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While not visually impressive, these red wine brownies made with an easy home-made mix taste ethereal and will delight any chocolate - or red wine - lover!

www.yummysmells.ca/2018/03/red-wine-brownies-with-icing.html

CBS Building by Emilio Guerra

Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The CBS Building was built in 1961-64 as the headquarters for one of America's three historic radio and television networks. The last completed work designed by architect Eero Saarinen, it is one of New York's premier post-World-War-II-era skyscrapers and one of the country's great works of modern architecture. Saarinen's goal was to build what he called "the simplest skyscraper in New York." At the height of the popularity of the steel-cage office building, Saarinen designed the CBS Building as New York's first postwar reinforced concrete skyscraper. The 38-story tower is sheathed in dark gray granite, with gray-tinted vision glass - earning the building the sobriquet "Black Rock." When seen directly, the tower's bays appear open, with relatively narrow granite piers alternating with relatively narrow window bays of single sheets of plate glass, but when viewed from afar and necessarily at an angle, the V-shape of the piers effectively eclipses the view of the glass, creating the effect of a gray granite slab.

The austerity of the tower derives in part from its dark gray color and the almost complete absence of interruptions in the facades. Saarinen placed the main entrances on West 52nd and West 53rd Streets, rather than on Sixth Avenue, creating the effect of an absolutely pure granite slab on Sixth Avenue. Ground floor commercial uses are set behind the gray glass, making them barely visible from outside. Eero Saarinen died suddenly in 1961, leaving to his office the task of supervising the construction of the CBS

Building. Kevin Roche and John Dinkeioo, among others, oversaw the completion of the project from 1961 to 1964. The building remains the corporate headquarters of CBS.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

William S. Paley and the Columbia Broadcasting System2

CBS traces its origins to the United Independent Broadcasters, a fledgling radio station network that was an early rival to NBC (the National Broadcasting Company), the network created by RCA's David Sarnoff. UIB incorporated in 1927, and, following its purchase later that year by the Columbia Phonograph Company, changed its name to the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System, making its radio debut on September 18. When Columbia, unenthusiastic about future prospects, sold back the broadcasting rights to UIB's owners a few months later, the sale included permission to use the "Columbia" name — hence the "Columbia Broadcasting System.7' In 1928, William S. Paley, connected by marriage to one of the company's owners, used half a million dollars from his portion of the proceeds from the sale of his family's Congress Cigar business to buy a 51 percent interest in the network. He took the title of president, and proceeded over the next half century to build CBS into one of the nation's major media conglomerates.

CBS's chief rival for its first several decades of existence remained the much larger NBC.3 RCA's Sarnoff initially saw NBC as a free service intended to encourage the purchase of RCA-manufactured radios. Paley, with only radio programming to sell, focused on the promotion of radio advertising and the creation of saleable programs. By the end of 1928, CBS had 47 affiliates. Highlights of CBS's growth over the following years, from tiny upstart to major network, include the creation of CBS's news department; experiments in television broadcasting as early as 1931 (the first regularly scheduled in the nation, even though almost no one could watch); putting the young Bing Crosby on the radio in 1932, opposite NBC's Amos 'n Andy; broadcasting the School of the Air to some six million children starting in 1934; initiating the Lux Radio Theater in 1935, with Helen Hayes in its first offering; in 1936 bringing the popular Major Bowes' amateur hour to the radio, as well as comedians Bums and Allen, Eddie Cantor, and Ed Wynn, while at the same time inaugurating the Columbia Workshop for serious drama, including the works of W.H. Auden, Stephen Vincent Benet, Maxwell Anderson and Edna St. Vincent Millay; and the infamous 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles' production, "War of the Worlds." During World War II, CBS emerged as a major news broadcaster, led by foreign correspondents William L. Shirer and

Edward R. Murrow, with Charles Collingwood reporting on D-day from the Normandy beaches.

After the war ended, William S. Paley became chairman of the board, while his protege Frank Stanton became president. CBS moved into television, broadcasting Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy, and Walter Cronkite's series You Are There. In 1951, the CBS "eye" was developed as the network's television trademark. By the late 1950s, three decades after its founding, CBS had become firmly ensconced as a national institution. In 1966, the year following CBS's move into the new tower at 51 West 52nd Street, the corporation had over 17,000 employees, earned $64.1 million, and had net sales of over $800 million.

As early as 1929, while still in UIB's old offices in the Paramount Building, CBS had acquired Steinway Hall on West 57th Street for concert broadcasts.

