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Midtown Manhattan, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Rising 43 stories in height and completed in 1931, 275 Madison Avenue is an outstanding Art Deco skyscraper dating from the end of New York’s 1920s and early-1930s skyscraper boom. Designed by noted architect Kenneth Franzheim, the building features a striking polished-granite base; three stories high with tall rectangular openings, it was treated by Franzheim as a “stage setting” with a compelling black-and-silver color scheme and rich abstract ornament. Rising above the base is a dramatically massed, slab-form tower that steps back repeatedly before narrowing to a nearly square plan at its upper floors.
Like the nearby Daily News Building completed the year before, 275 Madison is best described as a transitional work, bridging the exuberant, “modernistic” Art Deco style and the spare, sculptural qualities of the International Style. Franzheim’s “exclusion of obstructive ornament” was promoted as making the building’s interiors “virtually shadowless,” but it also adds to the tower’s streamlined effect and the vertical emphasis created by its alternating white-brick stripes and dark window bands.
No. 275 Madison Avenue was developed by Houston Properties, a New York-based firm founded by Jesse H. Jones, who built nearly all of the skyscrapers constructed in Houston, Tex. during the first half of the twentieth century. A nationally known figure, Jones also served as Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a position in which he was “probably the most powerful financial baron in the nation.” This building is one of a handful completed in New York City by Franzheim, an accomplished, versatile, and innovative architect who was a prominent designer of theaters, department stores, apartment houses, and office buildings. Famed photographer Berenice Abbott photographed 275 Madison as part of her “Changing New York” series, and it remains, to this day, one of the finer skyscrapers of the period.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Murray Hill
Completed in 1931 at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 40th Street, the building now known as 275 Madison Avenue stands at the northern edge of Murray Hill—one of Manhattan’s most prestigious old residential neighborhoods—where it meets the vibrant commercial district to its north formerly known as the “Grand Central Zone.” Generally extending from East 34th to East 40th Streets, and from Madison to Third Avenues, Murray Hill’s historic core lies several blocks south of 40th Street, on lands that formed the eighteenth-century country estate of Robert Murray and his wife, Mary. Roughly bounded on the south and north by present-day East 33rd and East 38th Streets, the Murray estate reached from the old Middle Road—near present-day Madison Avenue—to the Eastern Post Road, an old route to Boston located close to present-day Lexington Avenue.
Murray Hill’s development as a premier residential district was intimately connected with the construction of the New York & Harlem Railroad, which began in 1831. Prohibited from operating steam locomotives south of 14th Street, the New York & Harlem constructed a depot just south of Murray Hill, where passengers could transfer between steam trains and the horsecars that operated farther downtown. In 1851, the Harlem Railroad—together with the New York & New Haven Railroad, which ran along the same right-of-way—began converting their open railroad cut, completed through Murray Hill in the 1830s, into a tunnel. Covenants instituted in the 1830s and 1840s limited development on the former Murray estate to brick and stone dwellings, churches, and private stables, and prohibited uses that could present fire hazards, generate noxious odors, or draw crowds of strangers to the neighborhood.
Murray Hill’s residential development began in earnest in 1851-53, when three members of the Phelps family erected elegant and luxurious mansions on the east side of Madison Avenue between East 36th and East 37th Streets. By 1858, much of the area had been transformed, with most of its new houses purchased by merchants who owned businesses in Lower Manhattan and commuted to work via the Harlem Railroad or the Third Avenue horsecars. At the end of the nineteenth century, the neighborhood was home to members of New York’s most prominent families, including the Belmonts, Delanos, Rhinelanders, and Tiffanys. Today, Murray Hill retains much of its nineteenth-century character; most of the area bounded by East 35th and East 38th Streets, and by Park and Lexington Avenues, was designated a New York City Historic District in 2002, with a district extension following two years later.
The “Grand Central Zone”
By the late 1910s, strong commercial pressure was pushing down on Murray Hill from the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street, where the mammoth and bustling new Grand Central Terminal had been completed in 1913. So great were the expectations for the area surrounding the terminal as a commercial district and “notable center of artistic structures” that the area was christened the “Grand Central Terminal Zone” a year before Grand Central opened. By 1917, “the blocks immediately north and south of 42nd Street in the terminal zone [composed] one of the liveliest commercial quarters of the city,” and four years later, 100 million people—equal to the entire population of the United States—were passing through the terminal each year.
The Grand Central Zone emerged in the late 1920s as one of the city’s great skyscraper districts. As developer Irwin Chanin explained in 1929—the year in which his firm completed its namesake 56-story building at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue—the area possessed many advantages over the older Lower Manhattan business district from which it was drawing tenants. Compared with the Wall Street area, which had become “widely separated from railway terminals, hotels, clubs, theaters, and such important centers as the garment, fur, furniture, millinery, and jewelry industries,” the Grand Central area was much more convenient for “our typical big businessman [who] now lives in the Park Avenue district, in Westchester County, or on Long Island.” Skyscraper construction boomed in the Grand Central Zone in 1929; eight new skyscrapers totaling 249 stories were being readied for occupancy that year, including Warren & Wetmore’s 34-story New York Central Building , the Chanin Building, and the 44-story office building at 10 East 40th Street designed by Ludlow & Peabody and constructed by Houston Properties, the developer of 275 Madison Avenue. Five skyscrapers totaling 220 stories were being readied for 1930 occupancy.
Following the October 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Depression, office building construction slowed to a crawl in the Grand Central Zone, as it did throughout the city; No. 275 Madison Avenue was among the few skyscrapers begun in the Grand Central district in the crash’s aftermath. For a period of about fifteen years between the early 1930s and late 1940s, no new major office buildings were completed in the Grand Central Zone.
New York’s Art Deco Skyscrapers
America’s involvement in World War I, followed by a recession in the early 1920s, caused a construction lull in New York City, as in other parts of the country. By the mid 1920s, the economy had bounced back, and demand for new and larger commercial buildings was booming. Fifteen new office skyscrapers were erected in New York in 1925, and 1926 saw the construction of 30 more, an annual number that still had not been equaled 50 years later. This building frenzy lasted through the 1929 stock market crash, as construction went forward in the early 1930s on buildings that had already been planned and financed; although largely finished by 1932, the boom left behind a “rich array of towers,” many of them executed in what is known today as the Art Deco style. Indeed, several of New York’s most spectacular skyscrapers from this period—including the Chanin Building, the Chrysler Building , the Empire State Building and the General Electric Building , all designated New York City Landmarks, are among the country’s most significant examples of Art Deco design.
Into the 1910s, no limits on building height or bulk existed in New York City. In 1916, New York implemented the nation’s first zoning regulations, which permitted unrestricted height on one-quarter of a building site, but required skyscrapers to taper as they rose to allow light and air to reach the street. Six years later, architect and critic Harvey Wiley Corbett and architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss first published a group of dramatic renderings that explored zoning’s impact on the shape of tall buildings. Presented as a series of illustrations progressing from the abstract, pyramidal shape of the zoning envelope to a stepped-back practicable building form, these drawings were profoundly influential, catalyzing a trend in which “buildings endeavored to take on the feeling of sculpted mountains, their shape suddenly more important than their historical detail or even their style.” So pervasive were the new stepped-back skyscrapers that by the mid-1920s, architects and critics spoke of an emerging “setback style”; these buildings “helped to popularize an aesthetic of simple, sculptural mass that became the benchmark of progressive design.”
Another important influence on 1920s skyscraper design was Eliel Saarinen’s 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune’s new tower. With its straightforward shape, vertical emphasis, and limited ornament, Saarinen’s ahistorical design was “taken to be style-less and was thought in the twenties to have freed architects from what seemed the inevitable alternatives in skyscraper design, Gothic solutions on the one hand and vertically stretched Classicism on the other.”
During this period, the issue of what constituted “modern” design was expounded upon in the press and occupied the thoughts of many architects, who sought an appropriate means of expressing the societal changes brought about by new technology and manufacturing processes. A dichotomy existed, according to Ada Louise Huxtable, between the “modern” architecture of Europe and the “modernistic” new skyscrapers of New York:
‘Modern’ was radical, reductive, and reformist; ‘modernistic’ was richly decorative and attached to conservative and hedonistic values. ‘Modern’ was the austere, abstract, elite, avant-garde work of … [Walter] Gropius, Mies [van der Rohe], and Le Corbusier, united in its early days under the rubric of the International Style.
‘Modernistic’ was neither pure nor revolutionary; it fused the ornamental and the exotic for what was really the last great decorative style.
Only a handful of International Style skyscrapers were constructed in the United States before World War II. Far more popular was the “modernistic” style, which was later termed “Art Deco” based on its debt to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Flamboyant, dynamic, and dazzling to the eye, Art Deco’s primary characteristic was its “sumptuous ornament, and the lush textures and colors achieved by combining several materials, such as stone, brick, terra cotta, and metal.” Gilding and shiny materials were frequently used, and favorite decorative motifs, drawn from the natural world and geometric forms, included “spirals, sunflowers, steps, zigzags, triangles, double triangles, hexagons, fragmented circles, and seashells.” Inspirations included the products of the machine age—the gargoyles of the Chrysler Building, based on automotive radiator caps, are one example—as well as ancient and pre-industrial cultures; Art Deco representations of animals, fish, and humans reflected Cubist and folk-art influences. Frequently, facades were given a woven fabric treatment, in buildings including One Wall Street and the 21 West Street Building . Wall surfaces read as thin decorative veneers, as “stage sets” to a public infatuated with movies and the theater. Some architects made literal the theatricality of the Art Deco style, including Joseph Urban, whose Ziegfeld Theater imitated a stage on its facade, complete with proscenium and raised curtain.
The Art Deco skyscraper married the style’s exuberant, showy ornament to the tall building forms inspired by the 1916 zoning law and the Chicago Tribune competition. Like the movie palaces of the time, Art Deco skyscrapers had an accessible, comprehensible grandeur and were essentially conservative works; they maintained the conventions of past commercial skyscrapers. Ornament continued to be concentrated at the base and the crown, where brightly colored terra cotta ornament, highly polished stone, lighting effects, gilding, and other features attracted attention from near and afar.
As Art Deco was conquering New York, a new skyscraper form, the slab, emerged. Into the 1920s, the city’s tallest skyscrapers were typically constructed on enormous lots. These sites were big enough, as with the Chrysler Building, to allow for “geometrically pure” square, needle-like towers that broke free of their bases and pierced the sky. But as large lots became rarer and developers sought to construct tall office buildings on narrow lots, this approach became unfeasible; the square tower, if made too small, lost too much of its internal space to elevators. As a result, new skyscrapers on narrower lots took on a slab-like form, their long and rectangular upper stories seemingly extruded from their bases. The pioneering slab skyscraper was H. Douglas Ives’ and Sloan & Robertson’s 38story Fred F. French Building at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, which was constructed on a relatively small lot. But the master of the slab at the end of the 1920s was Raymond Hood, whose Daily News Building marked the most radical departure of any tall building from previous skyscraper form. Despite the rich Art Deco bas-relief over its main entrance, Hood’s building, with its artfully planned setbacks and flat, unornamented roofline, came closer to abstract sculpture than any skyscraper before; falling, in style, “between modern and modernistic,” it forsook the decorated crown of the Art Deco skyscraper and approached the purity of the International Style. Hood built upon his experience with the Daily News Building in designing another of the city’s great slab skyscrapers, the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center , which was completed in 1933. But with the Depression remaining entrenched and money for office buildings drying up, few Art Deco skyscrapers were completed in New York after Rockefeller Center, and the style, increasingly employed for government and institutional buildings, became considerably more restrained.
Jesse H. Jones and the Houston Properties Corporation
The builder of 275 Madison Avenue, Jesse Holman Jones was a towering figure in Houston, Tex. and Washington, D.C. during the first half of the twentieth century. Houston’s preeminent real estate developer, builder, and banker from the 1910s into the 1950s, Jones ensured the financial solvency of the Democratic Party in the 1920s, served under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and Secretary of Commerce, and amassed a fortune of a quarter billion dollars, most of which he left to charity.
Kenneth Franzheim
The versatile architect of 275 Madison Avenue, Kenneth Franzheim was a prominent designer of theaters, department stores, auditoriums, and office buildings.
History of 275 Madison Avenue
Before its acquisition for the construction of the 275 Madison Avenue Building, the site at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 40th Street was of the same exclusive residential character as the rest of Murray Hill. Although it was vacant in the early 1850s, three attached rowhouses—273, 275, and 277 Madison Avenue—each slightly less than 25 feet in width, were built there by 1862; they went on to serve, for decades, as “the homes of many distinguished citizens of New York.”
