduced to about 90 men who could still fight. One of the battleships who helped the battalion was the USS Texas (BB-35).
The assault on Pointe du Hoc has recently been portrayed in the video game Call of Duty 2, in which the player is a member of the Dog Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, and is faced with destroying the artillery battery and fending off the counter-attacks. The battle looks, however, much more action oriented in the video game than in real life as many of the Rangers are killed in spectacular fashion at the base of the cliff. Another video game version of this battle is in G.I. Combat, a real-time wargame from Strategy First and Freedom Games. As well, a playable version of Pointe Du Hoc is in the Real-Time Strategy game Company of Heroes.
The movie, The Longest Day, also contains scenes of the assault on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc.
Pointe du Hoc now has a memorial and museum dedicated to the battle. Many of the original fortifications have been left in place. The site is speckled with an impressive number of bomb craters.
1931, Cory and Cory; Yasuo Matsui, associate architect
from Wikipedia:
"The building features large setbacks, polygonal corners, and alternating bands of steel strip windows, brickwork and concrete floorplates, creating a striking effect described by architectural critic Lewis Mumford in 1931: 'the contrast between the long, continuous red-brick bands and the green-framed windows, with sapphire reflections or depths, is as sound a use of color as one can see about the city.'
The modernity of the building's design made it one of the few American structures not designed by a major architect cited in the 1932 "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" show of the Metropolitan Museum of Art."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starrett-Lehigh_Building
NYT article about Yasuo Matsui:
www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/realestate/streetscapes-yasuo-...
Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2638.
Vivacious, blonde Mae Clarke (1910-1992) scored a big hit as the prostitute with a heart of gold who meets an inglorious end in The Front Page (1931). She made three films with director James Whale for Universal, Waterloo Bridge (1931), the Horror classic Frankenstein (1931), in which she played Colin Clive's terrified bride, and Impatient Maiden (1932). On a loan out to Warner Brothers, she was put in a scene that would make her immortal when James Cagney smashed a half grapefruit in her face in Public Enemy (1931). Only a few years later, she was increasingly cast in productions with lower budgets that lacked the status of her earlier films.
Mae Clarke was born Violet Mary Klotz in 1910 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was exposed to cinema from an early age. Her father was an organist in a cinema. Growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, she learned how to dance. At the tender age of 13, she was already performing in nightclubs and amateur theatricals. In 1924, she was one of ‘May Dawson's Dancing Girls’, a New York cabaret act. There producer Earl Lindsay discovered her. He promptly cast her in a minor part at the Strand Theatre on Times Square. She then performed as a dancer and burlesque artist at the Strand Roof nightclub, situated above the theatre which was managed by Lindsay and at the Everglades Club, earning $40 a week. While there she struck up a lifelong friendship with fellow actress Ruby Stevens, who would later change her name to Barbara Stanwyck. In 1926, Clarke got her first chance in ‘legitimate’ theatre, appearing in the drama ‘The Noose’ with Stanwyck and Ed Wynn. This was followed by the musical comedy ‘Manhattan Mary’ (1927). In 1928, at age 17, she married her first husband, Lew Brice, brother of Fanny Brice. They divorced in 1930. After further Vaudeville experience, Clarke was screen-tested by Fox and landed her first film role in the drama Big Time (Kenneth Hawks, 1929) opposite Lee Tracy. While she was top-billed in films like Nix on Dames (Donald Gallaher, 1929), she was headed for B-movie status and left Fox just over a year later. This resulted in better roles for her, though she was generally cast in ‘hard-luck’ roles.
1931 would be a banner year for Mae Clarke. She played prostitute Molly Malloy in the hugely successful The Front Page (Lewis Milestone, 1931) starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien. On the strength of this performance, she was signed by Carl Laemmle Jr. at Universal. She starred in Waterloo Bridge (James Whale, 1931) as a young American dancer who is forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution in World War I London. Both the film and Clarke's performance were well-received by the critics. Reviewer Mordaunt Hall described Clarke's complex performance in The New York Times as "capital". Years later, the film sadly disappeared in the vaults of MGM when Vivien Leigh starred in the sanitized MGM remake, Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn Le Roy, 1940). She was third-billed in James Whale's classic horror film Frankenstein (1931). Mae played the role of Henry Frankenstein's fiancée, Elizabeth, who was abducted by the Monster (Boris Karloff) on her wedding day. Her best moment in the film - one of sheer terror - comes when she is confronted by the Monster in her bedroom. Also in 1931, she had the brief but iconic role for which she will always be known as the gangster’s girlfriend in The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931). James Cagney pushes a half grapefruit into Mae's face, then goes out to pick up Jean Harlow. She later appeared with Cagney (a close friend in real life) in still more adversarial scenes, in Lady Killer (Roy Del Ruth, 1933) and Great Guy (John G. Blystone, 1936). She also had some feisty comedy roles in Three Wise Girls (William Beaudine, 1931) with Jean Harlow, and Parole Girl (Edward F. Cline, 1933).
Sadly, Mae Clarke's career suffered several major setbacks, beginning in 1932, from which it never fully recovered. She had a nervous breakdown in June of that year and a horrifying stay at a mental institute for a few months. In March of 1933, she and actor Phillips Holmes were in a serious car accident that left Clarke with a broken jaw and facial scarring. In 1934, she had another nervous breakdown, most likely caused by overwork and marital problems. In addition to that, her sexy screen personae became restricted by the new, strict Hollywood Production Code. When she returned to the screen it was to be in B-pictures. She had some rewarding parts in some films for Republic, notably The House of a Thousand Candles (Arthur Lubin, 1936) alongside Pillips Holmes, and the Civil War romance Hearts in Bondage (Lew Ayres, 1936), with Lew Ayres. Despite an image change from frizzy blonde to brunette, she had few opportunities to shine after 1938, except, perhaps, as the heroine of the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men (Fred C. Brannon, 1949). By the beginning of the 1950s, she was largely reduced to doing cameos and walk-on roles. At best, she played minor parts in Westerns and the classic melodrama Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954) with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. She did make notable appearances on television, including General Hospital, Perry Mason and Batman. Her last film appearance was in Watermelon Man (Melvin Van Peebles, 1970). Clarke fell on hard financial times towards the end of her life. In her 70s she worked in the ‘Court of Miracles’ show at the Universal Studios Tour in Hollywood. Clarke retired to the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles. She devoted her remaining years to her favourite hobby: painting in the style of Swiss abstract artist Paul Klee. Clarke was married and divorced three times: to Lew Brice, Stevens Bancroft, and Herbert Langdon. All of the unions ended in a divorce and were childless. Mae Clarke died in the Motion Picture & Television Hospital of cancer in 1992, aged 81. She is interred at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park, North Hollywood, California. Very rye and very honest, Clarke gave lengthy interviews in her last years to biographer James Curtis that resulted in the autobiography ‘Featured Player,’ which came out shortly after her death.
Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Danny (Pre-code.com), Find A Grave, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Final levee work is underway at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District's setback levee project near South River Road in West Sacramento, California, Nov. 6, 2014. Now that the new setback levee behind it is finished, crews are completing some of the last remaining work for the project by removing the old levee adjacent to the river. The work is part of the Sacramento River Bank Protection Project, a joint effort between the Corps and the California Central Valley Flood Protection Board to repair riverbank erosion along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. (U.S. Army photo by Todd Plain/Released)
NEWARK, Del. (Nov. 22, 2008) -- Villanova ran up 317 yards on the ground led by Aaron's Ball's 105 yards and two touchdowns as the Wildcats downed Delaware 21-7 Saturday afternoon at Delaware Stadium in the Blue Hens' final football game of the 2008 season. Delaware, which got its only points on a 34-yard scoring strike from Robby Schoenhoft to Martwain Johnston (above) in the final quarter, closed out a disappointing, injury-plagued season with a record of 4-8.
NEWARK, Del. (Nov. 22, 2008) -- Villanova ran up 317 yards on the ground led by Aaron's Ball's 105 yards and two touchdowns as the Wildcats downed Delaware 21-7 Saturday afternoon at Delaware Stadium in the Blue Hens' final football game of the 2008 season. Delaware, which got its only points on a 34-yard scoring strike from Robby Schoenhoft to Martwain Johnston (above) in the final quarter, closed out a disappointing, injury-plagued season with a record of 4-8.
NEWARK, Del. (Nov. 22, 2008) -- Villanova ran up 317 yards on the ground led by Aaron's Ball's 105 yards and two touchdowns as the Wildcats downed Delaware 21-7 Saturday afternoon at Delaware Stadium in the Blue Hens' final football game of the 2008 season. Delaware, which got its only points on a 34-yard scoring strike from Robby Schoenhoft to Martwain Johnston (above) in the final quarter, closed out a disappointing, injury-plagued season with a record of 4-8.
BOX DATE: 1991
MANUFACTURER: Mattel
DOLLS IN LINE: Skipper; Courtney; Kevin
BODY TYPE: 1987; articulated waist; half bent arms; bend & snap legs; flat feet
HEAD MOLD: 1987 "Teen Sweetheart"
PERSONAL FUN FACT written by my sister: The quest is over at last I am victorious! I have been seeking this beauty for over two decades! It is a long quest, fraught with setbacks, but the time has finally come for Pet Pals Courtney to be written about on our photostream because...SHE IS FINALLY PART OF MY COLLECTION.
The journey began shortly after my mother passed away. It was autumn of my freshman year, 2002. I'd gotten into Skipper and coveted both the new dolls in stores and the older ones, this style doll, that I felt nostalgic for. At the time, I only had two Skippers--one was a Teen Time Courtney I'd had since I was about six, but had no idea was Courtney (not having internet access or collector books at the time), the other was a redheaded Rio de Janeiro Skipper who I named Courtney. I knew Skipper had a friend named Courtney because, a few years prior, Shelly had a Totally Yo Yo Courtney (who she'd gotten rid of early on). At the time, I conceived Courtney as a redhead, Skipper as a blonde, and knew Skipper had an African American friend named Nikki (because I saw them in stores--Totally Yo Yo Nikki is another dream doll of mine). I was at a flea market we used to go to and I saw an early 90s Skipper with dark skin, dark crimped hair, and beautiful eyes lined with magenta. I didn't buy her the first time I saw her, because twenty dollars seemed like a small fortune to 15 year old me, but I did get her after a few weeks. Because she didn't fit my mental image of Nikki (who I pictured having the newer look of the girls still in the store) or Skipper, who I saw as a blonde, I had to give her her own name. I named her Robin and her story is told in another place (many places, actually, I talk about Robin a lot!), but it is because of Robin, who is a Pet Pals Skipper, that I found out about this line and about COURTNEY. I think that is probably how I found out Courtney was a brunette in her earlier years--because of the back of Robin's box. It is probably then that I realized my Daphne might actually be a Courtney. From then on, this doll was ICONIC. Like famous. I remember ogling her on the Kati's Dolls website. Sometime in my teen years, probably circa 2004, I actually got pieces that I knew had to go to this doll--some might even be the ones my doll is wearing here! I didn't have a collector's book and we still didn't have the internet at home, but I knew what these pieces had to go to. I even got the ball for her pet to play with! But, sadly, Courtney wasn't there. By the time we got our Ultimate Barbie Book in 2011, I wasn't surprised to discover that these clothes did go to Courtney. But I really wanted Courtney! I went on ebay many times over the years in hopes of finding one for the right price. I'm sure it can be done. I think I just never looked at the right time. Plus, by the time I had a little disposable income, I was investing a lot of it in the 18 inch fashion doll (go big or go home!). But I never forgot about Courtney. More than once, we'd be headed to the flea market and Shelly would say, "What do you hope to find today?" and I'd say, "Pet Pals Courtney" and she'd joke that that was really specific. Less than a week before my Courtney dreams came into fruition, we'd retaken all the Skipper photos for Flickr and I said, for the zillionth time, how much I wanted Courtney as I laid out the nicest clothing articles (by then I had duplicated clothing items, but still no doll) for the outfit photo. I didn't know how close I was to my dream coming true, but I hoped! And Shelly thought, "I feel like Colleen is going to have Courtney really soon."
The last Sunday in June 2024, we were out at the flea market. We were on that last stretch, when it's almost time to go back the way we came. Shelly had said, "I don't think we're going to find anything today." At the end of the aisle, we spotted a basket of dolls on the ground--90s by the look of them. Shelly is quicker than me. By the time I noticed the dolls, she'd already seen a Barbie wearing Courtney's outfit and, by the time I spotted the familiar spotted dress, Shelly had spotted the brown crimps. I was making the intuitive leap that my dream doll MIGHT be in that basket, when Shelly already had her in hand. I said, "Shelly, there's a Pet Pals Courtney outfit!" and she said, "I know! She's right here. Courtney's here!" The lady wanted five dollars for each doll. In today's economy when you can't get anything for less than three dollars, that doesn't seem bad for a doll you've wanted a million years. Back in 2002, shortly after I got Robin, I paid the same--five dollars each--for Vanessa (Cool Crimp Courtney), Margie (Hawaiian Fun Skipper), and Lydia (Babysitter Skipper). At the time, I thought that was forking over big bucks--which, believe me, I still think I got the better deal on Courtney. The flea market I got the other girls from was squalid, as were the girls. Lydia had frizz that looked scary and Margie was half bald. Courtney was an easy clean up and Shelly reckons that back when I was in my early teens, before doll hygiene became vital, I probably wouldn't have given her a bath, just brushed her hair out a bit and started playing. The disturbing thing is, Shelly is right. I shudder to think of it, but I may have did exactly that with the unkempt ladies I rescued in 2002 (don't worry, their hygiene standards have been met nowadays).