Later that year, Paley arranged the move to offices at 485 Madison Avenue. As early as 1935, CBS planned a new headquarters to designs by prominent modem architect William Lescaze, but it was never built. ^By the late 1950s, however, a diversifying CBS had grown enormously, acquiring interests in record manufacturing, television sets, musical instruments, publishing and a talent agency. The network invested in theatrical productions, and for a time owned the New York Yankees baseball team. CBS operations occupied space in a number of buildings scattered around Manhattan. Paley decided that the company's rented space on Madison Avenue was neither adequate to the network's needs nor helpful to its image, and determined to build a new headquarters that could compete in architectural prestige with NBC's headquarters at Rockefeller Center. In his words: "I think we were . . . determined that if we went ahead on our own building for CBS, it would have to be of the highest aesthetic quality obtainable."4

Paley thought Park Avenue had "too cold a feeling," and considered Madison Avenue "too narrow to display good architecture." Nothing was available on Fifth Avenue. He found a site on the east side of Sixth Avenue between West 52nd and West 53rd Streets, just two blocks west of the network's old Madison Avenue headquarters, and a few blocks north of NBC, in an area Paley characterized as "emerging as the newest important business area in midtown."5 CBS bought the site in 1960, and hired Eero Saarinen, one of the most prestigious and best-known modem architects of the

day, to design the building. To PaJey, "not only was he one of this country's outstanding architects, he was also a creative artist in the deepest sense, and he won us over by the force of his personality, imagination and practicality."6

Eero Saarinen Associates

The American saga of the remarkable Saarinen family is framed by two skyscrapers, the Chicago Tribune Tower and the CBS Building. Eliel Saarinen's second-prize entry in the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922 had enormous influence on subsequent skyscraper design; its critical American success helped convince the Finnish architect to bring his family, including his son Eero, to the United States. Eero Saarinen's CBS Building, the only skyscraper by either man to have been built, was completed only after its designer's untimely death, and has become recognized as one of the country's major monuments of modern skyscraper design.

A master architect of the mid-twentieth century, Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) was groomed from childhood to be a successful designer by his parents, textile artist Loja Gesellius Saarinen, and highly regarded international architect (Gottlieb) Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950). Eliel's early career is best remembered for his Helsinki Railroad Station (1904-c.1913, with Herman Gesellius) which successfully demonstrates his sympathies with the Arts and Crafts movement. The Saarinen family immigrated to the United States in 1923, but visited Finland annually. Eliel contributed significantly to the creation of the Cranbrook School and Academy of Art, a complex of children's schools and an advanced-level art academy, located at Bloomfield Hills, north of Detroit. Cranbrook was devoted to every field of design — textiles, metal work, architecture, and city planning. Eliel designed several buildings there, including the Cranbrook School for Boys (1924-30) and the Kingswood School for Girls (1929-30).

The latter project exemplifies the Arts and Crafts ideal of collaboration between the fine and applied arts: while Eliel oversaw all aspects of design, Loja designed and wove fabrics (in association with the Cranbrook Looms), Eero designed furniture, and his sister, Eva-Lisa, assisted with selecting wall and ceiling treatments.

During the early 1930s, Eero studied sculpture at the Parisian Academie de la Grand Chaumiere, completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Beaux-A rts-oriented architecture program at Yale University, and toured Europe and Egypt on a travel fellowship, during which time he was influenced by the architecture of Erich Mendelsohn and Alvar Aalto — before joining his father's firm in 1936. Together, the Saarinens produced the much-praised Crow Island School (1939-40, with Perkins, Wheeler & Will) in Winnetka, Illinois. Eero entered many design competitions, and won several prizes. He collaborated with designer Charles O. Eames on the scheme for a molded plywood chair which won the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition (1940-41), sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. Recognized from that point on as an important furniture designer, Saarinen produced many designs for the Knoll furniture company, best represented by his Womb chair (1946-48) and Nos. 71 and 72 chair series (c.1956).

Eero Saarinen has been credited with developing the innovative "systems approach" to design; he carefully analyzed each problem, and usually relied on modern technology to find a unique form and structure to express a concept architecturally. As a result, each of his designs has a certain wholeness about it; he claimed to be concerned with the "esthetics of the whole organism" and sought an "expressive architecture, an antiassembly-Iine architecture," stating "each building should be as distinctive as each person should."8 The commission which firmly established his architectural career was the General Motors Technical Center (1945-56, with Smith, Hinchman & Grylls) in Warren, Michigan. Though the initial designs for the Center were begun in association with his father, the final scheme was largely Eero's.

The complex is ruled by its strictly modular design (structure, partitions, and mechanical systems are fully integrated) and features such technological innovations as neoprene window gaskets and walls of thin insulated panels sheathed in porcelainized sheet metal; the architect also added brightly colored brick surfaces and his signature element, a reflecting pool. During the GM project, the elder Saarinen died and Eero formed a successor firm', Eero Saarinen & Associates. An intensely devoted and methodical worker — he worked 365 days a year, according to his chief of design, Kevin Roche — Eero produced a number of buildings which have become American landmarks.