With the area just to the north developing into one of the city’s great commercial centers, business had infiltrated the row by 1920. In the 1920s, the area below Grand Central was evolving “into the city’s second most important financial center,” and in 1922, the New York Trust Company purchased, and opened an office in, the corner rowhouse at 277 Madison Avenue. In 1929, New York Trust purchased the lot at 275 Madison, giving it the adjacent parcel to its “uptown branch”; in April of 1930, Jesse Jones was negotiating with the bank and the owner of 273 Madison with the goal of “assembling … a site for a tall office building at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 40th Street.” Within a month, Jones had acquired the entire 74’-by-150’ corner parcel—which included two stable buildings at 24 and 26 East 40th Street constructed before 1910—and created the 277 Madison Avenue Corporation to undertake the building’s financing and construction. This move followed Jones’ standard practice, as he once explained, of creating new corporations to construct each of his buildings “so that if one building got into trouble, it would not involve any other.”
Plans were soon in place to construct the skyscraper originally marketed as 22 East 40th Street, but called, by the end of the 1930s by its current name, 275 Madison Avenue. In May of 1930, New York Trust received approval from state banking authorities to move its branch across Madison Avenue until the new building was completed, and in June, Kenneth Franzheim filed plans for the building, which had a projected construction cost of $1.25 million. In July of 1930, Houston Properties announced its plans for the new 505-foot structure. The building’s construction proceeded quickly, with excavation taking about a month, and structural steel completed in about three months, between early September and the middle of December. Leasing was also underway, with the American Bankers’ Association taking two floors in the new building. New York Trust would occupy almost all of the ground floor and mezzanine—its banking hall designed by Walker & Gillette—and the top three floors were leased by Kenneth Franzheim, along with two engineering firms. Franzheim maintained his office in the building while living at 1158 Fifth Avenue.
Perhaps because of the city’s gloomy economic climate, the Times repeatedly reported on 275 Madison as its construction progressed. At the end of July, the newspaper published Franzheim’s rendering of the building, and at the end of December, it ran a detailed article on this new “mammoth structure” in the Grand Central district. The Times ran additional short pieces when the American Bankers’ Association and New York Trust Company moved into the completed building in April and June of 1931, but Cross & Brown, the building’s agent, clearly faced a tough market, promoting not only the building’s location in the “Uptown Wall Street district” but also its value. In one advertisement, Cross & Brown explained how the skyscraper’s “superior floor arrangements” permitted one tenant to save money by renting a smaller space than it otherwise would have needed, and another advertisement promoted “the finest offices in the district at the price.”
Design of 275 Madison Avenue
Franzheim’s completed building is a distinguished example of Art Deco design. Considered one of the city’s notable skyscrapers of its time, it was described in one contemporary account as being “of novel aspect” and would be photographed in 1936 by Berenice Abbott as part of her famous “Changing New York” series, which chronicled the evolution of the city’s streetscape during the 1930s. Like many Art Deco skyscrapers, 275 Madison Avenue has a strikingly ornamented base; three stories high with tall rectangular openings, it was treated by Franzheim “as a sort of stage setting … related to the street.” With a compelling black-and-silver color scheme similar to those of the Fuller Building and Bloomingdale’s Lexington Avenue building , the base’s taut, polished granite skin is set off by bright metal door moldings, window frames, and faceted mullions. The motifs within its ground-floor windowsills, the stepped and starburst elements within the spandrels between the ground-floor and mezzanine windows, and the zigzagging molding around the Madison Avenue entrance to the first-floor banking hall reflect Art Deco’s affinity for abstract geometric forms. Unusual abstract ornament in contrasting unpolished granite also fills the space between the third-floor windows, implying a cornice; resembling folded fabric and reminiscent of Urban’s “raised curtain” on the proscenium-like façade of the Ziegfeld Theater, this motif reads as a valence or curtain over the “stage” of the base, particularly over the main, 40th Street entrance. At that entrance, lights concealed by angular shell-like sconces dramatically illuminate the bright metal ornament over the doors.
Rising above the base is 275 Madison Avenue’s dramatically massed slab-form tower, its vertical white-brick stripes likely inspired by Hood’s streamlined Daily News Building, which bridged Art Deco and the emerging International Style when it opened in 1930. As with Daily News—where Hood sought to conceal the windows to avoid the effect of a wall “shot full of holes”—these stripes alternate with dark window bands, which emphasize the building’s vertical ascent. The spandrels of 275 Madison are composed of grids of black terra-cotta tiles, and together with the windows, they form unified, mesh-like bands that were particularly visually effective with the building’s original multipane sashes. Above its base, 275 Madison Avenue is virtually free of ornament, except for simple black geometric motifs on and near its setbacks and crown; the “exclusion of obstructive ornament” around its flush-mounted windows and of “entablatures, architraves, pediments, cornices, and other conventional ornamental devices” reflected the emerging functionalism of the early 1930s and was promoted by Franzheim as making the interiors “virtually shadowless,” although it may also have been a cost-saving measure. Berenice Abbott likely saw the building’s clean, streamlined form as representative of modern New York City, juxtaposing it, in one photograph, against the fussy iron balconies and ornate ornament of the old Murray Hill Hotel.
Above the twelfth floor, the slab begins to step back from the streetwall. With fewer setbacks on its east façade than the west, the building’s main facade is asymmetrical, although this is barely noticeable from East 40th Street. Above the setbacks, the slab narrows considerably to a nearly square plan, which is largely a product of the 1916 zoning law and the building’s small site; unlike larger buildings’ square towers with their central service cores, this building’s elevators are grouped at the tower’s south end, making the most economical use, like most slab skyscrapers, of a narrow floor plate. Reflecting the increasing influence of the International Style, 275 Madison originally terminated with a sparely ornamented, flat crown, marked by little more than austere striped ornament, corbelled piers, and notches at its four corners.
Later History
Despite difficult economic conditions, Cross & Brown succeeded in attracting tenants to the building; in 1933, the Johns-Manville Corporation, then a major producer of asbestos-based building products, leased fourteen floors. Nevertheless, the Depression rapidly caught up with 275 Madison Avenue. It was clear that the Midtown office market had crashed by November of 1931, when the Times reported that three proposed skyscrapers in the Grand Central Zone—including a 65-story office tower planned by Houston Properties on Madison Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets—had recently been canceled. By July of 1932, Houston Properties’ building at 10 East 40th Street was in default, as was 275 Madison, which also had substantial unpaid taxes. In 1933, New York Trust took title to the building, but it remained “in arrears” in the following year.
Better times followed, as in 1943, 275 Madison was purchased by an investment group. In a transaction that was seen as a sign of a reviving Midtown real estate market, American Home Products, which was among the building’s investors, took a long-term lease on most of its top 23 floors and based its headquarters there. Eight years later, AHP sold the building to Tishman Realty & Construction, but it leased back its space—comprising all of seventeen floors and parts of seven others—from Tishman. At that time, 275 Madison had several major corporate tenants, including Procter & Gamble and Babcock & Wilcox, a large boiler-making concern; New York Trust and Johns-Manville also remained in the building. In 1961, American Home Products left the building for its own office tower, and its space was leased to other firms. In 1998, RFR Holdings , a subsidiary of RFR Frankfurt of Germany, purchased the building’s 98-year lease, and today, under the continued ownership of RFR, the 275 Madison Avenue Building remains an outstanding example of Art Deco architecture dating from the end of New York’s skyscraper boom of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Description
No. 275 Madison Avenue is a 43-story skyscraper composed of a three-story, black polished-granite base supporting a 40-story slab-form, setback tower faced in white brick and black terra-cotta tiles. The tower, which has both upper and lower portions, is topped by a non-historic penthouse. With a footprint of approximately 74’-by-150’, the building has two main facades, on Madison Avenue and East 40th Street. Although the building’s base has always had a black-and silver color scheme, the materials of the base’s silver-colored ornament—primarily, its window frames, mullions, door surrounds, and decorative spandrel panels—is difficult to determine because they are painted with silver-colored paint. Examination of one of the first-floor windowsills on the Madison Avenue façade, where paint has flaked off of the surface, indicates that the base’s metal ornament may be painted zinc.
Several changes were made to the building beginning in 2004. This work included the installation of a translucent green-glass panel and supporting metal framework over the main, 40th Street entrance, as well as minor alterations to the storefronts and storefront entrances east of the main entrance. The biggest change on the Madison Avenue façade was the removal of the historic, recessed Madison Avenue building entrance—which contained a wide transom bar crowned by two shell-like sconces that were likely identical to those at the 40th Street entrance—and the incorporation of the entrance recess into the adjacent storefront. Also at that time, the opening just to the north of this entrance was altered, with the removal of half of its decorative sill and the installation of a swinging door for a new automatic teller machine vestibule; pin-mounted stainless steel numerals reading “275” were installed at the northwest corner of the building, on both the Madison and 40th Street facades. A window-replacement campaign begun in 2008 resulted in the replacement of most of the sashes on the building’s tower with one-over-one, double-hung sashes.
All elements included below should be considered historic, unless described otherwise.
Base: East 40th Street Façade
This asymmetrical façade contains the building’s main entrance. It is eight bays in width, with the main entrance recess at the fifth bay in from Madison Avenue. The main entrance door set, consisting of metal-and-glass revolving and swinging doors, is not original to the building. Above the doors is a black metal transom bar, probably original, containing gold-colored letters, likely non-historic, reading “275 MADISON AVENUE.” This sign band is crowned by a large transom opening containing a window divided into five parts horizontally and four parts vertically. The lowest and highest quarters of the transom contain plain panels, possibly lighted from behind; the third quarter of the transom from the bottom contains five single-pane sashes. The second quarter of the transom from the bottom contains four identical decorative spandrel panels; each of these is fabricated of metal and contains abstract ornament resembling a skyscraper crowned by a starburst. The black “skyscraper” within each of these panels is executed in a contrasting ribbed material, possibly painted metal. Five abstract, angular sconces resembling seashells sit on the transom bar; the four flanking the central seashell contain partially concealed, non-historic light fixtures that project light upward. The transom also has four identical, faceted mullions that curve outward at their bases and extend from the transom’s base halfway up its length; two identical pieces flank the window, forming a partial surround. A larger, but similar faceted vertical piece at the center of the window is attached to a curving, prow-like projection and steps back twice near its peak. Metal grilles composed of rectangular geometric elements made up of thin metal members are attached to the lowest and highest quarters of the transom window. Five square, non-historic light fixtures are attached to the soffit of the main-entrance recess.
Flanking the main entrance on each side and attached to the main-entrance reveal is a recessed, rectangular light panel. Each panel is covered with a metal grille composed of rectangular geometric elements made up of thin metal members, with hinges, and a crowning star and keystone. The west reveal has a rectangular door opening containing a metal door with its historic handle. To the right of the door is a non-historic “no smoking” sign; below this sign are metal, individually mounted letters reading “22 EAST FORTIETH.” The east reveal contains a non-historic “no smoking sign,” a non-historic door buzzer panel, and a non-historic “for handicapped service” sign. Non-historic bright, reflective metal covers the corners of the main-entrance recess, where it meets the building’s front wall. A non-historic translucent panel composed of two pieces of green glass and metal attachments is installed slightly outward from the front building wall, and covers approximately the top half of the main entrance recess. It is attached to the metal-covered corners of the main-entrance recess with two non-historic metal rods and eight large non-historic metal brackets. Attached to the front of the glass are non-historic metal numerals reading “275.”
The base of 275 Madison Avenue is essentially flat, except for a slight, sill-like projection that extends the width of the façade. West of the main entrance are four tall openings. Each of these openings contains an identical metal window, each with an angled, non-projecting sill containing raised ornament in a simple geometric pattern; the raised portions of these sills are painted silver, and the recessed portions black. Each of these windows is split into three vertical parts, consisting of a ground-floor portion, a mezzanine portion, and decorative spandrels, identical to the “skyscraper” ornament of the main-entrance transom, separating the two. At the ground floor, the window is tripartite, containing a large central pane flanked by two slightly shorter panes; each of the shorter panes is headed by an almost-square, single-pane sash. The mezzanine portion of each window comprises five single rectangular panes. Projecting, faceted mullions extend from the sills to a point just above the spandrels; shorter but similar faceted projections begin above the central first-floor pane and separate the central three spandrel panels from each other. Although signage for the bank occupying the ground-floor space is visible through the windows, it is set several inches back, except for decals reading “Valley National Bank” that are affixed to the inside of the glass. Two non-historic signs reading “Valley National Bank” are also present at the ground floor west of the main entrance, as is a siamese connection. Above the westernmost window are non-original metal numerals reading “275.”
The spandrel and mezzanine portions of the three windows east of the main entrance are identical to those west of the entrance, except at the central of the three windows, where the central spandrel panel is wider than the others, and of a slightly different design. Other portions of these windows and their openings appear to have been altered, although the extent of this alteration is unclear, as no historic photographs of this portion of the base have been found. The central opening of the three windows contains, at its ground floor, a recessed entrance with polished black granite reveal, paved with non-historic beige ceramic tile and containing two non-historic metal swinging doors with sidelights and single-pane transoms. These doors are separated by a black metal pier; each is set at an angle and serves a different storefront. The soffit of this entrance recess is of black metal, with a non-historic single-tube fluorescent light fixture; the east reveal has an outlet box and lock box, both with conduit. Over the entrance is a non-historic metal box containing a security gate. Between this box and the spandrel panels is a split sash, its eastern half containing a single pane, and its western half containing a metal louver. The metal faceted surround of this window appears to be original to the building, although its sill, just above the security gate box, does not. Two non-historic metal blade signs reading “KODAK” and “food merchants” flank the central opening. An outlet box with conduit is attached to the façade just east of the entrance recess.