Pet Pals Courtney may not be a childhood doll. But she is a HUGE part of my childhood. I feel like getting her is similar to how I felt when, as an adult, I got Teen Time Skipper (to go with my four Teen Time Courtneys). At first, it was too good to be true. I couldn't stop staring. But now? Teen Time Skipper, who I named Avery, is part of the family. I feel like she's one of my childhood dolls any time I look at her. Because, in a way, Teen Time Skipper and Pet Pals Courtney were so much part of my teenage years, their faces so very familiar, that it's like meeting someone I've known for years! Courtney fits right in--I've just been waiting for her to finally come home!
==The Bowman Estate. Below==
Vreep. Vreep.
Vreep. Vreep.
Vreep. Vreep.
Once more, the bunker was quiet; the clacking of its sole occupant’s fingers tapping away at the keyboard had subsided and had been replaced by the rhythmic ringing of a faraway phone. The Riddler could barely contain his excitement; he was exuberant. Giddy. The progress bar was getting fuller; the download quicker. 67%. 68%. 69%. 70%. Soon he would be victorious, and every insult, every setback, every abject humiliation would be a mere footnote in his path to glory. But his victory rang hollow without an audience. Without him.
Vreep. Vreep.
Vreep. Vreep.
Vreep. Vreep.
Click.
Across the country, a gloved hand picked up their purple phone and placed it against their chalk-white skin. "Hello, Room Service,” their voice echoed from the speaker. Mirthful, but malicious. Amused, but annoyed.
A relieved smile broke across Nygma’s face, and he sang into the speaker, bending fully over the console to ensure that not a single spoken word was missed, misheard, or misinterpreted.
“Red and yellow but feeling blue,
No third dimension, so two will do.
He nuked a city, big and large,
So why was battery the charge?
Stripped of flesh and stripped of bone,
Bowman Mansion is where he’s home.
So, sign up, enroll accept your betters,
Or Arkham’s choosers will soon be beggars.”
Nygma paused, basking in the joy of a well delivered poem. He only wished that he could see the clown’s nose crinkle, watch the edges of his mouth droop downwards and his eyes flash with emerald fury. “I trust I have your attention now, Joker,” he addressed the monitor, fingers steepled, prideful tears filling his eyes.
The Joker responded, with his trademark irreverence. “Eddie? Eddie Ligma, is that you? I read your diary! I burned your diary,” his playful voice rasped through the speakers.
Nygma’s composure crumpled instantly, paragraphs of pre-planned banter vanished from his mind, and his proud smile turned to scornful rage. ”Nygma, you cackling cretin. It’s Nygma,” he hissed.
“Ligma taint, you dirty dog!” Joker cackled back.
Nygma stared hopelessly into the blank screen. He’d hung up.
==The Mothcave==
Drury lay something heavy, swaddled in a tartan blanket, in the trunk of his ‘mobile, then slammed the door shut. He patted Merry on the head one final time, then slid into the driver’s seat beside Gaige.
“Alright, ‘Baby,’ you sure you can drive?” Gaige asked.
Drury lowered the key, a puzzled expression on his face. “Of course, I can drive, why wouldn’t I-”
“I’m just saying, the last time you got behind the wheel, you created an arch nemesis,” Gaige reminded him.
“That wasn’t- that wasn’t the last time. I’ve driven since,” Drury muttered defensively, as the car revved into life.
“They let you keep your license?” Gaige leaned forward; his mouth open.
“No, they didn’t let me keep my license; I was a supervillain, I broke the law all the time. Besides, it was my first offence. Y’know, behind the wheel.”
“You killed a guy.”
“Yeah,” Drury conceded. “But I never got a DUI.”
Dissatisfied, Gaige leaned back in his seat. “No wonder you got into politics.”
They spent the next twenty minutes driving through Gotham’s backstreets in silence. The streets were empty; no cars, no civilians. Drury theorised Billings was redirecting energy elsewhere. It made sense; there was no point in wasting resources on assets that Drury would ignore anyway. As they neared the precinct, the eerie quiet was replaced with singing; a sopranos’ song echoed through the car, and Gaige’s attention turned to the dashboard.
“You turn on the radio?” he grunted.
Drury frowned. “No, I-”
He looked up, and his heart stopped. A man was standing in the middle of the road, head cocked inquisitively; and before Drury could change course, he had shot a wave of white light from his cane.
“Look out!” Gaige bellowed, taking the wheel. The car swerved, then flipped over; Drury climbed through the broken window, across shards of broken glass, then staggered upright. When he next looked up, the man was gone.
“How- how far’s the precinct?” he groaned, holding the back of his head.
“Four blocks, and company’s inbound,” Gaige answered, clutching the side of his chest and eyeing an amorphic mass on the horizon.
“Then we get to higher ground,” Drury resolved, as he opened the trunk, cast the blanket aside, and tied a huge, moth-shaped stencil to his back with a set of bungee cords. Gaige grabbed their weapons, pulled the ladder down on the nearest fire escape, and the duo began the ascent.
==The Bowman Estate==
Jenna reached the bottom of the shaft first, then helped guide Mayo down. They exchanged a few whispered words, then looked through the opening; Nygma sat at the console, his green jacket was placed over the back of the chair. Less neat was Kuttler’s body, which remained sprawled out at his feet. By now, the skin had turned pallid, and the muscles had begun to stiffen. That did not appear to bother Nygma however. Rather, it appeared to add to his jovial mood. Jenna knelt on the floor, frantically rubbing the ground in a desperate search for Tockman’s firearm, a task made more daunting in the dark.
“I believe you dropped this,” Nygma cut her search short, holding his arm out to reveal that the gun was back in his possession. “You really should be more careful about where you leave your toys. They’re a choking hazard. Mr Mayo could swallow them. In fact, I recommend it.”
Mayo looked at his feet, crestfallen. Jenna didn’t respond.
“Another time, perhaps,” Nygma smirked, swivelling his chair around. “Now, riddle me this.”
“The smartest man alive, he thought
He slighted me, though he forgot
My memory’s strong, thus I did not
And that is why I let him rot
These metal walls will be his cot,
Who was he?”
“Come now, it’s an easy one! Even your potbellied pickle-licker of a partner in crime can answer it, and he’s as brainless as a Moai, and twice as heavy!”