These include his Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (designed 1948, completed 1964), the famous parabolic arch in St. Louis, Missouri; the Kresge Auditorium and Chapel (1953-56, with Anderson & Beckwith), geometrically-derived enclosures highlighting different materials, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; the David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink (1956-59), the undulating concrete roof of which expresses the exhilaration of a hockey game, at Yale University in New Haven; and two soaring reinforced concrete masterpieces associated with flight: the Trans World Airlines Flight Center9 (1956-62) at New York (now J.F.K.) International Airport — probably his most renowned design — and Dulles Airport (1958-62, with Ammann & Whitney) in Chantilly, Virginia. The last three commissions were completed after Saarinen's death in 1961, as was his other prominent New York project, the somber, granite-clad Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Headquarters (1961-64) on Sixth Avenue between West 52nd and 53rd Streets.

Saarinen's buildings received extensive publicity in the press, and he was given several prestigious awards. Though many architects and architectural writers sympathetic to the International Style criticized Saarinen's work as lacking consistency, his oeuvre has withstood the test of time: by 1993, six of his designs had received the American Institute of Architects' 25-Year Award for "exemplifying] design of enduring significance." These include the Crow Island School, GM Technical Center, and Dulles Airport.10 Saarinen's successor firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates, founded by his colleagues, has been a significant force in American architecture during the second half of this century.

The CBS Building

Both Saarinen and Paley wanted a skyscraper that would differ from the established International Style of the 1950s represented by such New York towers as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Lever House and Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building." "After all," said Saarinen's widow Aline, "that's why they came to Eero and not to Skidmore."'

Saarinen experimented with models showing various possible shapes for the tower, ranging from the wedding-cake profile encouraged by then existing zoning laws to various square and rectangular towers rising from a plaza.13 Saarinen eventually settled on a rectangular tower, as he wrote to Paley in March of 1961:

I think I now have a really good scheme for C.B.S. The design is the simplest conceivable rectangular free-standing sheer tower. The vertically of the tower is emphasized by the relief made by the triangular piers between the windows. These piers start at the pavement and soar up 424 feet. Its beauty will be, I believe, that it will be the simplest skyscraper statement in New York.14 Paley later went out to Saarinen's office in Detroit to see a model, which he at first didn't like. On a second visit, however, Paley changed his mind: "I saw what I had first thought of as austerity really came through as strong, exquisite, ageless beauty. In July, 1961 I decided to go ahead with Saarinen."15

John Dinkeloo later said that Saarinen had been "especially excited about this design."16 In Saarinen's words: "I wanted a building that would be a soaring thing. I think Louis Sullivan was right to want the skyscraper to be a soaring thing. I wanted a building that would stand firmly on the ground and would grow straight up. Your eyes should be led up to comprehend a building as a whole thing."17

After Saarinen's sudden death, Paley met with chief designer Kevin Roche, and decided to continue with the firm. Paley was an actively involved client. In the words of a contemporary critic, Eric Larrabee: "Where CBS left off and Saarinen began is now difficult to determine, especially since he was the kind of architect . . . who . . . cared less who got credit for an idea than whether his own ideas prevailed."18 Of the building's completion, Paley wrote; "Participating in the creation of Black Rock was one of the great sources of satisfaction of my life."19

The premise of Saarinen's design, a freestanding tower in a plaza, was bound up in changes then being proposed to New York City's zoning laws. The 1916 zoning ordinance, in effect until 1961, had encouraged progressively set-back towers. The new ordinance encouraged tall towers set back in plazas. Saarinen met with the architects and planners working out the new zoning proposal, including Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and James Felt of the New York City Planning Commission, to explain the economics of his tower. CBS wasn't just one of the first towers to be built under the new zoning; Saarinen's designs and calculations for the tower actually helped shape the new regulations.20 In the words of New York Times architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, the CBS Building "set the shape and standard for New York building today."21

Saarinen designed the CBS Building as New York's first postwar skyscraper built of reinforced concrete.22 Instead of an internal cage, from which to hang a seemingly weightless glass curtain wall, he designed exterior walls of triangular, weight-bearing concrete piers, which together with the interior service and elevator core support the building. By using the piers, he emphasized its verticality. Instead of a flat facade, Saarinen made the concrete piers in a three-dimensional projecting triangular V-shape, with the glass recessed behind them. And instead of creating a transparent glass, shiny steel, or aluminum facade, he sheathed the concrete piers in dark gray granite, and filled in the intervening window bays with gray-tinted vision glass. Instead of the illusion of a glass box, he created the illusion of a slab of dark granite — earning the building the sobriquet "Black Rock."