Within the easternmost opening, the portion of the window below the spandrel panels is split into two large single-pane sashes, with a non-historic metal bar separating them. Although the original faceted window surround remains, it may have been extended with additional metalwork to a non-historic metal sill. The opening two bays to its west appears to have undergone similar treatment, although the portion of its window just below the spandrel panels is split into two parts by a vertical bar. It is presumed that at least two of the openings east of the main entrance had decorative, angled sills identical to those west of the main entrance. A siamese connection is installed between the main-entrance recess and the third-easternmost opening; also between this opening and the main entrance are the ghosts of pin-mounted letters once identifying 275 Madison Avenue as the Johns-Manville Building.
A band of rectangular window openings—six to the east of the main entrance, and twelve to its west—exists at the third floor. Seventeen of these openings are filled exclusively with one-overone, double-hung sashes, which appear to be non-historic. The third-floor opening immediately to the east of the main entrance contains a one-over-one, double-hung window and a short metal louver, neither of which is likely historic. Contrasting, light gray abstract geometric ornament in unpolished granite, possibly painted with silver-colored paint, fills the space between these windows and forms a band over the main entrance. The East 40th Street façade of the base is crowned by two flagpoles, which extend at an angle from their attachment points on the top of the base’s parapet, and flank the main entrance.
Base: Madison Avenue Façade
The Madison Avenue façade of the base is similar to the East 40th Street façade. Asymmetrical and four bays in width, its second-northernmost bay contains a stepped-back, recessed main entrance to the building’s ground-floor banking hall. Among the features of this entrance are a metal revolving door with sidelights, probably non-original; a high, single-pane transom window; and a black transom bar with metal enframement separating the two. These are set within a historic surround comprising a thick metal molding with a zigzag pattern; a transom covered with an apparently non-historic black panel; and an enframement composed of faceted black metal panels within a silver-colored metal frame. The surround is crowned by a historic octagonal clock set within a stepped surround. Above the main-entrance surround is a four-part metal window containing four single-pane sashes.
The openings flanking the entrance are of identical width and contain spandrel panels that are identical to those on the East 40th Street façade. They are narrower, however, containing only three panels and three mezzanine-level sashes. The northernmost opening on the Madison Avenue facade appears to be in original condition, containing a large single-pane sash and retaining its original sill and faceted window surround. A decal advertising Valley National Bank is affixed to the inside of the window, near the sill. The opening immediately south of the banking-hall entrance has been altered, with half of the sill removed and an entrance to an ATM vestibule installed. Above the vestibule entrance and its adjacent single-pane sash, which has a decal advertising Valley National Bank attached to its inside, near the sill, is a large single-pane sash. Although an illuminated box sign is visible through this upper sash, it is set back from the window. The southernmost opening is similar in its upper half to the others; seven spandrel panels in width, it retains its projecting, faceted window surround and one of its faceted mullions, as well as the faceted vertical elements separating each of the spandrel panels. Metal louvers installed above the spandrel panels are likely non-historic. This opening contains additional non-historic infill, including a pair of non-historic glass doors with single-pane sidelights, crowned by a large, frameless, single-pane transom. Although this opening’s historic sill only extends across a portion of the opening, this may be the opening’s historic condition. South and north of this opening are two non-historic blade signs. Two non-historic signs reading “Valley National Bank” are attached to the façade.
As on the East 40th Street façade, a band of rectangular window openings—eight in all—exist at the third floor. The northernmost and fifth-northernmost of these openings contain paired one-overone, double-hung windows, and the other openings contain single one-over-one, double-hung windows, all of which appear non-original. Contrasting, light gray abstract geometric ornament in unpolished granite, possibly painted with silver-colored paint, fills the space between these windows. Above the northernmost window are non-original metal numerals reading “275.”
Tower
The three-story base of 275 Madison Avenue is topped by a slab-form tower that brings the building to a height of 43 stories, not including its non-original, two-story penthouse. The building’s white vertical stripes are composed of white brick; these alternate with dark window bands that have spandrels composed of grids of black terra-cotta tiles. Its window openings originally contained threeover-three, double-hung sashes; while a few of these remain, most have been replaced by single or paired, one-over-one double-hung windows. Some of the existing window openings contain non-historic metal louvers. The lower portion of the tower—approximately the fourth through 23rd floors—rises in a series of setbacks, different on each façade, to a narrow, nearly square upper tower, which comprises approximately the 24th through 43rd floors. Both the lower and upper towers are sparely ornamented, except for simple abstract geometric ornament in contrasting white brick and black brick or terra cotta within some of the spandrels and at some lintels. The entire tower has seen few alterations, except for the construction of the penthouse and the replacement of some brick with new white brick, particularly at the corners.
Lower Tower
On the main, East 40th Street façade, the lower portion of the tower is fourteen bays wide at the fourth floor, the first floor above the base. Its openings contain paired one-over-one, double-hung windows. A recessed six-bay-wide central portion is flanked, on each side, by four bays, forming a light well. The central portion proceeds up to the 21st floor, after stepping back at its uppermost four stories to form a two-bay-wide peak. Simple, abstract geometric white-brick ornament decorates the black spandrels of the central portion on its stepped-back floors, and projecting white piers flanked by bands of black brick or terra cotta crown the two uppermost windows. The bays flanking the central portion of the main façade step back above the twelfth floor, and again two floors above. Two bays of windows face into the light well up to the twelfth floor, with one of these bays continuing to the fourteenth floor. The twelfth-floor spandrels and lintels of the flanking bays are decorated with simple black-and-white geometric ornament; black lintel bands are present at the setback floors above.
The Madison Avenue façade is six bays wide at the fourth through twelfth floors. Above the twelfth floor, it steps back in a series of setbacks to the upper tower. Above the first setback, the windows change from paired one-over-one, double-hung sashes to single one-over-one, double-hung sashes. Seven south-facing windows exist on the setbacks, overlooking the adjacent building at 271 Madison Avenue. Ornament on this façade is similar to that of the main façade.
The partially visible east façade is flat, faced in white brick, and virtually free of ornament. It has several window openings containing one-over-one, double-hung sashes. This façade steps back from East 40th Street above the twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth floors. Above the 23rd floor, the entire façade steps back from the east plane of the building to meet the upper tower.
Upper Tower
The upper portion of the tower of 275 Madison Avenue is much narrower than the lower, slab-like portion of the tower. It is six bays wide on the East 40th Street façade, and five bays wide on the Madison Avenue and east facades. On the Madison Avenue façade, the openings of the two southernmost bays are filled with black panels. The south façade is eight bays wide, with window openings containing non-historic one-over-one, double-hung sashes within its three easternmost bays and an exposed vertical pipe set back from black, horizontal beams within the second-westernmost bay. The westernmost and third-, fourth-, and fifth-westernmost bays are composed of black vertical stripes. Some brick on the lower portion of the south façade of the upper tower is discolored, possibly by exhaust from the adjacent building to the south. All facades of the upper tower feature limited, abstract geometric ornament in white brick and contrasting black brick or terra cotta similar to that of the lower tower.
The upper tower originally rose to a symmetrical flat crown marked by notched corners and a parapet ornamented with black-and-white, chevron-like decoration and simple corbelled, projecting white brick piers. The roof has been altered with the construction of a two-story penthouse, which is primarily visible over the east and south façades. This glass-and-steel addition, featuring ribbon windows and chamfered corners, is topped by two levels of rooftop terraces with metal pipe railings. A vertical exhaust pipe is also visible over the east façade. Changes visible to the roof over the south façade include the removal of the tower’s southwest notch with the installation of a two-story-high white-brick addition, and the removal of ornament over the three window openings at the top of the south façade. Portions of the glass-and-steel addition are also visible over the easternmost portion of the south façade.
- From the 2009 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
There are hundreds of these interwar blocks of flats in inner London. Most are of unremarkable design, but when I came upon this one I thought it looked a cut above most. Then I remembered reading in Pevsner of some flats somewhere around here by one of the more distinguished Modernist practices. I looked it up when I got home. Yes, Henriques Street, south of Commercial Road, by Burnet, Tait & Lorne, 1934-5, Modernist flats for the adjoining Bernhard Baron Jewish Settlement, founded by Basil Henriques. The only trouble is Pevsner refers to Basil House, but this is called Batson House. This must be it though. I've been up and down Henriques Street on Google Street View and there is no other candidate. It adjoins the Jewish Settlement. There are, I think, three blocks like this ...so perhaps one of the others is Baron House. I like the pillars running through the landings, with an especially chubby one at ground level. The windows must be replacements. Henriques Street, by the way, used to be Berner Street, site of one of Jack the Ripper's murders. I think it was still Berner Street when I last visited in 1970.
1935 - 1938
Volvo adopted the streamlined trend of the 1930s and in 1935 introduced the PV36, popularly known as the "Carioca".
The car featured independent front-wheel suspension with wishbones and coil springs and a very sturdy all-steel body with rear wheel spats. The body not only looked modern, it was also very safe, as some serious accidents proved. Silent, smooth, expensive and slightly controversial, only 500 Carioca saloons were built and sold. One bare chassis was delivered on which Nordbergs built a convertible body. Top speed of the PV36 was 120 kph.
3.670 cc
6 in-line
80 bhp @ 3.300 rpm
500 ex.
Techno Classica 2019
Essen
Deutschland - Germany
April 2019
Anonymous
Vintage photograph
Undated
LOS ANGELES RAILWAY -1895-1945
During World War II, a fundraiser for the civilian poplation [sic] was War Bonds and Stamps. Streamlined streetcars No. 3016 was painted up in a special red-white-blue patriotic livery to promote sales. It was dedicated October 15, 1942 as the "Victory Express."
==================
The caption doesn't match the photograph, circa 1944.
This is clearly not a streetcar. It is a bus, "Old Look" (a retronym) model
GM TG 4006 built in 1944 by General Motors as Transit, with a Gasoline engine (and a Manual transmission) to seat 40 passengers, in unibody style 06 ( as opposed to chassis on ladder frame.) It never ran in the MTA or RTD fleet or even in Los Angeles because it is from Long Beach City Lines, a Lang Transportation company, now LBT is still located at the same corner of 1330 Cherry Ave. and 1963 Anaheim St., in Long Beach, California. The destination headsign of this coach indicates is route is eastbound to the Naval Hospital 7th st. terminus on the East, departing from Long Beach Harbor on the West terminus. It's fleet number is not 3016 as stated in the mismatched caption, but 562 the future area code for this bus, but way back when the 213 area code was Los Angeles COUNTY and the phone number was 32-171. Now the Long Beach Transit address is 1963 East Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA 90813, which is the same parcel of land.
A similar bus is pictured at
Also see:
dsc00176, Photo in MTA lobby with mismatched description of Long Beach City Lines, GM TG 4006 coach No. #562, E. Anaheim route terminus, Long Beach, CA.jpg
Steamtown, USA display of former Canadian Pacific non-streamlined 4-6-4 H1b Hudson (Empress) # 2816, with son Jeff standing by the rear 75" driver at the museum in Riverside, Vermont, August 1982. Jeff almost made to the height of the driver at his present height of 74 inches tall.
This Fox Theatre in Inglewood CA opened in 1949 and was built in a style that could best be described as Art Moderne meets Streamlined.
The theatre hasn't run any films since the late 70's and what is left on the exterior now is pretty much the architecture of the building and the outline of where the neon and marquee used to reside....... the interior isn't all that bad all things considered and with some funds and renovation this grand old theater would fit right in again with the rejuvenation that's been done on Market Street in Inglewood
Okay, I literally squeed with delight when I saw this streamlined old McCrory's Building. For those not who may not know, McCrory's was a five and ten cent store, ala G.C. Murphy's, Woolworth's, or Kresge's (And if you don't know what any of those are, then you're young!) The red sign and the light brick is a feature I've encountered on several McCrory's stores, but I've never seen one in this streamlined style. Unfortnately, I'm sure this place died long ago, as it is currently a thrift shop... I bought a hand held juicer for like 25 cents haha. :) I've been in one that was nearly original inside (with snack counter), but this one was pretty bland... and uh.. not original.
Canonsburg, PA
The Shape of Speed
Streamlined Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1930–1942
JUN 16 – SEP 16, 2018
Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum is pleased to announce The Shape of Speed: Streamlined Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1930–1942, a special exhibition debuting at the Museum in Summer 2018. Featuring 19 rare streamlined automobiles and motorcycles, The Shape of Speed opens June 16 and will be on view through September 16, 2018.
The concept of streamlining has fascinated people for generations. Beginning in the 1930s and extending until the outbreak of the World War II, automotive designers embraced the challenge of styling and building truly streamlined cars that were fast and fuel-efficient. They were encouraged by the confluence of aircraft design with the sleek shapes of fast railroad locomotives; new advanced highways such as the Autobahns; and events like the 1939 New York City World’s Fair, which showcased futuristic design.