Jenna took a step forward, then Nygma tutted, the corners of his mouth ever-so-slightly downturned. “Please, I have an eidetic memory, did you think I couldn’t recognise a satchel?” he sighed. “Place the bag against the wall, I can’t abide untidiness. Carefully,” he ordered.
Askance, Mayo looked to Jenna for affirmation; she nodded firmly, and he positioned the bag against the South Wall.
Nygma gave a slight, approving smirk. “Now take one out. Quick as you can. Yes, pass it to Miss Duffy.”
Mayo’s shaking hands removed one of Tockman’s Time Bombs from the bag, then he handed it to Jenna.
“Show me the display. Good. Slide it across the floor, there’s a good girl,” Nygma said, intentionally condescendingly. With one hand still holding the gun, he picked up the Time Bomb and rubbed his free thumb across the interface, chuckling as he confirmed the light was out. “See, now wasn’t that easy?” he chuckled.
“You see what comes of accepting your betters? How hassle-free and painless it is to simply raise your hands in defeat, admit your cognitive shortcomings, and relinquish your free will to your intellectual superiors? But no, you sought to usurp me. You and all your ilk, with your tasteless gimmicks, and ridiculous costumes designed by that lecherous hippie. If not for the diluting of the costumed criminal, Gotham would have submitted to me years ago. The Riddler used to mean something. Supervillainy used to mean something. Now every insect with a dream, every child with a toolbox, every imbecile with a condominium worth of condiments thinks THEY CAN DO WHAT I DO?” The gun swung back and forth as Nygma’s rant reached its crescendo. The screen behind him glitched, and shifted, but he didn’t care to look.
“You’re a fraud,” Jenna responded, unfazed by his immature outburst.
“Hm?” Nygma snapped.
“Everyone thinks you’re a mastermind. A genius. But I’ve seen you for what you are,” Jenna stated. The panic was gone. It had never been there.
“And what is that?” Nygma humoured her.
“You’re the guy who flips the chessboard and says you’ve won. The guy who yells victory, after he shoots his enemies in the back. Go on, genius, where’s the brilliance in that? Heck, you’re worse than the Joker! At least he’s funny,” Jenna said mockingly. She looked at the screen, past Nygma’s eyeline. The bar had stopped at 87, and was now retreating, one percentage at a time.
“I’m not meant to be funny.” Nygma’s face had turned a deep puce.
Jenna laughed. “Well, at least you’ve got that right. Really, you’re just pathetic. I can’t tell if you were bullied too much or too little in school. I get it, I was a theater kid too, but you don’t see me calling myself the bloody Riddler.”
Nygma was dumbstruck. His mouth hung open, and his gun hand shook. And for the first time since donning his green suit and tie, The Riddler was speechless. It was brief, yes, but Jenna was certain she would never forget that gawping expression on his face. He could shoot her right now, and she would die satisfied. And as he contemplated what to do next, the monitor pinged. ‘Finally,’ Nygma thought. ‘Finally, he had breached Cobb’s firewalls.’ He regained his composure and rested his back against the console.
“Now, that is funny,” he smiled. “All those words, and none of them mattered.”
“So, what shall it be first? Shall I drain your bank account and leave you penniless and destitute? Oh! Shall I message the GCPD with some very pertinent information regarding the Franco homicide case? Or shall I skip the preamble and send a missile to Arkham Island, wiping the board in one, brilliant masterstroke?”
He pressed the keypad, and nothing happened. An error message flashed on the screen, and his face fell. “What? The ping- I thought-”
He looked down at the Time Bomb and saw the blinking light. A blinking blue light.
“No!” Nygma flung the bomb forwards; Jenna and Mayo dropped to the ground, and the puck exploded into an orange fireball. The monitors glitched, replaying the same seconds over and over again. Kuttler’s final words blasted through the speakers like an anthem.
“YOU’RE NOT AS SMART AS YOU THINK. YOU’RE NOT AS SMART AS YOU THINK. YOU’RE NOT AS SMART AS YOU THINK.”
“What is this?” Nygma howled, pounding the keyboard, as he sought to turn off the screen, to no avail. His query was answered by a calm voice, attached to a holographic spirit.
“Your reckoning. Didn’t you see the signs?”
Riddler screamed, hurtling his chair at Cobb. Well, Cobb’s hologram.
Cobb looked back, with a look of pity, if anything. “I thought you were at least smarter than that.”
“It’s funny,” he smiled. “All of those words and none of them mattered.”
At once, Nygma realised the magnitude of his failure; if Cobb could control one bomb, then-
Boom. The strategically placed satchel erupted in one gigantic blast. The weak infrastructure gave way as seawater poured through the freshly made hole. Nygma stared on, near-paralysed by despair, as water creeped up his ankles. The servers groaned and fizzled as water dripped and poured through their processors. Jenna ran to the ladder, and Mayo followed. Snapping out of his trance-like state, Nygma raced to intercept them, but a metal limb latched onto his ankle, dragging him back. Thick blast doors slid shut on Cobb’s command, separating him from his targets. “Unhand me! Release me you mechanical mongrel! I am The Riddler, and you will obey me-!”
“Obey you?" Cobb's voice crackled. "I lived and died following the orders of would-be conquerors. Never again.” By now, the water had reached Nygma’s shoulders, and his mouth was surrounded by seawater; with each protest, more saltwater slid down his throat.
“NO! I’M SUPPOSED TO WIN! I’M SUPPOSED TO WIN! I- IT’S NOT FAIR!”
==Above==
The bedroom; undisturbed since McCulloch had first dropped them off at the manor. The door creaked open, as the exhausted pair entered; Mayo flopped onto the bed, his arms limply lying at his side. Jenna lay against the mirror’s surface, content to wait for their extraction. For the nightmare to be over. The door opened a second time: Tockman entered the bedroom, his approach heralded by the unfortunate squelching of sauce-spoiled soles. No fight left in him, he fell against the bedroom wall, and he caught his face in his hands. Just as weary as he was, Jenna stayed sitting on the floor, watching Mayo’s chest rise and fall atop the king-sized mattress.
Once more, the bunker was quiet.
~-~
Drury reached the top of the fire escape first, then gestured for Gaige to stay put. He closed his eyes and exhaled as he approached. Their assailant was sitting atop an AC unit, tapping his cane against the ground as he hummed Jonathan Freeman’s villainous reprise of ‘Prince Ali.’ The Music Meister. Sly. Sonorous. Sociopathic. The architect of Blackgate’s bloodiest prison riot. And the reason Drury couldn’t walk straight.
“Did somebody say encore?” Meister teased, caressing the inbuilt microphone on top of his staff. Gone was the music teacher’s long scarf and knitted sweater, replaced with a long purple overcoat with lime accents and a large, feathered hat.
“This is just another illusion,” Drury continued onwards.