The five-foot widths of piers and window bays tied into the modular design of the entire structure. Each entrance on West 52nd and 53rd Street fit into one bay, and was planned with revolving doors, which required a minimum of five feet. Five-foot modules also met the needs of then standard office furniture arrangements.23 The precise dimensions of pier and window were carefully adjusted. Roche did a series of mock-ups of the proposed building in New Rochelle, New York, and Paley wrote he "must have gone out to New Rochelle at least thirty times to study the various mock-ups . . . when Roche, Stanton and I went out to look at [the mock-up], we realized that the difference between the window area and the column area was not right. Your eye could tell you that. We started then to change it. We got down to talking about a quarter of an inch or a sixteenth of an inch. We must have put up five or six different-sized mock-ups before we finally got it right."24

The use of dark gray granite was proposed by Saarinen, but the final selection was made by his successors. His widow suggested that Saarinen was thinking of executives in dark gray suits.25 Dinkeioo believed that dark stone projected strength better than glass.26 Saarinen himself wrote: "A dark building seemed more quiet and dignified and appropriate to this site."27 Paley recalls deciding in favor of true granite after rejecting a synthetic version, because "in the long run it would be worth it. The building would be built to last a hundred years. Granite would retain its beauty as long as the building stood." After examining granite from Africa, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and the United States, they settled on Canadian Black granite from the Robitaille family quarry in Alma, Quebec.28

Saarinen's triangular piers and modular design created a three-dimensional study in architectural illusion. From directly across Sixth Avenue, for example, the tower's bays appear open, with five- foot-wide granite piers alternating with five-foot-wide window bays of single sheets of plate glass. When viewed from afar and necessarily at an angle, the V-shape of the piers effectively eclipses the view of the glass, creating the effect of a gray granite slab. The bays of any of the building's four sides thus appear to open directly in front of a viewer but appear to close up like a vertical Venetian blind to the right or left. As the viewer walks along the sidewalk, the bays appear to open and close in succession, rather like an accordion (as contemporary critics remarked). This optical effect was described by one contemporary writer as "trompe l'oeil,"29 and by another as "op-arch."30 Saarinen, describing the effect in motion, wrote: "We had learned the way a changing relief gives life to a facade."31

The austerity of the CBS Building derives in part from the almost complete absence of interruptions in the facades. There are no setbacks. The main entrances on the side streets are through doors set discreetly within bays and integrated into the facade's design. Saarinen created the effect of a pure glass and granite slab on Sixth Avenue. The commercial spaces at the ground floor, set behind gray glass, are rendered practically invisible from outside, with very discreet signage.32

Though he put the CBS Building in a sunken plaza, Saarinen tried in some measure to respect the street wall of Sixth Avenue, keeping the plaza small and siting the tower a little off-center. In the architect's words:

We tried to place the building on the site so that we could have a plaza and still not destroy the street line. A tower should not be tied in with lower street buildings. It should stand alone with air and light around it. A plaza is a very necessary thing in a city. It lets people sit in the sun and look at the sky. A plaza allows a building to be seen. Our buildings should be seen, because they are monuments of our time. But ... we have to remember the street line and we have to remember the space between is as important as the towers. These arrangements should be orderly and beautiful.33

Critical Reaction

CBS staff started moving into the new building at the end of 1964.34 That same year, the Architectural League of New York cited the building as one of eight recent CBS projects across the country built to high architectural standards, and

awarded a medal to CBS president Frank Stanton for "significant contributions and effective encouragement of the role of the arts in business and industry."35 Reporting on the award, the New York Times wrote: "Seeking to promote its corporate image, Columbia insisted on high architectural standards and employed some of the country's leading architects to achieve them."36

The following year, CBS won a Bronze Plaque from New York's Municipal Art Society for "an outstanding example of architecture befitting the city of New York." Stanton, accepting the award, explained: "The things we build should be beautiful for no better reason than man has created them as part of his work and places them beside the creation of nature as part of his life. The only goal for men who build should be to make nothing that is less than beautiful. In planning for the building, the one controlling idea from the outset was that we wanted a building actively, insistently, inexorably on the cutting edge in the evolution of the skyscraper."37

Critical reaction has varied somewhat, but the CBS Building has been generally accepted as one of New York's premier post-World-War-II-era skyscrapers and one of the country's great works of modern architecture. Even before its completion, the Times wrote that, "if buildings were rated like television programs, the Columbia Broadcasting System would have a new hit."38

The CBS Building represented a departure from the International Style, and some critics didn't understand that. Some thought that the building's piers did not explicitly express their function — an important concept in International Style design — because they didn't narrow towards the top (where they supported less weight than at the bottom).39 Yet others praised the piers as "directly expressed from plaza to sky, rather than concealed behind curtain walls as in neighboring office buildings."40 Similarly, Saarinen's biographer, Allan Temko, writing in 1962, faulted the tower for not growing "visually more open and light as it rises," and commented that though it had a plaza, the plaza was "scarcely more than a protective border for the freestanding tower, and is in no sense a real civic space."41 Temko opined that if Saarinen had had the opportunity to design additional skyscrapers, they would have overcome such weaknesses, making his untimely death "one of the cultural disasters of modern times."