The Shape of Speed presents a select group of rare automobiles and motorcycles that demonstrate how auto designers translated the concept of aerodynamic efficiency into exciting machines that in many cases, looked as though they were moving while at rest.
The Museum will display 17 cars and two motorcycles—the best of that era’s streamlined offerings—from Europe and the United States. Engineering drawings and period photographs will show some of the aircraft, railroad, ship and yacht designs that influenced the automakers.
Featured designers and engineers include European streamlining pioneer Paul Jaray, along with Richard Buckminster Fuller, Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, Harley J. Earl, Hermann Ahrens, Georges Paulin, Joseph Figoni, Dr. Wunibald Kamm, Otto Kuhler, Jean Bugatti, Hans Ledwinka, Gordon Buehrig, and others.
title.
The sound of the window. (With iPod shuffle 1st.)
Manhattan,New york, USA,2007 … 2 / 6
(Today's picture. That's unannounced.)
image.
DJ Q ….. Season's End
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Profile.
In November 2014, we caught the attention of the party selected to undertake the publicity for a mobile phone that changed the face of the world with just a single model, and will conclude a confidentiality agreement with them.
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2016/11/profile.html
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iBooks. Electronic Publishing. It is free now.
0.about the iBooks.
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2017/03/about-digit...
1.unforgettable '(ENG.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216576828?ls=1&...
For Japanese only.
2.unforgettable '(JNP.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216584262?ls=1&...
3. Streamlined trajectory.
itunes.apple.com/us/book/%E6%B5%81%E7%B7%9A%E5%BD%A2%E3%8... =11
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flickr . ( XL size )
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/
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My Novel >> Unforgettable'
(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
There are two reasons why a person faces the sea.
One, to enjoy a slice of shine in the sea like children bubbling over in the beach.
The other, to brush the dust of memory like an old man who misses old days, staring at the shine
quietly.
Those lead to only one meaning though they do not seem to overlap. It’s a rebirth.
I face myself to change tomorrow, a vague day into something certain.
That is the meaning of a rebirth.
I had a very sweet girlfriend when I was 18.
After she left, I knew the meaning of gentleness for the first time and also a true pain of loss. After
she left, how many times did I depend too much on her, doubt her, envy her and keep on telling lies
until I realized it is love?
I wonder whether a nobody like me could have given something to her who was struggling in the
daily life in those days. Giving something is arrogant conceit. It is nothing but self-satisfaction.
I had been thinking about such a thing.
However, I guess what she saw in me was because I had nothing. That‘s why she tried to see
something in me. Perhaps she found a slight possibility in me, a guy filled with ambiguous, unstable
tomorrow. But I wasted days depending too much on her gentleness.
Now I finally can convey how I felt in those days when we met.
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Fin.
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
_________________________________
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Title of my book > unforgettable'
Author : Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Out Now.
ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
in Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/Unforgettable’-Mitsushiro-Nakagawa/dp/...
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Schedule of the next novel.
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
2018. Spring. It's expected to open it. That's Japanese.
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2017.
Autumn.
Theme.
This must be the place I waited years to leave .
Place. Tokyo Big Sight.
Sponsoring. Design festa.
2018.
The uncertainness of date and time.
Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art Annex Gallery.
Place. Sakura-shi, Chiba.
Theme.
From that day ....
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Future's photography place.
2017.
Manhattan. New York. The United States.
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I went to New York 2007.
Day when Japan was left. March 9. Afternoon.
Day where it returned to Japan. March 14. Afternoon.
I am in Japan now.
The photograph in New York starts as follows.
www.fotolog.com/stealaway/22748231
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Japanese is the following.
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YouPic
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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タイトル。
窓際の音。( with iPod shuffle 1st.)
( Nikon cooplix 8700 shot )
次の小説のイメージ。
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
（いつまでもなくならないだろう）
Manhattan,New york, USA,2007 … 2 / 6
(今日の写真。それは未発表です。)
image.
DJ Q ….. Season's End
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プロフィール。
2014年11月、たった1機種で世界を塗り替えた携帯電話の広告を請け負った選考者の目に留まり、秘密保持同意書を結ぶ。
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2016/11/profile.html
_________________________________
_________________________________
iBooks.電子出版。（現在は無料）
0.about the iBooks.
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2017/03/about-digit...
1.unforgettable’ ( ENG.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216576828?ls=1&...
For Japanese only.
2.unforgettable’ ( JNP.ver.)(この小説は未来のアーティストへ捧げます)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216584262?ls=1&...
3.流線形の軌跡。
itunes.apple.com/us/book/%E6%B5%81%E7%B7%9A%E5%BD%A2%E3%8...
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_________________________________
僕の小説。英語版
My Novel Unforgettable' (This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .
1/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24577016535/in/dateposted...
2/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24209330259/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/23975215274/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24515964952/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24276473749/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24548895082/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24594603711/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24588215562/in/dateposted...
9/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24100804163/in/dateposted...
Fin.
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
_________________________________
_________________________________
Title of my book > unforgettable'
Author : Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Out Now.
ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
in Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/Unforgettable’-Mitsushiro-Nakagawa/dp/...
_________________________________
_________________________________
次の小説の予定。
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
（いつまでもなくならないだろう）
２０１８年。春。公開予定。それは日本語です。
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２０１7年。秋。
テーマ。
This must be the place I waited years to leave .
場所。東京ビッグサイト。
Sponsoring. Design festa.
２０１８年。
日時未定。
DIC川村記念美術館付属ギャラリー。
場所。千葉県佐倉市。
テーマ。
あの日から、ずっと…
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今後の撮影地。
２０１７年。
マンハッタン。ニューヨーク。アメリカ。
_________________________________
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I went to New York 2007.
Day when Japan was left. March 9. Afternoon.
Day where it returned to Japan. March 14. Afternoon.
I am in Japan now.
The photograph in New York starts as follows.
www.fotolog.com/stealaway/22748231
_________________________________
Japanese is the following.
_________________________________
_________________________________
YouPic
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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HAPPY DAYS ! Very much more so..................................................
GM Buses saw fit to compare their new air suspension coach seated Olympians to icons such as Concorde and Sir William Staniers Streamlined Coronation pacifics and the VSOE! and these were some of the posters promoted the Express network.
Norfolk Southern operated Norfolk & Western streamlined J class 4-8-4 Northern steam locomotive # 611, with it's railfan train is seen in the yard at Atlanta, Georgia, October 1989. This is big time Eastern steam power at it's best. Located on the left side of the photo is a fire hose providing water to top off the tender for the trip. The train provided two weekend railfan trips.
Shallow Water
Streamlined and spreading
sirenian tails,
dugongs in shallows
weave bubbles in trails
through warm turquoise waters
spangled with sun
into the sea grass
where crystal tides run,
herding and grazing,
for coral and shell
have built a great bulwark
that holds back the swell,
but now there's a dredger
that spews a great plume:
a thick cloud of silt
and a shadow of gloom.
The sea grass turns yellow
and dugongs turn tail,
a man-made calamity
out of all scale.
They do it for profit,
though profit can't buy
the health of our Mother,
the sea or the sky,
and boors sit in offices
wearing their ties
spreading the silt
of their lucre and lies
and sly politicians
leave the sea rank
on their way to the ballot-box
via the bank -
but give me a glimpse
of those flukes in the surge
and I'll spurn all their wealth
and swallow the urge
to rail as we squander,
to weep as man fails:
there's hope in those rising
sirenian tails.
(Poem by Giles Watson, 2015.)
These are a few Streamlined and Semi-streamlined steam locomotives in HO scale. All are brass, except the two British LNER locomotives. New York Central (NYC) Class J 4-6-4 Hudson - Empire State Express by LMB Models
At the junction of Newton St/London Rd/Piccadilly in this early postwar view. Still wearing its original 1937 style of prewar livery, the off white parts repainted in wartime grey.
As with the pic of 564, 617 has lost its nearside "fairing" although the streamlined swoop is painted in a different style on the leading panel.
634 appears to be heading for Chorlton on route 82x. Interesting that the bonnet side is hanging loose, a feature commented on by Geoff Hilditch who frequently observed prewar Crossleys as such.
Just wish I'd been there to hear the whining and growling of a type some named "grumpys".
1940 Leyland TB5 English Electric trolleybus 1125 heads for Portland St to take up service on the Stalybridge route 28 (renumbered 218 in 1950) with a further postwar repainted "grumpy" following.
With its distinctive plywood-skinned oval section streamlined fuselage, the Albatros D.V entered service in May 1917, but from October 1917 was supplemented in large-scale production by the strengthened Albatros D.Va with different upper wing and aileron control system. One D.V, D2859, was flown by ‘The Red Baron’, Manfred von Richthofen.
At its operational peak in May 1918, over 1,000 often brightly-coloured Albatross D.V/D.Va fighter aircraft were serving on the Western Front as well as in Italy and Palestine. This was an attempt to overcome the Allies by quantity rather than capability, since the outclassed Albatross Jagdstaffel units suffered heavy losses in combat in the German’s Spring offensive of 1918 and as a result of structural failure of the lower wing, leading in 1918 to a prohibition of prolonged diving in the type. Despite this, the type remained in production until the November 1918 Armistice, with over 3,000 produced, of which only two survive, in the U.S.A and Australia.
Actually painted as a D.V aircraft from a batch of 400 ordered in May 1917, this flying replica was built by New Zealand Company The Vintage Aviator Ltd (TVAL) in 2011, and uses an original contemporary Mercedes D.III engine from RAF Museum stocks. It represents an aircraft flown on the Western Front by Jasta 61in 1918. Flown a number of times in New Zealand and the UK in 2012, it arrived at Hendon in October 2012.
Streamlined LMS Stanier Princess Coronation 4-6-2 Pacific 6229 DUCHESS OF HAMILTON at the National Railway Museum, York.
These are a few Streamlined and Semi-streamlined steam locomotives in HO scale. All are brass, except the two British LNER locomotives. Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul - Pacific RR - The Milwaukee Road - Class A 4-4-2 by Nickel Plate Products.
Tram Blackpool English Electic Railcoach 680
Wikipedia description
The English Electric Railcoach cars were 45 streamlined enclosed single deck trams built by English Electric between 1933-1935. They were numbered 200-224 and 264-283. None of these remained in their original form, with 10 cars (272-281) rebuilt as towing cars for the Progress Twin Set cars in the 1950s and 1960s, 2 cars rebuilt as illuminated cars in the 1960s (209 as the Western Train Locomotive and 222 as the Hovertram), No. 264 rebuilt in 1964 with flat cab-ends and rounded corners, No. 618 (271) rebuilt in 1968 with tapered cab-ends and the last 11 surviving cars as well as Nos. 264 and 618 (220-221, 224, 264-271 and 282-283) rebuilt as the One-Man Operated (OMO) cars in the 1970s. The other 20 cars were scrapped.
English Electric Railcoach car No. 264 was rebuilt in 1964 with flat cab-ends and rounded corners, resembling the Coronation cars and the Twin Set cars. No. 264 was also given exterior plastic panelling to reduce its weight, but was returned to aluminium panelling due the plastic warping and becoming discoloured. No. 264 became No. 611 in 1968. English Electric Railcoach car No. 618 was rebuilt in 1968 with tapered cab-ends, increasing its capacity from 48 to 56. Prior to being rebuilt as the OMO cars, the last 11 cars remaining in their original form, as well as Nos. 264 and 618 (271) were renumbered in 1968: 220-221 became 608-609, 224 became 610, 264-271 became 611-618 and 282-283 became 619-620.
The former Twin Set towing cars 678–680 (278-280) were converted back to single trams with cabs at both ends. English Electric Railcoach tram No. 679 was given an all-over advert for Mecca Bingo in 1994, which featured two big fibreglass bears fitted to the roof, with one on each end. The advert and fibreglass bears were removed in 1995. The last of these in the active fleet, No. 680, was withdrawn in 2008. 678 was preserved by Fleetwood Heritage Leisure Trust in 2011. 679 was preserved by the Lancastrian Transport Trust until 2013, when it joined the retained heritage fleet in Blackpool and will eventually be restored into original condition and regain its original pre-1968 number of 279. 680 was preserved at the Heaton Park Tramway in Manchester in 2011. During December 2013, 680 was transferred to Beamish Museum for an operational loan deal and entered service there. In April 2015, No. 680 was transferred to its permanent home at Heaton Park Tramway and entered service there. In August 2015, No. 680 was transferred to Blackpool for an initial 2-year loan and was repainted into 1990s green and cream livery with black window surrounds.
The Bell P-39 Airacobra was an important fighter in WWII for both the USAAF and the Soviets. However, despite its progressive, streamlined design, its limited engine capabilities restricted its effective use to low-level attacks (below 10,000 feet). Ted Koston, photographer. © Koston Photography. All rights reserved.
The New York Central K-5b Pacific Class 4-6-2 steam locomotive #4915 with Henry Dreyfuss' streamline design. Originally manufactured in 1926 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), no. 4915 and her sister no. 4917 were streamlined in 1936 to lead The New York Central’s most luxurious experience on rails.