“Is it? Is it really? Tch, you take one tumble off a balcony, and it’s like they forget every lesson you ever taught them…” Meister tutted. “You’re in my world now, not your world. Have you met my friends on the other side?”
An all-too-familiar fluttering of mechanical wings from above caught Drury off guard; what blindsided him further was their wearer. The suit was a darker shade of purple, the silver mask had a sharper brow, and the lenses were a ruby-red, but the figure was unmistakenly Killer Moth. Ruling out an out-of-body experience, that left only one option:
Drury gritted his teeth. “Twag.”
Daniel ‘Danto’ Twag. In life, he thought of himself as the original Killer Moth; in reality, he was a sick man whose obsessions got him killed, resurrected, and finally, driven to suicide. Drury was getting real sick of these reunions, and he suspected the worst was yet to come. Running for cover, Drury dove behind the AC unit the Meister was previously sitting on. The dual barrels of Twag’s wrist-mounted guns shone with yellow energy, then set the rooftop alight, unleashing an unrelenting barrage of high voltage projectiles. Drury stayed hidden, desperately screwing a cocoon capsule onto the base of his gun, but it was too late. Twag flew above him; wrist guns pointed squarely at his head. Then, he stopped.
A rusty hook buried itself in Twag’s sternum, grayish blood trickling from the wound. Cautiously, Drury peered over the edge; Gaige was in his wetsuit again, holding the speargun presently embedded in Twag. And with a firm nod, Gaige pulled.
“Get the FUCK over here.”
The cable receded into the gun with such force that Twag was torn in two; his waist careened off the roof onto the empty streets below, his torso landed on top of the AC unit, wetting it with gray blood.
“How many more are you expecting?” Gaige asked, keeping watch as Drury looted Twag’s person.
Drury sighed, strapping the second of Twag’s guns to his wrist. “Enough to fill a graveyard.”
As it turned out, Drury’s estimate wasn’t far off. Whilst they were battling Twag, the mob had climbed the fire escape on the neighbouring buildings and were now close enough for Drury to identify the faces in the crowd. Some he knew better than others, but they all held a significant axe to grind against him, his friends, and his family. Among them were:
Roy Reynolds. The Getaway Genius. Spent all his life running; died trying to escape the Secret Society’s judgement.
Christopher Weiss. Slipknot. Classic case of wrong place, wrong time; took an elevator ride with Drury, paid for it with a black arrow through his skull.
Jim Garth. The Blaze. Oh, Jim. His only crime was his concern for Drury’s unorthodox parenting. And Drury had responded by defenestrating him out of a Gotham High-Rise.
Elliot Caldwell. Wrath. A cop killer who allied with Drury’s old man to take over the Gotham Mob and had ended up sleeping with some very big fishes.
Clifford Walker. Mr Moth himself. An abusive father and a power-hungry gangster, Walker’s short-lived alliance with Ted Carson had jaw-dropping consequences for everyone involved.
Onomatopoeia. Though Drury’s stepfather, his loyalty seemingly lay with whoever could hurt his stepson the most, having partnered with Charaxes, Mr Moth, Carson, Twag and the Secret Society across his explosive career.
Arthur Brown. Cluemaster. Not dead, but after a run-in with Bane, he might as well have been. Currently strapped up to a life support machine in a supermax prison; concurrently, throwing a dozen gas pellets in Drury’s direction.
Bartholomew Meagan. Doctor No-Face. The face-switching surgeon who’d taken Carson’s mug to replace his own. Bridget Pike had thrown him from The Belfry during a fist fight for her father’s face.
James Carter. The ill-named Mr Incognito; Gaige’s right-hand man, until the Black Mask made him a better offer, then had him dissolved by:
Preston Payne. The third Clayface, after Karlo and Hagen, and three times the threat they posed, thanks to his protoplasmic touch, although it did little to defend himself from an axe to the dome.
Lightning Bug I. Simon’s predecessor with a penchant for frying his victims from the inside. His tenure as a Misfit ended prematurely and bloodily when he blew up an apartment block to get Batman’s attention.
Zodiac Master. The self-proclaimed arch enemy to the Human Magnet, and whose frequent professions of love to Magpie, were at best unreciprocated, and at worst, met with vomit-inducing disgust. After various unsuccessful attempts to win her heart, he had his back blown out by the supervillain Codpiece.
Irving Norbet. Planet Master. Zodiac’s chief cheerleader, lackey and, although he would never have admitted it, his only friend. That didn’t stop him from erasing Norbet’s mind and hijacking his body though.
Professor Hugo Strange. The monster who experimented on Drury's brother and let Arkham fall to ruin.
There were others too, of course; Ray Salinger, the Birthday Boy; Telman Davis, The Hooded Hangman; Deacon Blackfire, who had officiated Drury’s wedding and half a dozen sacrifices in God’s name; Davey Franco and Iron-Hat Ferris, even Jumbo Carson had made it in. Billings had evidently been watching closely, counting the dead, slowly adding them to this macabre parade of corpses.
And they were all standing between Drury and freedom.
“I can see your future.”
“It’s written in the stars.”
“Jss fc ih.”
“You’ve no fire.”
“No spark.”
“And if you think you can walk away-”
“You’re clueless.”
As Drury raised his gauntlets in front of him, a single red web latched onto Arthur Brown's capsule, enveloping the rooftop in smoke.
“What-?”
“I can’t see! I can’t see!”
“Fuck that, I can’t breathe!”
“Get him! Get that fucking-!”
Just as quickly as they had formed, the clouds parted, cleared by the twin turbines of Garfield Lynns’ wingsuit. He was followed by Chuck and Joey in the air, and Ten and Fiasco on foot. Needham dropped down from a web-line, then rejoined the rest of the group. Just as Drury had begun to process this, Gar lowered himself to the ground and made a direct beeline for him.
“Gar-” Drury stammered, the only word he managed to get out before he was embraced in a tight bearhug.
“Don’t ever do this again,” Gar warned, hugging tightly.
“Do what?” Drury wheezed.
“All of it? None of it?” Gar laughed, then squeezed even tighter.
“Gar- Gar- You’re pressing really fucking hard,” Drury grunted, as he finally broke free of his grip. "What are you all doing here, what- Len!” he gawped, looking at the assembly of mercifully friendly faces and suddenly feeling a similar urge to hug; one Fiasco did not reciprocate.
“Hey, ease up on the PDA, would you?” he teased. “I don’t know where you’ve been.”
"What’s the play, Walker?” Needham asked.
“I have to get to the GCPD,” Drury replied, twirling around to show the group the metal moth plate he had made. “If I can get this onto the signal, I think the spell breaks.”