Critic Bethami Probst, unhappy that the tower didn't "soar," compared it unfavorably with the Seagram Building ("If Seagram is the Rolls Royce of recent skyscrapers, CBS must be content with

being in the Bentley class (which is by no means bad)"). Nevertheless, in the critic's final judgment, "CBS is a building to be reckoned with, a powerful, brooding presence."43

David Jacobs described the impact of the opening-closing facades on a "fascinated" public: "They stroll back and forth, walk slowly then quickly, back and forth again, playing peek-a-boo." Though he found the CBS Building "impersonal and forbidding, and from close by, downright overwhelming," he noted that European cathedrals were overwhelming too, and he judged the building "a marvelous contribution to the city of New York, a splendid monument to the business of communications and the art of architecture."43

Ada Louise Huxtable, writing in 1966, thought the public was less favorable to the building than the critics: "The dark dignity that appeals to architectural sophisticates puts off the public, which tends to reject it as funereal," ascribing this fault to the corruption of "the public eye" which "takes bright and shiny as synonymous with new and good." Huxtable herself judged CBS "a building, in the true, classic sense: a complete design in which technology, function and esthetics are conceived and executed integrally for its purpose." She faulted the building's interior for being out of character with the exterior (it was not designed by Saarinen or his successor firm), but ultimately found the CBS Building a "first-rate work of architecture" and "an extraordinarily impressive structure."44

Description

The CBS Building is a freestanding, 38-story reinforced-concrete tower, sheathed in dark gray granite and gray-tinted vision glass, rising straight up 490 feet without setbacks. The tower, with a 135-foot by 160-foot footprint, is placed within a sunken plaza that occupies the entire western end of the block bounded by Fifth and Sixth Avenues and West 52nd and 53rd Streets on a site that is 200 feet-10 inches by 216 feet-10 inches. The tower occupies approximately 60 percent of the plaza's area and is set slightly towards the east. The plaza is set five steps (approximately three and a half feet) below the sidewalk level at Sixth Avenue, six steps below on West 52nd Street, seven steps below on West 53rd Street, and slopes downward to the east.

The building is rectangular in plan, with twelve bays on the eastern and western facades and fifteen bays on the wider northern and southern facades. Each facade is composed of five-foot-wide piers faced in "Canadian Black" granite flanking large, five-foot-wide panes of glass framed in bronze-

finished aluminum. The windows are 19 feet-10 inches high on the ground floor above bronze-finished aluminum sills, and nine feet high on the upper floors. At the first level above the ground floor, instead of glass the bays contain grilles.

The profile of each pier is a projecting triangular or V-shape; at each of the building's four corners the "V"s meet to form double-width piers, creating the effect of chamfered corners. Ground floor commercial uses behind gray glass are rendered practically invisible from outside.

There is no entrance to the CBS Building on Sixth Avenue. The building has fourteen ground floor entrances, seven on both West 52nd and West 53rd Streets. The entrances, containing three door types, are fitted unobtrusively into the narrow bays.

The entrances in the seven central bays on the West 52nd Street side are arranged as follows from west to east: 1) A single-door entry, flanked by sidelights, providing entrance to the commercial space; above it is a simple, modestly projecting light box. 2) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 3, 4, 5) Each has a revolving door with a simple, modestly projecting light box above with the raised letters "CBS." 6) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 7) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above, serving as entrance to a restaurant; there is a second simple, modestly projecting light box above, at the top of the bay. Discreet lettering on several windows identifies the restaurant. The single doors, double doors, revolving doors and their housings, and projecting light boxes are all of the same bronze-finished aluminum.

There are seven entrances and one window bay in the central bays on the West 53rd Street side, arranged as follows from west to east: 1) A double-door entry to the commercial space, with a simple, modestly projecting light box. 2) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 3, 4, 5) Revolving-door entrances with simple, modestly projecting light boxes above with the raised letters "CBS." 6) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 7) A window of the restaurant, with a simple, modestly projecting light box above it and

an additional simple, modestly projecting light box at the top of the bay. 8) A double-door entrance to the restaurant, with an angled projecting marquee with backlit letters indicating the restaurant's name, "China Grill."