This project is my first MOC and has taken about a year and a half to complete with many challenges arising in trying to obtain the beautiful "streamline moderne" styling. Perseverance paid off however and through 1/2 steps, 1/3 steps and even 1/6 steps I have ended with a final version that I hope you all will enjoy.
The model is 8-wide, built to 1:48 scale and is designed to fit all standard lego track geometry. The locomotive is powered by two Power Functions M motors.
Directions to the build can be found here:
Waterman Woody Brown’s streamlined catamaran Waikiki Surf Kai dropping off and picking up passengers for a cruise around Waikiki Beach.
Photo details
- 1917 Halekulani Hotel seawall, center left
- The Halekulani's House Without a Key open air bar, restaurant and music venue, above the seawall
- The Halekulanii's landmark Keawe tree above the House Without A Key
Often considered the last of the great traditional Pony Cars before the 80's brought in either blandness or a more streamlined 'Japanese' look, the Camaro Z28 of 1970 was one of the longest running Pony Car generations in automotive history, with a production life of 11 years over which very little in the design changed.
Dubbed 'Super Hugger', the 2nd generation Camaro was developed without the drawback of haste, unlike the original Camaro that was rushed to the showrooms to ward off the Ford Mustang. In addition, a greater budget was also available to the new Camaro as the rewards were reaped for the original's immediate success.
Although it was an all-new car, the basic mechanical layout of the new Camaro was familiar, engineered much like its predecessor with a unibody structure utilizing a front subframe, A-arm and coil spring front suspension, and rear leaf springs. The chassis and suspension of the second generation were greatly refined in both performance and comfort; base models offered significant advances in sound-proofing, ride isolation, and road-holding. Extensive experience Chevrolet engineers had gained racing the first-generation led directly to advances in second-generation Camaro steering, braking, and balance.
The original Camaro of 1970 was powered by a 4.1L Straight-Six engine which produced 155hp. However, a mixture of the oil crisis and legislative change to reduce emissions meant that the compromises had to begin in earnest. The first major change came in 1974 with alterations to the external styling, which brought the headlights inboard. This was followed by another major change in 1978, with colour coded bumpers being added and a new engine which came in the form of a 5.7L V8 which produced 185hp. Prior to this, a Catalytic Converter had been added to the 1975 along with many other tweaks and changes internally that made the cars more reliable and miles between maintenance increased, all being placed under the aptly named "Chevrolet's new Efficiency System."
This particular version is a 1980 model, which shows many of the changes made during the 1979 model year that truly brought this car into the style of the late-70's. The biggest changes for 1979 were the introduction of the luxury-oriented Berlinetta model, replacing the Type LT, and a restyled instrument panel with a much flatter appearance than the previous wraparound design. The base models, RS and Z28 remained, the Z28's now came with a front spoiler and fender flares much like its Pontiac Trans Am twin had, and now came with "Z28" decals that ran from the beginning of the front flares to the bottoms of the doors. Electric rear window defroster became optional this year, replacing the old blower type.
Sales for 1979 were the highest ever for any generation Camaro before or since, numbering 282,571 units. These cars came with the base engine of a 4.4L V8 engine producing 120hp, although a limited edition 5.7L V8 was also available for 1980 model year.
By 1981 though the gig was up for the 1970 Camaro, it's style starting to look quite tired and increasing legislation on emissions labouring it heavily. The 1981 model was fitted for the first time with a CCC (Computer Command Control) unit, and minor tweaks to the styling and engine were carried out, largely to reduce the horsepower of the hungry V8 to comply with demands.
Eventually the 2nd Generation Camaro met its end in 1981, being replaced by the Camaro of 1982 which took on a much more radical and somewhat Japanese style. Although many Camaro fans recoiled at the comparatively mundane looking car, at least General Motors got it right, still giving the machine a raunchy personality as well as a powerful 5.0L V8, unlike what was going on at Ford where the Mustang of 1984 was intended to be based on a Mazda, to which enthusiasts recoiled!
Today this generation of the Camaro has become a monster hit in the retro Pony Car Classics, being tough, reliable but also incredibly well styled, retaining the basic ingredients that made it such a motoring icon of the early 70's. Many believe that this particular version after 1979 was when the car was at its peak, mixing style with substance even in the face of legislative adversity.
From what my American friends tell me, much like old Mustangs and Pontiacs, you can pick up these cars for apparently next to nothing in the USA, and are often the first cars teenagers drive after they pass their test!
If only that were so here in the UK!
In reality, this locomotive was inspired by the South Australian Railways 520 class 4-8-4 and the hover mono-rail engine from the Legend of Korra TV Show, while the train coaches were inspired by a vintage 2009 LEGO model of "Galaxy Express 999". (Link to Brickshelf: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=374748 ) The real story behind the of the name 909 Limited is a combination of this fantasy train and the Beatles song "One after 909", which is sort-of about a train.
One of the Gresley streamlined A4 Pacifics is the star of Reginald Mayes's poster publicising British Railways' Queen of Scots Pullman service between London King's Cross and Glasgow Queen Street. Note the tartan six foot. Earlier in his career, Mayes (1901-92) had been chief staff artist at the LMS's PR department. Ironically, one of his tasks during the Second World War entailed producing posters discouraging rail travel. Mayes also worked for London Transport.
1930's Micheline streamlined railcar at the Citi du Train (National Railway Museum) in Mulhouse, France. These cars utilized a set of special flanged rubber tires with aluminum safety rings inside.(see the 3rd and 4th photos in this set) The concept was also trialed in America, see this interesting page on the Classic Streamliners website:https://www.classicstreamliners.com/rpc-budd-michelin.html,
A very interesting film from the Micheline archives about their rubber-tired railcars can be found here: www.michelin.com/eng/innovation/fields-of-innovation/tire...
The Shape of Speed
Streamlined Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1930–1942
JUN 16 – SEP 16, 2018
Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum is pleased to announce The Shape of Speed: Streamlined Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1930–1942, a special exhibition debuting at the Museum in Summer 2018. Featuring 19 rare streamlined automobiles and motorcycles, The Shape of Speed opens June 16 and will be on view through September 16, 2018.
The concept of streamlining has fascinated people for generations. Beginning in the 1930s and extending until the outbreak of the World War II, automotive designers embraced the challenge of styling and building truly streamlined cars that were fast and fuel-efficient. They were encouraged by the confluence of aircraft design with the sleek shapes of fast railroad locomotives; new advanced highways such as the Autobahns; and events like the 1939 New York City World’s Fair, which showcased futuristic design.
The Shape of Speed presents a select group of rare automobiles and motorcycles that demonstrate how auto designers translated the concept of aerodynamic efficiency into exciting machines that in many cases, looked as though they were moving while at rest.
The Museum will display 17 cars and two motorcycles—the best of that era’s streamlined offerings—from Europe and the United States. Engineering drawings and period photographs will show some of the aircraft, railroad, ship and yacht designs that influenced the automakers.
Featured designers and engineers include European streamlining pioneer Paul Jaray, along with Richard Buckminster Fuller, Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, Harley J. Earl, Hermann Ahrens, Georges Paulin, Joseph Figoni, Dr. Wunibald Kamm, Otto Kuhler, Jean Bugatti, Hans Ledwinka, Gordon Buehrig, and others.
Jamaica Business Resource Center, 90-33 160th Street, Jamaica, Queens, New York City, New York, United States
La Casina is a rare surviving example of Streamlined Moderne design in New York City. The metal and stucco facade of this former nightclub and restaurant structure was constructed c. 1933, during the period of greatest popularity for the streamlined style. The building, erected in the heart of Jamaica’s commercial center, is representative of the many entertainment facilities built in Jamaica during the first decades of the twentieth century as this area developed into the commercial and entertainment hub for Queens County and nearby sections of Long Island. Although altered over the years, the La Casina Building has been beautifully restored and is again one of the most distinctive structures in Jamaica’s business district.
Development of Jamaica
Jamaica, one of the oldest settlements within the boundaries of New York City, developed into the leading commercial and entertainment center of Queens County. The Dutch purchased land in Jamaica from the Jameco (also spelled Jemeco) Indians in 1655. The following year, Governor Peter Stuyvesant granted a charter to the town, originally known as Rusdorp.
Following the transfer of power from the Dutch to the English in 1664, Rusdorp was renamed Jamaica, after the original Indian inhabitants of the region. Queens County (incorporating present-day Queens and Nassau Counties) was chartered in 1683. The English established Jamaica as the governmental center of Queens County, with a court, county clerk’s office, and parish church (Grace Church; the present structure, dating from 1861-62, is a designated New York Landmark). Outside the town center, Jamaica was largely an area of farm fields and grazing land for cattle. The rural village was officially incorporated by New York State in 1814.
Jamaica’s central location in Queens County and the extensive transportation network that developed in the town during the nineteenth century, resulted in the transformation of the community into the major commercial center for Queens County and much of eastern Long Island. It was the arrival of the railroads that began this transformation. The roads and rail lines connecting Jamaica with other sections of Queens County, with Brooklyn to the west, eastern Long Island, and ferries to New York City had a tremendous impact. Jamaica’s farmland was soon being subdivided into streets and building lots, and new homes were erected.
By the turn of the century, Jamaica’s importance as a commercial area became evident in the impressive buildings beginning to appear on Jamaica Avenue, most notably the Beaux-Arts Jamaica Savings Bank Building (Hough & Deuell, 1897-98), 161-02 Jamaica Avenue. After Jamaica was incorporated into the borough of Queens and became a part of New York City on January 1, 1898, additional transportation improvements brought increasing numbers of people. As a result, the population of Jamaica quadrupled between 1900 and 1920.
It was during the 1920s, when the major mass transit links were in place, and during a period when private automobile ownership was growing at an extraordinary rate, that Jamaica experienced its major expansion as a commercial and entertainment center. By 1925, Jamaica Avenue between 160th Street and 168th Street had the highest assessed valuation in Queens County.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, many small- scale commercial buildings were erected in Jamaica, as well as several major office and commercial structures, including the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Building (George W. Conable, 1928-29) on 161st Street; the Title Guarantee Company Building (Dennison & Hirons, 1929), 90-04 161st Street; and the J. Kurtz & Sons Store (Allmendinger & Schlendorf, 1931; a designated New York City Landmark) on Jamaica Avenue. In addition, Jamaica developed into a significant entertainment center. By the mid-1930s, there were at least eight movie theaters on or just off of Jamaica Avenue, and there were over sixty restaurants, bars, and clubs, ranging from small ethnic taverns to elegant restaurants. It was within this bustling commercial and entertainment setting that La Casina opened.
The Nightclub:
A Brief Examination of Its History and Design
During the late 1920s and 1930s, the nightclub became a prominent and romantic symbol of New York’s nightlife. While partially based on the reality of the city’s exclusive clubs and restaurants, the nightclub image was largely a fantasy based on Hollywood’s interpretation of these elegant establishments. Nightclubs and restaurants with live shows began to appear in New York City in the late 1920s as the enforcement of Prohibition ebbed. With the end of Prohibition in 1933, nightclubs proliferated." As nightclubs and restaurants with live shows grew in popularity, their designs became increasingly elegant. Clubs and related restaurants such as the Central Park Casino, the Persian Room, the Rainbow Room, El Morocco, the 21 Club, and the Stork, catered to an exclusive clientele. While most New Yorkers could not afford to patronize these establishments, they were well known through newspaper gossip columns, magazines, and other popular media outlets.
Movies such as Broadway (1929), Puttin’ on the Ritz (1930), Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935), Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), and Swing Time (1936) created a romantic image of nightclubs with Modeme and Art Deco decor incorporating streamlined walls and ceilings, glistening mirrored floors, and elegantly appointed revelers. Perhaps in homage to popular Latin dances, many of these clubs, both real and cinematic, were given Spanish- sounding names.
Although modest in scale, La Casina was designed to fit the image of the up-to-date night spot. The club and restaurant was provided with a Latin name and its streamlined design echoes, in miniature, the elegant clubs enjoyed vicariously by patrons as they viewed movies at their local movie palaces.
La Casina: The Site and the Design of the Building
La Casina is located on 160th Street between Jamaica Avenue and 90th Avenue. Located only a few blocks from the center of Jamaica, 160th Street was initially developed with modest frame buildings, most erected as residences but later converted for commercial use. In 1907, the Queens Borough Real Estate Exchange erected a neo-Classical style brick and limestone office building designed by Tuthill & Higgins at 90-33 160th Street.
The building was purchased in 1918 by Arnold Behrer, Jr., and Clarence Behrer. On November 1, 1932, the Behrers leased the site to Bernard Levy and La Casino, Inc., for a period of four years (until 1936). According to the lease agreement, the building was "to be used and occupied only as a restaurant, cabaret, beer garden, casino and dance hall." The rent rose from $1,800 a year the first year to $3,000 during the fourth year. All alterations made to the building by the lessee had to be approved by the owner.