“Oh, that’s not so bad, the GCPD is just over-”
Joey’s eyes followed the light from the spotlight over to the precinct, past the sea of undead supervillains, and immediately realised Drury’s dilemma, ending his sentence with a much less optimistic ‘there.’ Gaige patted him on the back.
“Dru, we could be talking Elm Street rules here. If we die here, we could die in real life,” Gar theorised.
“Or it’s like Inception. We die in the dream, we wake up in Arkham,” Drury countered.
“Is that how it worked? I never really got that film,” Joey admitted.
“Believe me, it’s a lot more difficult when you can’t see the screen,” Ten responded.
“Alright…” Chuck paused. “What are we thinking?”
Gar rolled his shoulders and adjusted the nozzle of his flamethrower. “That it's cheaper than therapy.”
Chuck nodded to Drury, lowered his visor over his eyes, and with no words needed, but two in his head, led the charge against the damned. The eight of them fought with everything they had. Nothing held back, no holds barred. Gaige plunged two knives into Zeiss’ eyes. Needham’s spinning kick knocked LaMonica off the ledge, then webbed him up against the side of the adjacent office block. Fiasco stood on Jumbo, then cleaned his shoe with a wet wipe with insulting indifference. Joey’s blade tore through Ramsay Rosso’s wrist, cauterizing it, then he speared him through his chest. Zebra Man was engulfed in a fireball; black, gray, and charred all over.
Drury kept moving.
Chuck dodged a punch from Artie and responded with a furious haymaker. ‘Arm’s still broken,’ he remembered a little too late, holding his stinging shoulder. ‘Of course, why wouldn’t it be?’ Suddenly, a burly arm reached out, and lifted him up by his neck, wide eyes poking out from behind the assailant’s burlap sack. Salinger. Chuck shone his chest light in his eyes, blinding him temporarily. Stunned, the Birthday Boy dropped him. Chuck staggered upwards, shooting him a quiet glance, then flew back into the fray, carried by his kite.
Reynolds fell off the roof, cracking his head off the fire escape as he plummeted. Weiss misjudged the distance between one roof and the next and hung himself with his own ropes as he too fell.
Drury kept moving.
Needham’s web latched from Gar’s wingpack to Joey’s to Chuck’s kite; propelling him forwards, he leapt onto Comb’s jetpack, fired two web-bombs into his jet turbines, then dropped to the ground; watching as Combs crashed through the nearby skylight. His respite was short-lived, however.
“Blam Blam. Blam. Blam,” Onomatopoeia telegraphed his ambush, firing bullet after bullet until Needham found a window, and clogged up the barrels of his twin pistols with his webs.
“Click.”
“Click?”
“Thwip-Thwip, motherfucker,” Needham hissed, before a roundhouse kick knocked him down.
Drury kept moving.
Blackfire’s knife went through Ten’s palm. He didn’t feel it. “Oh, shut the hell up,” he snapped, cold cocking him with his free hand. Next, a stun baton to his ribs took him by surprise. Instinctively, Ten swung his fist backwards, hitting something. Hard. There was a squelch, then a thud, as Lyle Bolton hit the ground, a pronounced crater in his skull. “God,” Ten gasped, shaking the blood off his prosthetic, then chasing after the others.
A blade stuck into Fiasco’s calf. Gagsworthy chuckled, waggling a second butter knife mischievously. Fiasco grunted in mild amusement, then grabbed the scruff of the jester’s neck, and threw him down a ventilation duct.
Drury kept moving.
A skeletal hand grasped Gar’s ankle, and with superhuman strength, plucked him from the sky; Gar rolled across the gravel roof before colliding with a cell tower. The creature approached the stirring Firefly and grabbed his arm. “Lynns.”
“Al,” Gar replied groggily.
Gar’s suit was heat resistant, but only up to a point. Doctor Phosphorus was that point. As his fluorescent claw squeezed Gar’s wrist, the suit melted away, and fresh blisters burst forth from his cracked skin. If he had held on for much longer, Gar’s hand would liquify like ice cream in the midday sun.
Fortunately, Phosphorus didn’t get that chance. His hand went limp; he spat up irradiated blood, and as Gar looked up, he saw a still-melting crowbar protruding from his hollow eye socket. Gaige harmlessly knocked Phosphorus to the ground, then helped Gar to his feet.
Drury kept moving.
Zodiac summoned a large bull, a Taurus, from his costume; Drury ripped the Monarch’s cape off of his shoulders and waved it like a red flag, redirecting the faux bull into the path of another dozen approaching villains. Norbet suffered the brunt of it; even now, paying for Zodiac’s mistakes. Fiasco sprayed an aerosol can into Zodiac’s eyes, blinding him. He clicked his heel into the ground, and a blade sprung from his shoe, slashing his knee. Zodiac ripped a Pisces from his suit, but all it did was hasten his own end. Fiasco ripped it from his grip and smacked the silver fish against the conman’s head. He tasered the Monarch with his own scepter, then cracked the staff across his knee. Gaige slammed his head against Hangman’s with savage repetition, caving in his skull with his diver’s helm.
Carter howled as he was shoved headfirst into Payne’s awaiting palm. Gaige didn’t stick around. Meagan gurgled as Drury’s fist struck the place his nose should have been, uttering an incomprehensible cry of “Uueh. I fce,” as he hit the floor. Meister’s cane flew into his face, demolishing his already crooked teeth and preventing him from singing another ballad.
Drury kept moving.
Gaige lodged his knife into Mister Moth’s throat and twisted it. Drury winced as he watched his dad gurgle bloody breaths but kept fighting; encasing Blaze with one cocoon capsule and melting through The Moth’s shin with another. Gaige grabbed Cliff Walker’s pistol and tossed it to his son. Putting it to good use, Drury ducked behind a hi-vac unit and shot The Tally Man between the eyes, then traded his dad’s gun for the hitman’s twin uzis. Seeking retribution, Billy Garth instead swallowed a flurry of ammunition, courtesy of his father’s killer.
A Wratharang cut one of Gar’s fuel lines. Caldwell. They exchanged blows for only a few seconds, before Gar grew tired and set his cape alight, then kicked him into the stampede, igniting the crowd. Next, Franco swung at Gar; he flew out of the way, smoke spurting from his wingpack, and Franco fractured his hand on Ferris’ iron-hat. Before he could respond, Ferris was broiled by napalm from Joey’s wrists. Chuck and Ten grappled with Strange, the latter finally knocking him out with a glasses-shattering strike.
Just as The Misfits had regrouped, a yellow lightning blast put them on the backfoot. Lightning Bug. Joey held his firesword in a batting stance, prepared to swat away any more lightning blasts, Gar’s sticky bomb tore open the Bug’s helmet. A web bound one arm; a cocoon charge caught the other. And Fiasco’s shotgun did the rest. Drury saluted his Misfits, unbuckled the metal, moth-shaped symbol from his back, tucking it under his arm, then began the final leg alone. Killer Moth leapt from rooftop to rooftop, the light of the signal reflecting in his eyes like silver moons. He jumped onto the GCPD roof; arm outstretched in preparation.