The material of the doors and light boxes is the same as that used on West 52nd Street.

At the east elevation, the ground floor bays are as follows from south to north: 1, 2, 3) Glass windows. 4, 5, 6) Bronze-finished aluminum with a double door. 7) Bronze-finished aluminum with a grille. 8) Bronze-finished aluminum. 9) A glass double door, with bronze-finished aluminum above. 10,11,12) Glass windows for the restaurant. There are simple, modestly projecting light boxes in the 2nd, 5th, 8th and 11th bays.

The plaza is paved in a gray granite slightly lighter than that on the building's piers. The plaza is sunken below street level, forming a gray granite retaining wall with parapets and vertical slits on the inside faces. Wide steps lead down to the plaza from each street side; a narrower staircase with eight steps leads down to the plaza from the east.

Each set of steps has two freestanding bronze-finished aluminum railings. A ramp (not original) with a dark bronze-finished aluminum handrail has been added to the steps from West 52nd Street. The ends of the parapets above the retaining walls have polished bronze letters and numerals (replacements of the original) flanking the steps: "CBS" on Sixth Avenue, "51" for the address on West 52nd Street, and "52" for the address on West 53rd Street.

Planters with trees have been placed in the plaza, planters with bushes have been placed on the parapets of the retaining wall. At the eastern end of the plaza, the retaining wall has been enlarged, and includes a wheelchair-access ramp (a later addition), and a staircase leading down to a "messenger entrance." A portion of the tax lot has been excluded from the Landmark Site and has been re-landscaped as part of the plaza for the adjacent building to the east.

- From the 1997 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

PeopleMadeNew by Roland Gilbert

2 2

Goal: Visually convey "new life in Christ" as stated in Romans 5-8

Audience: Members of Frisco Bible Church and visitors

Direction: Not much given ;o)

Project: New 10-message series

Other important info:

Eleonora Rossi Drago by Truus, Bob & Jan too!

17

Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano, in the series Divi del Cinema, nr. 56.

Voluptuous, visually stunning Italian film actress Eleonora Rossi Drago (1925–2007) played princesses and temptresses throughout Italian cinema of the 1950´s and 1960´s. She never found the international cross-over fame destined for Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, but she earned respect as a fine actress playing leading roles in films by famous directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Luigi Comencini and Valerio Zurlini.

Eleonora Rossi Drago was born Palmira Omiccioli near Genoa, Italy, in 1925. She was the daughter of a Spanish sea captain and an Italian mother. She married at the age of 17 to a gentleman named Rossi and bore a daughter Fiorella. The marriage did not last, and mr. Rossi emigrated to Argentina leaving his wife to raise their daughter by herself. She found work as a department store mannequin and began actually designing couture clothing herself. An arresting beauty, she started competing in beauty contests and wound up in fourth place in the Miss Italy pageant. Gina Lollobrigida came in third. The attention lured her to films. She moved to Rome and in 1949 began receiving small film roles while using her married name of Rossi. Her first two big breaks came with Persiane chiuse/Behind Closed Shutters (1951, Luigi Comencini) with Massimo Girotti, a melodrama about prostitution, and the highly controversial Sensualità/Barefoot Savage (1952, Clemente Fracassi) in which Marcello Mastroianni and Amedeo Nazzari violently quarrel over her affections. Persiane chiuse was considered a strong success. The highly impressed director, Luigi Comencini went on to cast Eleonora as a female lead in his next film La tratta delle bianche/The White Slave Trade (1952, Luigi Comencini), another tawdry melodrama about prostitution that co-starred Vittorio Gassman and also showcased the up-and-coming Sophia Loren.

According to Gary Brumburgh at IMDb it was obvious that Eleanora Rossi-Drago “had the makings of a bosomy sex goddess but she constantly strove to better her acting reputation in classier material”. She got the nickname of the ´Lady of the Italian Cinema´. In 1954 she appeared opposite Madeleine Robinson in the L'affaire Maurizius/On Trial (1954, Julien Duvivier), a bleak drama about the miscarriages of justice. In 1955 she won critical notice on stage as Helena opposite Marcello Mastroianni in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya directed by Luchino Visconti. Her finest hour in films came about that same year with the release of Antonnini's Le amiche/The Girlfriends (1955, Michelangelo Antonioni), in which she starred in the rags-to-riches story of a humble girl who becomes a respected owner of a fashion salon and the social class struggle therein. Among her other standout roles in the 1950´s were Kean (1956, Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi) again opposite Vittorio Gassman, Suor Letizia/The Awakening (1957, Mario Camerini) starring Anna Magnani, the Odcar nominated La strada lunga un anno/The Year Long Road (1958, Giuseppe de Santis) opposite Silvana Pampanini, and teh crime drama Un maledetto imbroglio/An Ugly Mess (1959, Pietro Germi) with Claudia Cardinale. In the Italian/French co-production Estate violenta/Violent Summer (1959, Valerio Zurlini) she played a married woman approaching middle age who surrenders herself to a younger man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) during the summer of '43 and height of fascism. The film earned her the Nastro d'argento (Silver Ribbon award), voted for by Italian film journalists, and the Best Actress award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina.