The La Casino Supper Club opened in 1933. It first appeared in the Queens telephone directory for winter 1933-34. Apparently, the club was only open for a short time since it did not appear in the telephone directory for winter 1934-35. The club reopened by May 1936. Telephone directory listings continued to call the establishment the La Casino Restaurant. However, the weekly La Casina Journal, published by the establishment, spelled the name with an "a" and also referred to the La Casina Restaurant and Supper Club in its text. The work undertaken to create the present streamlined design was an alteration of the original building, but no surviving alteration application has been located that specifically notes the construction of a new front. Several permits for small alterations were issued in 1933, and one of these may have included the new facade.
La Casina was designed in the Streamlined Modeme style which became popular in America in the 1930s.' Although it initially appeared on residential buildings, the Streamlined Moderne style was soon adapted for commercial buildings since the dramatic massing and dynamic stripped forms drew attention and, therefore, brought people to the buildings. The style was popular for relatively small-scale public buildings, especially those that were erected for businesses that relied on a large paying clientele.
These businesses included hotels, such as those in Miami Beach; theaters, such as the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Hollywood; movie theaters, notably those designed by S. Charles Lee; bus depots, such as the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Washington, D.C.; and roadside structures such as auto showrooms, motels, and diners. Historian Martin Greif characterized the Streamlined Moderne (also sometimes referred to as Depression Modem) as "an art stripped bare of all ornamentation. . . . Ideally, the Depression Modern style was spare . .
. without a single detail that could be called extraneous, without any embellishment, without a line that did not seem inevitable."
With its smooth planes of stucco, dynamic ziggurat massing, sweeping bands of metal, and its lack of applied ornamentation, the La Casina building fits Greifs description of the ideal streamlined structure. The streamlined mode was an appropriate choice for La Casina, not only providing an up-to-date image for the establishment, but also creating a noticeable form for the small midblock structure, one that would attract attention from busy Jamaica Avenue. This was heightened by the use of a bright projecting vertical neon sign announcing the nightclub’s presence.
La Casina: The Restaurant and Nightclub
La Casina offered dining, dancing, and entertainment. According to the La Casina Journal, La Casina offered three shows a night performed by the La Casina Adorables and the La Casina Swing Melo-Dears. The club also featured special guests such as Maureen Rio, the Broadway star of Earl Carroll’s Sketch Book? There was no cover charge and the club offered free parking.
The Journal noted such special events as "Celebrity Night"; "Democratic Night" and "Republican Night" (at the latter two evenings guests were to meet primary candidates); and "Bowery Night," where guests were to dress in old clothes, men were to arrive unshaven, and all were to be entertained by Diamond L’il, Cuspidor Carrie, Fishface Fanny, Gashouse Gertie, Willie the Gonof, Little Annie Rooney, Champagne Lil, and Limehouse Lou.
Later History
La Casina (or a facility with a similar name) occupied the building until about 1938; the last entry in the telephone directory is for winter 1937-38. In 1940, Arnold Behrer, Jr., lost the property in a legal proceeding to the mortgagor, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. A tax photograph taken by New York City in 1940 shows "For Rent" signs in the picture windows of the club.
In 1942, the building was sold to the Church of God of Greater New York, Inc., although it does not appear to have ever been used as a church (the Church of God was headquartered on 224th Street). The use, if any, of the building in the early 1940s is not known.
In 1946, the former nightclub was sold to Polly Foundations, Inc., which converted the building into a factory that manufactured Ladyform bras. In 1952, the building was purchased by the Ellen Howard Corporation which manufactured Roxanne swim suits in the building until c.1987.
At some point, probably in the 1960s or 1970s, the galvanized-iron cladding of the ziggurat was covered in aluminum siding. The building was vacated in the late 1980s and deteriorated. In 1989, the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation acquired the former home of La Casina. A restoration was undertaken in 1994-95 under the guidance of the architectural firm of Li-Saltzman.
The restoration entailed the removal of the aluminum siding, the replacement of the deteriorated galvanized iron with aluminum that matched the form of the original, the restoration of the stucco at the lower level to its original colors, the removal of historically and stylistically inappropriate glass block windows and their replacement with historically accurate plate-glass windows, and the restoration of the tile flanking the entrance and of the original doors and glass entrance surround. The original vertical sign was conserved and encased within a new sign. The building now houses the Jamaica Business Resource Center.
Description
La Casina is a one-story symmetrical structure with a two-tiered streamlined facade in the form of a stepped pyramid or ziggurat. The base of the pyramid is set parallel to the sidewalk. This section of the building is faced with stucco.
The stuccoed portion of the facade is divided into a lower section that is painted gray and an upper section painted coral (paint studies determined the historical accuracy of these colors). The base is punctuated by a central entrance that is set back from the sidewalk within a five-stepped enframement clad in glazed black tiles at the lower section; the upper section is coral-colored stucco.
The entrance contains its original wood and glass double doors with very large vertically-placed bronze handles supported by silver-metal upper and lower stepped brackets. The doors are set within a frame of opaque black glass. The entrance bay is flanked by rectangular windows.
During the restoration, glass blocks that were crudely installed, probably when the building became a factory in the 1940s, were removed and replaced with historically accurate undivided plate glass. In addition, a shallow ramp for handicapped access has been added in front of the building.
Directly above the entrance is a curving streamlined frontispiece. It is divided into six wide horizontal bands with seven raised narrower bands covering the joints. To either side of this frontispiece is a six-layer stepped ziggurat. The frontispiece and flanking ziggurats were originally clad in smooth galvanized sheet metal attached to a wooden frame. The metal may originally have been painted gray. During the restoration, the deteriorated galvanized metal was replaced with shiny bands of aluminum.
Attached to the Building is the original vertical neon sign. This sign, which retains the words "La Casina" (an "o" for "casino" overlaps the "a"), "Ladyform Bras," "Swim Suits," and "Roxanne Swim Suits,” has been encased in a new aluminum sleeve with the "JBRC" initials of the Jamaica Business Resource Center in neon.
- From the 1996 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
These are a few Streamlined and Semi-streamlined steam locomotives in HO scale. All are brass, except the two British LNER locomotives. Pennsylvania RR (PRR) T-1 4-4-4-4 Duplex by Nickel Plate Products.
The Stout Scarab is a streamlined car, designed by William Bushnell Stout and manufactured by Stout Engineering Laboratories and later by Stout Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan.[1][2]
The Stout Scarab is credited by some as the world's first production minivan,[3] and a 1946 experimental prototype of the Scarab became the world's first car with a fiberglass bodyshell and air suspension.
Background
William B. Stout was a motorcar and aviation engineer and journalist.[4] While president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Stout met Buckminster Fuller at a major New York auto show and wrote an article on the Dymaxion Car for the society's newsletter.[5]
Contemporary production cars commonly had a separate chassis and body with a long hood. The engine compartment and engine were behind the front axle and ahead of the passenger compartment. The front-mounted engine typically drove the rear axle through a drive shaft underneath the floor of the vehicle. This layout worked well, but limited the passenger space.
In contrast, the Scarab design eliminated the chassis and drive shaft to create a low, flat floor for the interior, using a unitized body structure and placing a Ford-built V8 engine in the rear of the vehicle. Stout envisioned his traveling machine as an office on wheels. To that end, the Scarab's body, styled by John Tjaarda, a Dutch automobile engineer,[6] closely emulated the design of an aluminum aircraft fuselage. The use of lighter materials resulted in a vehicle weighing under 3,000 lb (1,400 kg).[7]
The short, streamlined nose and tapering upper body at the rear foreshadowed contemporary monospace (or one-box) MPV or minivan design, featuring a removable table and second row seats that turn 180 degrees to face the rear — a feature that Chrysler marketed over 50 years later as "Swivel ’n Go".[8]
Although reminiscent of the Chrysler Airflow, streamliner, and the slightly later (1938) Volkswagen Beetle — other aerodynamically efficient shapes, the Stout Scarab was generally considered ugly at the time.[1] Decades later, its futuristic design and curvaceous, finely detailed nose earn it respect as an Art Deco icon.[9]
Innovative features
Front view of Stout Scarab at Stahls Automotive Collection
Rear view of Stout Scarab
The Scarab's interior space was maximized by its ponton styling, which dispensed with running boards and expanded the cabin to the full width of the car. A long wheelbase and the engine directly over the rear axle moved the driver forward, enabling a steering wheel almost directly above the front wheels. Passengers entered through a single, large, common door. A flexible seating system could be easily reconfigured (except for the driver's seat, which was fixed). The design anticipated the seating in modern minivans, such as the Chrysler Voyager and Renault Espace; a small card table could be fitted with the passenger seats as needed. Interiors were appointed in leather, chrome, and wood. Design elements also worked in a stylized ancient Egyptian scarab motif, including the car's emblem. Visibility to the front and sides was similar to that of an observation car, although rearward vision was negligible and there were no rear-view mirrors.[1]
The innovations did not end with the car's layout and body design. In an era where almost everything on the road had rigid axles with leaf springs, the Scarab featured independent suspension using coil springs on all four corners, providing a smoother, quieter ride. The rear-engine-induced weight bias coupled to the coil spring suspension and "Oil Shock Absorbers" endowed the Scarab with "Smooth Riding and Easy Steering on Rough Roads",[7] if not very good handling and traction (even by the standards of the early 1930s, the reputation of the Scarab was one of very poor "blackjack-like" handling). The rear swing axle suspension with long coil spring struts was inspired by aircraft landing gear.[10] The Scarab suspension inspired the later Chapman strut used by Lotus from their Lotus Twelve model of 1957.[10]
The Ford flat-head V8 drove the rear wheels via a custom Stout-built three-speed manual transaxle. The engine was reversed from its normal position, mounted directly over the rear axle and with the flywheel and clutch facing forward. The transmission was mounted ahead of this, reversing and lowering the drive-line back to the axle.[10] This unusual layout would later be repeated by the Lamborghini Countach.
Production
A drivable prototype of the Scarab was completed in 1932, probably the first car to have an aluminum spaceframe unit-construction body. Some frame parts were steel.[11] The second prototype was ready in 1935, with some styling and mechanical changes. The headlamps were set behind a fine, vertical-bar grille, and at the rear, narrow chrome bars curved from the back window down to the bumper, giving the car its Art Deco appearance. The body was changed to steel to reduce cost.[1]
Stout Scarab Experimental (1946)
Stout stated that the car would be manufactured in limited quantities and sold by invitation. Up to a hundred a year were to be made in a small factory at the corner of Scott Street and Telegraph Road (US 24), Dearborn, Michigan.[1] Although the Scarab garnered much press coverage, at $5,000[9] (equivalent to $113,297 in 2024), when a luxurious and ultra-modern Chrysler Imperial Airflow cost just $1,345, very few could pay the hefty premium for innovation. Nine Scarabs are believed to have been built.[12] The vehicles were never produced in volume and were hand-made, with no two Scarabs identical.[4]
Immediately following World War II, Stout built one more prototype Scarab, called the Stout Scarab Experimental.[13][1] It was exhibited in 1946 and was more conventional in appearance, although still equipped with a rear engine. It was a 2-door, featured a wraparound windshield and the world's first fiberglass body. Like its metal counterparts, it too was a monocoque, built up out of only eight separate pieces and featured the world's first fully functioning air suspension, previously developed in 1933 by Firestone. It was never produced.
Legacy
Stout owned and drove his own Scarab, accumulating over 250,000 miles in travel around the United States.[2]
Up to five Scarabs are reported to survive today. A 1935 Scarab in running condition was on display for many years at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine, but was returned to its lender, the Detroit Historical Museum.[4] The Detroit Historical Museum's vehicle was scheduled to be returned to the museum's storage on August 21, 2016, when another car would be rotated into the exhibition....Wikipedia
ex-LNER streamlined A4 Pacific, in its BR guise as 60009 'Union of South Africa', passes the site of Upwey Wishing Well Halt, nearing the end of its journey, with the Dorset Coast Express (1Z82 0845 London Victoria to Weymouth) on 8th August 2019.
Majestic Apartments (Irwin S. Chanin with Jacques Delamarre, 1930-1931). Same developer-architect team as at the Chanin Building, here doing a less floral, more streamlined Deco for an almost-twin-tower apartment scheme, set on Central Park West (between 71st and 72nd Streets). Fantastic.
Norfolk Southern operated N&W modern streamlined J class 4-8-4 Northern steam locomotive # 611, is seen rounding a curve in a view taken from a railfan excursion train car in Tennessee, October 1989. This train operated from Chattanooga to a northern location near the Kentucky border, then returned the same day. The on-board railfans with their camera's are really out this day.
Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The 21-story Look Building dates to 1948-50, when the minimalist aesthetics of European Modernism first began to transform the character of “setback” office buildings. Located on the west side of Madison Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets, this handsome mid-20th century modern structure combines tiers of ribbon-like windows with tightly-rounded corners and setbacks faced with white brick to create a unique and memorable silhouette.