But The Demon’s Head had other plans.
His blade tore through stretched ligaments, then twisted. Drury’s momentum was halted, and he collapsed mere feet from the signal. The silver stencil fell from his arm; a black shoe kicked it aside. The Demon stepped in front of the spotlight, a thin smile on his gaunt features, then he twisted the lever downwards. “It appears your escape plan, was defective. Not unlike yourself.”
Drury had stopped moving. He couldn’t move. Blood spurted from his leg like a fountain, and as he struggled to drag himself forwards, The Demon raised his sword above his head like an executioner’s axe. Drury closed his eyes, his thoughts on his Tiger Lily, as he silently prayed for her understanding. Her forgiveness.
His prayers were answered with a sword through Ra’s Al Ghul’s chest.
The Demon’s blade clanged onto the ground, green eyes widened in shock, as he tilted his head back towards his attacker. “You betray your oath?” he hissed, blood trickling down his chin.
“I’m beholden to a far greater vow, Great One,” The Demon Slayer answered. She swung her blade upwards, and split Ra’s from belt to brain in a single stroke.
“I said ‘I do,’” Miranda finished, stepping over The Demon’s bisected body, and collecting the metal moth sigil. As she finished fixing it to the police spotlight, Drury finally spoke up.
“You can’t- You’re not… You’re an echo, Tiger Lily,” he croaked, eyes brimming with tears.
Miranda knelt beside him, lifting the helm off his head, and running a gloved hand through his brown hair. “We are both echoes,” she said softly. She guided Drury’s bloodied palm onto the lever, and they pulled it together. Blinding light filled Drury’s eyes and when it faded, he was standing in the concrete confines of Arkham's auditorium.
Peering over the balcony, Billings panicked. Still clutching his severed prosthetic, he was kept upright only by clutching the metal railing before him. “Really now, I had no idea this was what they- I mean, uh, have you ever tried saying no to Joker? Because I-”
“Billings?” Drury asked, not shifting from his spot. “Run.”
His delivery was low, in a tone Billings had never heard Drury use before; not with Thawne, nor with Sims. Billings understood him completely, that it was not Drury talking, and it wasn’t the moth. It was the killer. And that 'run’ wasn’t a request, or even a warning. It wasn’t a threat; threats are extortion, a warning by another name, and Billings had nothing to offer. “Run” was an order, because the alternative was slow, excruciating, and utterly, utterly deserved.
“Good idea,” Billings nodded, his bottom lip quivering. “I- Oh.”
He had turned right, directly into the path of the Misfits. Fiasco pointed his shotgun squarely at his chest, and Billings flinched, beads of sweat dripping from his uncombed orange hair. “Ah, hell,” he lamented glumly. “No one appreciates cinema nowadays.”
“Hey, Del,” Fiasco replied. “Cheers.”
Fiasco lowered the gun away from his torso, a motion that lulled Billings into a false sense of security, then he blasted through Billings’ kneecap. He let go off the railing, collapsing into a screaming heap on the ground, nursing his bloodied leg; askew, the fractured bone protruding at a 45° angle from where it should have been.
Suddenly; the lights switched on, canned applause filled the room, and the curtains parted, projecting a flickering image of a handmade puppet of-
“Drury-?” Chuck gestured to the screen. Drury spun around; his expression hadn’t changed, he didn’t say a word, but his fist tightened.
“This episode has been brought to you by unprocessed trauma, uncensored violence, oh, and the letter M. If you or your loved ones have been affected by any of the issues raised tonight, please seek out your nearest icepick, pistol or Smylex Distributor! You’ll feel so much better.”
Drury walked slowly up to the screen, his face cloaked in shadows, and he whispered a single, hate-filled word.
“Run.”
The way to the State contract
Although the Allies declared the restoration of Austria as an independent state to one of their war aims already in the "Moscow Declaration" in 1943 and Austria was designated the first "victim" of Hitler's policy of aggression, after 1945 the way to a State treaty became difficult and was marked by repeated setbacks. This was mainly due to the disagreement between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. In the beginning of the "Cold War", Moscow feared that an independent Austria could enter into a military alliance with the Western powers. In addition, the Soviets repeatedly pointed out that the State Treaty alone would not provide sufficient protection against a renewed attachment of Austria to Germany and the associated threat of war, and therefore made its signature dependent on a solution to the "German Question" (Germany was divided in West Germany and East Germany, the latter one controlled by the Soviet Union). It was ultimately Stalin's death on 5 March 1953 that made movement on the Soviet side possible. In February 1955, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in a speech to the "Supreme Soviet" for the first time suggested the solution of the absolute package deal between the Austrian State Treaty and the German Question. In March Molotov invited Chancellor Raab to Moscow for negotiations. These negotiations in April, where in addition to Raab also Vice Chancellor Adolf Schärf, Foreign Minister Leopold Figl and State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, Bruno Kreisky, participated, should then bring the breakthrough. The talks took place in an excellent mood, and the diplomatic skills of the Austrian negotiators were praised by both the Soviets and Western diplomats. In the final communique - the "Moscow Memorandum" - a "speedy conclusion" of the State treaty was also promised. Austria agreed not to join a military alliance or to allow military bases of foreign power on its territory. The repayment by Austria of the "German assets" confiscated by the Soviets - a sum of 150 million dollars had been stipulated in the 1949 State Treaty Bill - could be made entirely in deliveries of goods. The oil production sites and the Danube steam shipping company should also get Austria back. Furthermore, the release of the remaining Austrian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union was agreed.
At the beginning of May, the "Conference of Ambassadors" began in Vienna, in which Figl and Kreisky participated in addition to the diplomatic representatives of the four occupying powers. In the process, the last obstacles should be removed and a conference prepared by the foreign ministers of Austria and the occupying powers. This "Foreign Ministers' Conference took place on May 14, one day before the signing of the State Treaty. The Foreign Ministers agreed to essentially adopt the 1949 State Treaty, and the in the "Moscow Memorandum" documented results of the Moscow negotiations include as annex. Austria's freedom from alliance should be guaranteed by the status of neutrality. It was agreed that this concept of neutrality should be defined precisely by diplomatic means. Figl also achieved that the third paragraph of the preamble, putting the blame on Austria for complicity, was canceled "for moral reasons". One of the first to congratulate the Austrian government on its success was German SPD chairman Erich Ollenhauer. Probably not unjustly he congratulated Austria for its "smooth diplomacy".