Eleanora Rossi Drago was forced to take on provocative roles of lesser quality - roles that usually emphasized her physical attributes or enhanced the scenery around her. While Sophia Loren had a Carlo Ponti to promote her internationally, Rossi-Drago was less fortunate. By the 1960´s she was relegated to such unmemorable adventures, horrors and sword-and-sand spectacles as David e Golia/David and Goliath (1960, Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier) with Orson Welles playing King Saul, and Rosmunda e Alboino/Sword of the Conqueror (1961, Carlo Campogalliani) opposite a raping and pillaging Jack Palance. More interesting were her parts in the anthology film L´amour a vingt ans/Love at Twenty (1961, Renzo Rossellini a.o.), Anima nera/Black Soul (1962, Roberto Rossellini) and the delightful comedy Se permettete parliamo di donne/Let's Talk About Women (1964, Ettore Scola) starring Vittorio Gassman. In 1964, she also appeared in the TV mini-series La Cittadella (1964, Anton Giulio Majano), an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, The Citadel. Elsewhere, she was pretty much overlooked in the epic ensemble as Lot's wife in Huston's mammoth failure The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966, John Huston). Things did not improve into the decade and after appearing in the elegant erotic drama Camille 2000 (1969, Radley Metzger), in the critically-panned retelling of Dorian Gray, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (1970, Massimo Dallamano) with Helmut Berger, and in the good-looking giallo thriller Nelle pieghe della carne/In the Folds of the Flesh (1970, Sergio Bergonzelli) with Pier Angeli, she decided to call it quits. Blending back inconspicuously into mainstream society, she married Sicilian businessman Domenico La Cavera in 1973, and eventually retired to Palermo, Italy. In 1989 she returned once to the screen, for the documentary Ben Webster: The Brute and the Beautiful (1989, John Jeremy) about jazz saxophonist Ben Webster. Eleanora Rossi Drago died at age 82 of a brain hemorrhage in 2007, and was survived by her second husband and daughter.

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (All Movie Guide), Wikipedia and IMDb.

St Mary the Virgin, Ashford, Kent by Jelltex

There are three Ashfords, really. The modern newtown, Swindonesque newbuilds stretching into the countryside; the Victorian railway town, all neat rows of brick buit houses and the station, and then there is the old town, timber-framed houses along narrow lanes, with St Mary standing towering above all but the modern office blocks.

The west end church was given over to a Christmas Fayre, but is also used now as a concert venue, while under the tower westwards is still in use as a church, with many of its ancient features left alone by the Victorians.

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A stately church in a good position set away from the hustle and bustle of this cosmopolitan town. The very narrow tower of 1475 is not visually satisfactory when viewed from a distance but its odd proportions are hardly noticed when standing at its base. The church is very much the product of the families who have been associated with it over the centuries and who are commemorated by monuments within. They include the Fogges and the Smythes. The former is supposed to have wanted to create a college of priests here, but by the late fifteenth century such foundations were going out of fashion and the remodelling of the church undertaken by Sir John Fogge may have just been a philanthropic cause. Unusually, when the church was restored in 1860 the architect Ewan Christian kept the galleries (he usually swept them away), but Christ Church had yet to be built and the population of this growing town would have needed all the accommodation it could get. Even in 1851 1000 people had attended the church in a single sitting. The pulpit, designed by Pearson, was made in 1897.

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Ashford+1

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THE TOWN AND PARISH OF ASHFORD

LIES the next adjoining to Hothfield eastward. It is called in Domesday both Estefort and Essetesford, and in other antient records, Eshetisford, taking its name from the river, which runs close to it, which, Lambarde says, ought not to be called the Stour, till it has passed this town, but Eshe or Eschet, a name which has been for a great length of time wholly forgotten; this river being known, even from its first rise at Lenham hither, by the name of the Stour only.