Two second-generation, family-run, businesses were responsible for its construction: Uris Brothers, developers, and Emery Roth & Sons, architects. Though they first began to collaborate in the mid-1920s, it wasn’t until the death of each firm’s founder in the mid1940s, that the sons Percy and Harold D. Uris and Julian and Richard Roth, began to focus on commercial development. This informal partnership, which lasted until the 1970s, produced a great number of large Manhattan office buildings. Richard Roth, who attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, served as lead architect. Planned to be stylish and profitable, the building closely followed the requirements of the 1916 zoning code to maximize the square footage while using industrial materials to create sleek, streamlined elevations that suggest the influence of not only the German Expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn, but also the 1931 Starrett-Lehigh Building and the 1947 Universal Pictures Building in Manhattan.
The new structure was named for Look magazine, which was part of the Cowles media empire. With a strong emphasis on photography, Look became one of the most widely-read magazines in the United States and it remained at this location until ceasing publication in 1971. Other prominent tenants included Esquire Magazine; Pocket Books; the music publisher Witmark & Sons, where singer-songwriter Bob Dylan made some of his earliest studio recordings; the industrial designer Raymond Loewy, and the building’s architects. During the late 1990s, a major and sympathetic restoration of the facade was undertaken by the architects Hardy Holzman & Pfeiffer Associates. At this time, the steel windows were replaced with similar aluminum frames and a new entrance portico was created. The Look Building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and the facade is subject to a conservation easement filed with the Trust for Architectural Easements.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Building Site
The Look Building, at 488 Madison Avenue, stands directly north of the St. Patrick’s Cathedral complex and the Villard Houses . Prior to the First World War, this section of midtown Manhattan was primarily residential, with a mix of free-standing mansions, brownstone row houses, and a growing number of hotels.
Transit improvements, including the extension of the subway north along Lexington Avenue in 1918, as well as on Sixth Avenue in the 1930s, would attract commercial development to the area. While some elegant Fifth Avenue residences, including houses owned by George W. Vanderbilt , Morton & Nellie Plant , and Edward & Frances Holbrook , were converted to new uses around 1917, many structures were demolished and replaced by retail stores and office buildings. Rockefeller Center , which grew out of plans for a large performing arts center, was midtown’s most ambitious commercial ensemble, incorporating stores, offices, and entertainment venues.
In the vicinity of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Roman Catholic diocese of New York owned several structures, including the rectory and cardinal’s residence that flank the Lady Chapel on Madison Avenue, as well as the Villard Houses. It also owned the block on the west side of Madison Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets, where the Look Building would later be erected. This site was originally part of the Roman Catholic Asylum and in 1893 a three-andhalf-story Gothic Revival-style structure was erected to serve as a trade school for boys.
When much of the asylum’s property from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue was sold in 1902, the structure became Cathedral College, a preparatory seminary to train men for careers in the priesthood. The New York Times called it “a midtown landmark which for two generations had offered a haven for quiet study and religious activities.” In 1942, the school moved to “modern facilities” on West End Avenue and 87th Street and the building was temporarily used by Catholic chaplains serving in the Second World War.
On East 51st Street, the Look Building stands beside a group of low-rise structures, including the former residence of contractor John Pierce . Designed by the prominent architect John Duncan, this five-story neo-Renaissance structure is clad with light-grey granite and was converted to commercial use after 1933. On East 52nd Street, the site adjoins 16 East 52nd Street , a 15-story brownish brick building with limestone details, designed by Schwartz & Gross.
Uris Brothers
Uris Brothers, acting as Neprock Realty, Inc., negotiated the purchase of the L-shaped site from St. Joseph’s Seminary & College in October 1948 for $2.6 million. The demand for office space in midtown Manhattan was growing and this market became their primary focus. Percy Uris and Harold D. Uris were the sons of Harris H. Uris , a Russian immigrant from Latvia, who arrived in New York City in 1892. By the first decade of the 20th century, he and his brothers operated a large iron foundry at 525 West 26th Street where a workforce of about 160 produced ornamental ironwork for the New York City subway system and other clients.
Percy Uris attended Columbia University, graduating with a degree in business administration in 1920. He and his father became commercial developers in the early 1920s, specializing in the construction of hotels and apartment buildings. Harold, who trained as a civil engineer at Cornell University, joined them in 1925. Together, they built numerous Manhattan structures, including the Court Square Building at 2 Lafayette Street, 1 University Place at the corner of Waverly Place, and the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South. They experienced great success but, like many of their contemporaries, struggled during the early years of the Depression and lost some of their best-known properties. In the late 1930s, they reentered the real estate field, hiring Emery Roth to design apartment buildings at 2 Sutton Place South and 930 Fifth Avenue . Roth also designed 880 Fifth Avenue, their last residential project, in 1946-48.
Few of Manhattan’s leading builders of the 1920s remained active following the Second World War. The New York Times described the Urises as being, along with the Tishmans, the “only builders . . . who are descended from the leaders of the Nineteen Twenties boom.” Percy and Harold Uris would accomplish this by focusing almost entirely on office building construction. The forecast for this type of real estate was particularly optimistic and using the skills they learned with their father, they would, over the next three decades, create more than 13 million square feet of new office space. Time magazine reported in 1954 that they:
. . . made a fortune out of conforming to the latest taste in office buildings. Their recent constructions in Manhattan have been compared both to wedding cakes and to Assyrian ziggurats, and have more layers than the former, more bulk than the latter and about as much esthetic merit as both combined. Says Percy Uris: “We’re not building in a vacuum. We’re building in a market.”
The company’s productivity was a remarkable accomplishment, one that transformed the midtown skyline and streetscape. Harold Uris recalled:
We had a policy of creating the greatest amount of space for the lowest cost . . . We bought better and built faster than anyone else . . . Efficiency was the key to our success.
In terms of architectural aesthetics, however, their ambitions were modest. They produced a portfolio of buildings that were modern but hardly radical, fresh but conventional. In 1972, Uris explained:
I happen to believe that the interior of a building is more important that the exterior. None of the architectural people agree with me. But you build for those who occupy it, not for those who stand across the street and look at it. We have always built good buildings. I won’t say I am not a perfectionist. I can’t help it if people think every building should be the Taj Mahal.
In 1960, Uris Brothers issued stock to finance future projects which resulted in such colossal structures as the New York Hilton , the Uris Building at 1633 Broadway , and 55 Water Street , which was at the time of completion the world’s largest office building. Shortly after the stock offering was made they began a series of major gifts to Columbia University which financed construction of a new building for the School of Business, called Uris Hall . They also made significant contributions to Cornell University, Lenox Hill Hospital, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Following the death of Percy, Harold sold his stock in the Uris Buildings Corporation to the National Kinney Corporation in 1973.
Emery Roth & Sons
Both before and after the Second World War, the Urises turned to architect Emery Roth with great frequency to produce buildings that were stylish and profitable. Emery Roth, the firm’s founder, was born in Hungary in 1871 and came to the United States around 1884. His talent as a draftsman was quickly recognized and in the decade that followed he worked in Chicago with the architects Burnham & Root, and in New York City with Richard Morris Hunt and Ogden Codman, Jr.
In 1895 he opened his own office and later purchased the practice that would initially be known as Stein, Cohen & Roth. Many of New York City’s finest residential structures were designed by him, such as the Bellclaire Hotel , Ritz Tower , the Beresford , the San Remo , the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights, and the Normandy Apartments . Though his early works display rich and inventive exterior ornamentation, the character of his later buildings is more restrained, reflecting the growing popularity of the Art Deco and Moderne styles.
Roth first collaborated with the Uris family in 1924, designing the Buckingham Apartments, at the northwest corner of Sixth Avenue and 57th Street. It was during this decade that Roth’s sons, Julian and Richard, joined the firm. Julian Roth attended Columbia University and may have been a classmate of Percy Uris. Though not licensed as an architect, he “specialized in building materials, construction methods, cost estimates and the technology of curtain walls.” Richard Roth graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1928 and after briefly working with Allen & Collens in Boston, entered his father’s practice, which was renamed Emery Roth & Sons in 1938. Steven Ruttenbaum, author of Mansions in the Clouds: The Skyscraper Palazzi of Emery Roth, claimed this change had little impact on the firm’s operations and the elder Roth remained “the man who made the decisions, who maintained client contact, and set the fees. He shared the responsibilities of overseeing design development with no one.”
In the 1940s, however, ill health caused Emery Roth to relinquish control of the office. One of his last commissions was 300 East 57th Street, an 18-story tan brick apartment house. Built for developer Samuel Rudin in 1944-48, it featured unusual recessed terraces that were probably added by Richard who became the firm’s chief designer. This sleek project received a medal from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects as one of the city’s best new residential structures. His next project was 505 Park Avenue , a 21story tan brick office building. Located at the northeast corner of 57th Street, the elevations had a strong horizontal orientation, with a “continuous glass front . . . to give a maximum amount of natural light.” This was the first of many buildings Richard designed for Uris Brothers, followed by 4 West 58th Street , incorporating the Paris Theater, and 575 Madison Avenue , between 56th and 57th Streets. Begun in January 1948, the latter building shares many features with the Look Building, such as a two-story base, white brick elevations, and continuous windows that “run entirely around the structure above the second floor level, providing maximum flexibility in the arrangement and subdivision of offices.”
These family-run businesses would remain closely aligned for several decades. Julian Roth later recalled:
Percy Uris would call me and say, Julian, I’ve just bought a plot of land. How soon can Richard have the plans ready?”
Emery Roth & Sons became one of New York City’s most prolific firms. As architect, or architect of record, they were involved in at least 150 structures after the Second World War. In 1967, reporter Thomas Ennis said that Roth has “earned most of the praise – or blame – for the way Manhattan’s business district looks today.” The firm developed a reputation for superior efficiency, employing mostly predictable formulas that maximized square footage and speed of construction. In addition, they collaborated on such high-profile projects as the Pan Am Building , the World Trade Center , and the Citicorp Building . One writer observed: “It seems unlikely any firm in history has been responsible for so many tall buildings within such a short span of time.”
Designing the Look Building
Richard Roth began to prepare his scheme in late 1948 and the final drawings were completed in July 1949. Built on speculation, the Look Building needed to be fashionable, practical, and profitable. Throughout his career, Richard pursued a pragmatic approach to design. Not only did he try to maximize the square footage in buildings but he believed this type of plan created the kind of interior space favored by prospective tenants. When he addressed the Real Estate Board of New York in 1952, Richard urged architects entering the field to develop “a working knowledge of the various codes, laws, regulations, and ruling affecting buildings.” Though he acknowledged that slender towers could be dramatic and beautiful, he believed the market for offices on the smaller, upper floors was limited.
While higher rents may be obtained from tower floors, he said there are fewer good tenants for 5,000 square feet of space than there are for 15,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet.
The 1940s proved to be a transitional period in office building design and the Look Building combines characteristics associated with Streamlined Modernism, sometimes referred to as Art Moderne, and the International Style. In terms of massing, its shape was determined by the 1916 zoning resolution, which was conceived to protect access to light and air in Manhattan’s most crowded districts. To accomplish this, commercial buildings were required to set back at a certain height, which was determined by location and street width. Bulk was regulated and diminished in stages, creating wedding-cake-like silhouettes in which the uppermost floors could cover only 25 per cent of the lot. Slender towers, consequently, were discouraged on all-but-thelargest of properties.
While Roth’s setback massing was fairly conventional, stepping back at every other floor above the 12th story, the treatment of the elevations was somewhat new. Faced with industrial materials, the facade has a strong horizontal emphasis. The building’s developer, Percy Uris, defended this trend toward simplicity, saying:
The new facade, with its horizontal lines and absence of ornamentation is generally admired, but there are some who consider the modern exterior too severe. Actually, if a building has good lines, its simplicity will add to its beauty.
The Look Building has bands of ribbon-like windows that alternate with white brick spandrels. Roth was most likely influenced by two local projects: the Starrett-Lehigh Building and the Universal Pictures Building . Both structures feature continuous bands of fenestration that reflect contemporary interest in functional aesthetics and possibly the work of the German Expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn, who immigrated to the United States in 1941. Many of his works had a distinctive streamlined appearance, such as the Rudolf Petersdorf Department Store in Breslau, which was illustrated in the New York Times in March 1931 under the headline “German Architecture Goes Modern.”
Of probable greater importance was the Universal Pictures Building, 445 Park Avenue, completed in 1947. Designed by Kahn & Jacobs, the project architect was Elsa Gidoni, who trained in Berlin and was later described as “highly attuned to the International Style work of Erich Mendelsohn.” Built on a comparable block-long site, this 21-story office building has similar bulk and massing, ribbon-like windows, terraces, and air conditioning. It was a great success and entirely rented prior to completion. Developer Paul Tishman asserted these amenities would increase “working efficiency” and “make it possible for tenants to obtain maximum use of space on each floor . . . there just won’t be any unusable areas.”
For the Look Building, Roth fine tuned many of these ideas. While the number of floors and massing is similar, the curved corners allow the windows and spandrels to flow without interruption. According to Percy Uris, this type of fenestration had various benefits. Not only did it provide better lighting and a sense of openness, but he believed it was part of:
. . . a real step forward in office planning. Where the space is used as a large open general office, the effect is light and cheerful. These windows also make for easy subdivision into smaller rooms with more flexibility than formerly possible when masonry and columns more or less determined individual office spaces.