Der Weg zum Staatsvertrag
Obwohl die Alliierten schon in der "Moskauer Deklaration" 1943 die Wiederherstellung Österreichs als unabhängigen Staat zu einem ihrer Kriegsziele erklärt hatten und Österreich als erstes "Opfer" der Aggressionspolitik Hitlers bezeichnet worden war, gestaltete sich nach Kriegsende 1945 der Weg zum Staatsvertrag schwierig und war von wiederholten Rückschlägen gekennzeichnet. Dies war vor allem auf die Uneinigkeit zwischen den Westalliierten und der Sowjetunion zurückzuführen. Im beginnenden "Kalten Krieg" befürchtete Moskau, dass ein unabhängiges Österreich ein militärisches Bündnis mit den Westmächten eingehen könnte. Außerdem wiesen die Sowjets immer wieder darauf hin, dass der Staatsvertrag allein keinen ausreichenden Schutz vor einem neuerlichen Anschluss Österreichs an Deutschland und einer damit verbundenen Kriegsgefahr böte, und machten deshalb ihre Unterschrift von einer Lösung der "Deutschen Frage" abhängig (Deutschland war in Westdeutschland und die von der Sowjetunion kontrollierte Deutsche Demokratische Republik geteilt.). Der Tod Stalins am 5. März 1953 war es letztlich, der auf sowjetischer Seite Bewegung ermöglichte. Im Februar 1955 deutete der sowjetische Außenminister Molotow in einer Rede vor dem "Obersten Sowjet" erstmals die Lösung des unbedingten Junktims zwischen österreichischem Staatsvertrag und Deutscher Frage an. Im März folgte eine Einladung Molotows an Bundeskanzler Raab zu Verhandlungen nach Moskau. Diese Verhandlungen im April, an denen neben Raab auch Vizekanzler Adolf Schärf, Außenminister Leopold Figl und der Staatssekretär im Außenministerium, Bruno Kreisky, teilnahmen, sollten dann auch den Durchbruch bringen. Die Gespräche fanden in ausgezeichneter Stimmung statt, und das diplomatische Geschick der österreichischen Verhandler wurde sowohl von den Sowjets als auch von westlichen Diplomaten gelobt. Im Schlusskommunique - dem "Moskauer Memorandum" - wurde dann auch ein "schleunigster Abschluss" des Staatsvertrags in Aussicht gestellt. Österreich erklärte sich bereit, keinem Militärbündnis beizutreten oder Militärstützpunkte einer fremden Macht auf seinem Staatsgebiet zuzulassen. Die Ablösung des von den Sowjets beschlagnahmten "deutschen Vermögens" durch Österreich - im Staatsvertragsentwurf von 1949 war eine Summe von 150 Millionen Dollar festgeschrieben worden - konnte zur Gänze in Warenlieferungen erfolgen. Auch die Erdölproduktionsstätten und die Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft sollte Österreich zurück erhalten. Weiters wurde die Freilassung der noch in der Sowjetunion verbliebenen österreichischen Kriegsgefangenen vereinbart.
Anfang Mai begann dann in Wien die "Botschafterkonferenz", an der neben den diplomatischen Vertretern der vier Besatzungsmächte auch Figl und Kreisky teilnahmen. Dabei sollten die letzten Hindernisse aus dem Weg geräumt und eine Konferenz der Außenminister Österreichs und der Besatzungsmächte vorbereitet werden. Diese "Außenministerkonferenz" fand am 14. Mai - einen Tag vor der Staatsvertragsunterzeichnung - statt. Die Außenminister einigten sich darauf, im Wesentlichen den Staatsvertragsentwurf von 1949 zu übernehmen und die im "Moskauer Memorandum" festgehaltenen Ergebnisse der Moskauer Verhandlungen als Annex beizufügen. Die Bündnisfreiheit Österreichs sollte durch den Status der Neutralität garantiert werden. Man vereinbarte, diesen Neutralitätsbegriff auf diplomatischem Wege noch genau zu definieren. Figl erreichte auch, dass der dritte Absatz der Präambel, der Österreich eine Mitschuld am Krieg zuwies, "aus moralischen Gründen" gestrichen wurde. Einer der ersten, der die österreichische Regierung zu ihrem Erfolg beglückwünschte, war der deutsche SPD-Vorsitzende Erich Ollenhauer. Wohl nicht ganz zu Unrecht gratulierte er zu Österreichs "geschmeidiger Diplomatie".
www.historisch.apa.at/cms/apa-historisch/dossier.html?dos...
This 1" long piece of wooden dowel keeps the saddlebag set back, so the bottom doesn't rotate forward and interfere with my legs. The dowel is curve-beveled to mate perfectly with the seat post. The other end is fastened to the saddlebag with a screw, screwed in from inside the bag.
I would have used a longer dowel, but the leather strap isn't long enough to buckle with a longer dowel. I may replace the strap and dowel with longer ones for even more setback. Carradice saddlebags typically work best with lots of setback, by using a support such as a rack or a Bagman-type wire support. Without any setback, I feel that some saddlebags (especially Carradice) flop forward way too much.
Another view:
Well this has been a setback. The fuel pump we had fully rebuilt for the little bus has sat dry for around 6 years. We went to try and start the little Dodge and no matter what we tried we could not get the injection pump to delivery any diesel.... So off to Pattersons Diesels the pump went. A few hundred quid later I got it back looking much the same..... fingers crossed its happy and fully functional.
A scaffold erected around the St. Joseph, Michigan outer lighthouse was in need of adjustment after 50 mile per hour winds churned up Lake Michigan, and tossed the scaffold around. Workers here were carefully removing the scaffold that was "floating" in mid air.
to the left of my knee if you look careful a very small white mark. This is one of three areas where the surgeons went in to remove the loose cartilage that was floating around in my knee cap.
Knee injury running setbacks can be one of the greatest obstacles for middle to long distance...
Penobscot Bldg: Basement elevator doors
Upon its completion in 1928, the Penobscot became the eighth-tallest building in the world and the tallest outside New York and Chicago. Like many of the city's other Roaring Twenties buildings, it displays Art Deco influences, including its "H" shape (designed to allow maximum sunlight into the building) and the sculptural setbacks that cause the upper floors to progressively "erode". The building's architect, Wirt C. Rowland, also designed such Detroit skyscrapers as the Guardian Building and the Buhl Building in the same decade. At night, the building's upper floors are lit in floodlight fashion, topped with a red sphere.
Detroit Financial District #09001067 US National Historic
A wheel tractor-scraper attempts a u-turn during levee work April 30, 2012, along South River Road in West Sacramento, Calif. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District is working to complete a setback levee and install a seepage cutoff wall in the levee’s center, further reducing the city’s flood risk. (U.S. Army photo illustration by Todd Plain/Released)