Roth claimed that this approach would satisfy “status conscious tenants . . . because it permitted an even distribution of window space for executive offices, a matter of considerable importance to corporate tenants.”
The stacked, multiple curves give the elevations an organic, almost biomorphic quality. Marv Rothenstein, who worked for Uris Brothers, later wrote:
Everything about them was special, starting with the curved structural steel,
followed by curved concrete forms, curved bricks, curved window frames, and
curved glass.
The corners have a three-and-a-half foot radius and are faced with radial brick. In New York City, buildings with rounded corners are found in Lower Manhattan, where irregularly-shaped parcels provided architects with opportunities to emphasize specific vistas, facades, and entrances. Though concave and convex facades gained greater popularity in the late 1930s and were present in various pavilions at the New York World’s Fair, such features were rarely used in office buildings. It was, however, used to great advantage at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, as well as in Roth’s much simpler design for 505 Park Avenue. These streamlined buildings, however, have much wider curves and were erected with less costly “straight segments.”
Above the 12th story, the Look Building’s setbacks function as private terraces. These unbroken, wrap-around spaces were part of the original design, and appear in the blueprints at Avery Library, Columbia University, with glass doors and metal railings.
In contrast to Rockefeller Center, which had common landscaped gardens on the rooftops, these shallow outdoor spaces seem closer in spirit to residential terraces and, like the upper floors of the Cities Service Building , 70 Pine Street in lower Manhattan, and the Universal Pictures Building, were reached from inside offices. Such amenities were also part of a broader trend after the Second World War to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior space.
To give the Look Building a stylish, modern appearance, Roth faced it with white brick. This material was introduced in the first decade of the 20th century but did not become popular until construction of Manhattan House . Built by the architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill on East 66th Street in 1947-51, this 21-story structure is considered Manhattan’s earliest white brick apartment house, influencing the design of numerous imitators and possibly Richard Roth. Though some explained the popularity of this brick in practical terms, saying it was self-washing and would reflect light into the surrounding area, white was also strongly associated with the European avant-garde, particularly the early minimalist works of Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto.
Construction
Plans for construction of a $6 million structure at 488 Madison Avenue were filed with the Department of Buildings in November 1948. Several months later, during February 1949, D.
E. H. Demolition began tearing down the former home of Cathedral College and excavation of the site began. The Harris Structural Steel Company began to deliver the steel components in June 1949 and by the end of August 1949 the framework was “topped” out. The New York Times reported that this was “considered a postwar record for steel erection.” According to Marv Rothstein, as many as seven four-men riveting teams were involved in the process. The concrete floors were finished in early September 1949, and shortly after, the white brick elevations. About four floors were enclosed each week. As this task progressed, the steel casement windows were installed. Once this job was completed, the interior plastering began. Tenants began to occupy the air-conditioned structure in early 1950.
Tenants
With Cross & Brown as the building’s rental agent, all of the office floors were leased by November 1949 – several months before construction was complete – and all of the retail space by May 1, 1950. This section of midtown Manhattan was a lively hub of media activity, especially around Rockefeller Center. Several magazines were early tenants, including Look, Esquire, and Seventeen. Look was launched by Gardner “Mike” Cowles, Jr., in Des Moines, Iowa, in January 1937. He consolidated the editorial offices at 522 Fifth Avenue, where it remained for a decade. Modeled on European picture magazines, it became a significant rival to Life magazine, which was based in Rockefeller Center, and by 1948 the magazine had a paid circulation of three million. Look would become the largest tenant, with offices on the 10th, 11th and 12th floors.
Uris Brothers agreed to name the building for Look in early 1950. Esquire, which claimed it was “embarrassed by the “new look,” took legal action to stop this, arguing that the change would “convey the false impression” that Esquire was “published or sponsored by the publishers of Look.” No action, however, was taken by the courts and until 1980 large capital letters spelled out “Look Building” on the mechanical tower’s south side. The 1950s would be heyday of Look’s popularity, reaching an estimated 21 per cent of all U.S. adults in 1961. It was the third most popular magazine in the nation and in 1963 it would sign a new lease, almost doubling its office space to more than 200,000 square feet. The New York Times Company purchased the Cowles Media Company in 1971, which included Family Circle and various regional newspapers.
Pocket Books, Inc., a division of Simon & Shuster, which published popular best sellers, was also an original tenant, as was the Music Publishers Holding Company, with such subsidiaries as Harms, Inc., Remick Music, New World Music, Advances Music, and Witmark & Sons. In Witmark’s fifth floor studio, a young Bob Dylan produced a series of important early demo recordings during 1962 and 1963.
Emery Roth & Sons joined the prestigious roster of tenants in April 1950. The New York Times reported that it was only the firm’s “fourth move” in fifty years and they occupied part of the 18th floor until the late 1950s. Three floors above, on the 21st floor, was Raymond Loewy, one of the 20th century’s most significant industrial designers, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine in October 1949 and would design the interiors of Lever House , completed nearby at 390 Park Avenue in 1952. Later tenants have included the Institutional Investor and Abbeville Press.
Subsequent History
In April 1953, the property was sold to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Several months later, in August 1953, the building was leased back to Uris Brothers. Since the 1970s, it has been owned by the 488 Madison Avenue Associates and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The two-story retail base was remodeled with tinted black glass and new shop entrances in the 1980s. Horowitz Immerman Architects were responsible for these alterations. The rest of the exterior was renovated with great sensitivity by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates in 1998. Architect Malcolm Holzman was the partner in charge of the project. He said that his main objective was to “keep the building as it is and not make it into something it will never be.” At the time, the original steel windows were replaced by similar aluminum frames and the glazed brick was cleaned. Additionally, about 20 per cent of the brick was replaced, as well as the original slate windowsills.
Interest in mid-20th century modern architecture was growing in the 1990s and the building’s careful restoration was described in a New York Times article, as well as in a small exhibition, New Life for a Modern Monument: A Salute to 488 Madison Avenue, organized by the Municipal Art Society in autumn 1998. The brochure’s text praised the owners and architects, commenting “The Look Building’s restoration shows how successfully the best postwar buildings can be updated, rewarding investors and delighting passerby.” In 2004, the Look Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and the facade is subject to a conservation easement filed with the Trust of Architectural Easements.
Description
The Look Building stands on the west side of Madison Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets. It occupies an L-shaped lot, measuring 200 feet on Madison Avenue, 140 feet on 51st Street, and 75 feet on 52nd Street. Above the second story, the facade is mainly white brick. Continuous non-historic aluminum windows , three horizontal panes tall, extend continuously around the facade, starting at the west ends of the north and south facades. The center panes are operable and open out from the bottom. Above the 12-story base, every second floor sets back, climaxing with a mostly windowless tower, which incorporates horizontal louvers on the east front.
The two-story retail base is non-historic and dates to the late 1980s. It is divided from the third story on all facades by what appears to be charcoal-colored cast-stone panels, crowned by a curved aluminum molding. The two stories of glass panels are transparent or tinted black and the water table may be granite. The main entrance is at the center of the sloping Madison Avenue facade. There is a recessed passage that leads to a single revolving glass entrance door, flanked by conventional glass doors. The entrance passage is paved with contrasting light and dark gray granite. The exterior panels that face the street are polished black granite and the walls that flank the passage are light brown-and-black marble.
There is a ribbed aluminum ceiling with recessed lighting fixtures, as well as square service panel near center. Above the entrance passage is a wide non-historic aluminum marquee with curved corners and free-standing numerals that identify the address. To the left are three storefronts with recessed entrances. The one closest to the entrance has a horizontal aluminum sign with white lettering. At the corner of 51st Street is a revolving door with dark tinted glass. Directly to the right of this door is a conventional recessed store entrance. To the right of the main entrance is a single storefront with clear glass windows. This storefront incorporates several horizontal aluminum signs with white lettering: on Madison Avenue, at the corner of 52nd Street, and on 52nd Street.
The Fifty-First street facade has four non-historic storefronts, at 19, 21 and 23 East 51st Street. The last address has two entrances. Most of the first-story businesses are identified above the storefronts with metal letters against black glass panels. Though most of the glass on the second story is tinted black, the windows nearest Madison Avenue are transparent. At the west end of the facade, a vertical banner is strung between two horizontal brass poles. A significant number of glass panels toward the west end of the second story have been replaced with horizontal metal louvers. Near the top of the 11th story, at center, a white horizontal box projects out from the facade. In addition, there are four vertical boxes attached at the corner above the third story. There is a fan-like security gate at the west edge of the 7th story.
Fifty-Second Street has a single storefront that extends around the corner from Madison Avenue. To the west of the last window is a single vertical panel of horizontal louvers. At the corner, above the aluminum sign, are two small black boxes with visible wires. The service entrance, with two metal doors that open outward, is located at the west end of the first story. At the middle of the 4th story, two of the upper windows have been replaced with horizontal louvers. Fan-like security gates have been installed at the west end of two of the uppermost floors.
- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
SSR's classic pairing of S317 & S302 is joined by P18 & B75 on grain train 9083 to Deniliquin as the quad loco combo bends through Malmsbury, with the latter two being on the train as far as Bendigo. 8/12/19
A new Henschel 4-6-4 class 61 streamlined steam locomotive for the Deutsche Reichsbahn (works nr. 22500/1935). This elegant locomotive was one of two built specifically for high speed passenger service and pulled the famous Henschel Wegmann Train between Berlin and Dresden. Top speed was 175 km/h.
Henschel-Werkfoto Stromlinienverkleidete Schnellzug-Tenderlokomotive für den Henschel-Wegmann-Zug. Fabriknummer 22500, geliefert 1935 an die Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, größte Geschwindigkeit 175 km/h.
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"Like an Arrow, the Streamlined Super Chief Flashes through the Country of the Navajos."
---The Diesel-powered Super Chief sweeps through the Indian country. Agleam with high lights, swift and silent as an arrow, this ultramodern contribution of man's inventive genius to transportation upon rail conveys its hosts of travelers to fateful wartime destinations. Flashing by the sunlit mesas, the Navajos in gaudy dress, the scarlet locomotive and its streamlined cars add central note of color to a realm aglow with splendor.---
***NOTE*** This wonderful illustration was painted by Thornton Oakley, and appeared in the December 1943 issue of National Geographic magazine. It is one of 16 similar paintings, all done by Mr. Oakley, which where intended to "capture the spirit of America's might in moving men, materials, and supplies."
Spotted this eye-catching little beauty at Red Canyon Campground near Bryce Canyon in Utah: a Camp-Inn 550 Classic Teardrop Travel Trailer by Pentwell Industries.
Check out their website at: www.tinycamper.com
But be forewarned: this diminutive gem will set you back a cool ten grand!
Nifty streamlined trailer at the OERM Antique Truck Show; this is a Bowlus Road Chief. A company is making them new once again, but this is a restored original.
The Aerotrain was a streamlined trainset introduced by General Motors Electro Motive Division in the mid-1950s. Like all of GM's body designs of this mid-century era, this train was first brought to life in GM's Styling Section. Chuck Jordan was in charge of designing the Aerotrain as Chief Designer of Special Projects. It utilized the experimental EMD LWT12 locomotive, coupled to a set of modified GM Truck & Coach division 40-seat intercity highway bus bodies. The cars each rode on two axles with an air suspension system, which was intended to give a smooth ride, but had the opposite effect.
The two Aerotrain demonstrator sets logged over 600,000 miles (970,000 km) and saw service on the following railroads: the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway; the New York Central Railroad; the Pennsylvania Railroad; and the Union Pacific Railroad.
Starting in February 1956 the Pennsylvania Railroad ran the Pennsy Aerotrain between New York City and Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, leaving New York at 0755; the round trip was scheduled 7 hr 30 min each way. From June 1956 to June 1957 it ran between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
In 1956 Aerotrain No. 2 was leased as a demonstrator to the New York Central, and ran between Cleveland and Chicago.
In March 1956 the Aerotrain made experimental runs for the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in California as the San Diegan between Los Angeles and San Diego. Its use ended because the trainset had to be turned after each trip and it needed helper locomotives on the Sorrento Grade north of San Diego.
Starting December 1956 Union Pacific ran the ex-New York Central Aerotrain as the City of Las Vegas between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The train was eventually relegated to Chicago commuter service on the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad.
I was looking at this locomotive and was thinking what if it were a Railway Series / Thomas and Friends visiting character. So I added a face to my streamlined 4-8-2 and named him Otto. why I named him that is beyond me, it just popped into my head.
...and yes, I know their never were any 4-8-2's in the UK.Also, when I get the loco next month it will not have a face.
Otto is a newer streamlined fast passenger steam engine who is everyone's friend. He is a student of a much older engine named Warren, and loves to run the fast passenger trains. However, he hides a deep fear of diesels replacing steam engines forever. He feels whenever he is down for repairs or cleanings, diesels are taking his loads and doing them better and faster. Otto worries that someday his fire will go out, and he will be sent to the scrap yard. To prevent this, he works really hard, (perhaps to hard) wearing down his parts faster and working trains that he should have some helper engines on.