A small part only of this parish, on the east, south and west sides of it, containing the borough of Henwood, alias Hewit, lying on the eastern or further side of the river from the town, part of which extends into the parish of Wilsborough, and the whole of it within the liberty of the manor of Wye, and the borough of Rudlow, which adjoins to Kingsnoth and Great Chart, are in this hundred of Chart and Longbridge; such part of the borough of Rudlow as lies adjoining to Kingsnoth, is said to lie in in jugo de Beavor, or the yoke of Beavor, and is divided from the town and liberty by the river, near a place called Pollbay; in which yoke there is both a hamlet and a green or common, of the name of Beavor; the remainder of the parish having been long separated from it, and made a distinct liberty, or jurisdiction of itself, having a constable of its own, and distinguished by the name of the liberty of the town of Ashford.

ASHFORD, at the time of taking the general survey of Domesday, was part of the possessions of Hugo de Montfort, who had accompanied the Conqueror hither, and was afterwards rewarded with this estate, among many others in different counties; in which record it is thus entered, under the general title of his lands:

¶Maigno holds of Hugo (de Montfort) Estefort. Turgisus held it of earl Godwin, and it is taxed at one suling. The arable land is half a carucate. There is nevertheless in demesne one carucate, and two villeins having one carucate. There are two servants, and eight acres of meadow. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, it was worth twenty five shillings; when he received it, twenty shillings; now thirty shilling.

The same Hugo holds Essela. Three tenants held it of king Edward, and could go whither they would with their lands. It was taxed at three yokes. The arable land is one carucate and an half. There are now four villeins, with two borderers having one carucate, and six acres of meadow. The whole, in the reign of king Edward the Confessor, was worth twenty shillings, and afterwards fifteen shillings, now twenty shillings.

Maigno held another Essetisford of the same Hugo. Wirelm held it of king Edward. It was taxed at one suling. The arable land is four carucates. In demesne there are two, and two villeins, with fifteen borderers having three carucates. There is a church, and a priest, and three servants, and two mills of ten shillings and two pence. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth seventy shillings, and afterwards sixty shillings, now one hundred shillings.

Robert de Montfort, grandson of Hugh abovementioned, favouring the title of Robert Curthose, in opposition to king Henry I. to avoid being called in question upon that account, obtained leave to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, leaving his possessions to the king; by which means this manor came into the hands of the crown. Soon after which it seems to have come into the possession of a family, who took their name from it. William de Asshetesford appears by the register of Horton priory to have been lord of it, and to have been succeeded by another of the same name. After which the family of Criol became owners of it, by whom it was held by knight's service of the king, in capite, by ward to Dover castle, and the repair of a tower in that castle, called the Ashford tower. (fn. 1) Simon de Criol, in the 27th and 28th year of Henry III. obtained a charter of free warren for this manor, whose son William de Criol passed it away to Roger de Leyborne, for Stocton, in Huntingdonshire, and Rumford, in Essex. William de Leyborne his son, in the 7th year of king Edward I. claimed and was allowed the privilege of a market here, before the justices itinerant. He died possessed of this manor in the 3d year of Edward II. leaving his grand-daughter Juliana, daughter of Thomas de Leyborne, who died in his father's life-time, heir both to her grandfather and father's possessions, from the greatness of which she was stiled the Infanta of Kent, (fn. 2) though thrice married, yet she died s. p. by either of her husbands, all of whom she survived, and died in the 41st year of Edward III. Upon which this manor, among the rest of her estates, escheated to the crown, and continued there till king Richard II. vested it, among others, in feoffees, for the performance of certain religious bequests by the will of king Edward III. then lately deceased; and they, in compliance with it, soon afterwards, with the king's licence, purchased this manor, with those of Wall, and Esture, of the crown, towards the endowment of St. Stephen's chapel, in the king's palace of Westminster, all which was confirmed by king Henry IV. and VI. and by king Edward IV. in their first years; the latter of whom, in his 7th year, granted to them a fair in this town yearly, on the feast of St. John Port Latin, together with all liberties, and to have a steward to hold the court of it, &c. In which situation they continued till the 1st year of Edward VI. when this collegiate chapel was, with all its possessions, surrendered into the king's hands, where these manors did not continue long; for that king, in his 3d year, granted the manor of Esshetford, with that of Wall, and the manor of Esture, to Sir Anthony Aucher, of Otterden, to hold in capite; and he, in the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary, sold them to Sir Andrew Judde, of London, whose daughter and at length heir Alice, afterwards carried them in marriage to Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, commonly called the Customer, who died possessed of them in 1591, and lies buried in the south cross of this church, having had several sons and daughters, of, whom Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, the eldest, succeeded him here, and was sheriff anno 42 Elizabeth. Sir Thomas Smith, the second son, was of Bidborough and Sutton at Hone, and ambassador to Russia, of whom and his descendants, notice has been taken in the former volumes of this history; (fn. 3) and Henry, the third son, was of Corsham, in Wiltshire, whence this family originally descended, and Sir Richard Smith, the fourth, was of Leeds castle. Sir John Smythe, above-mentioned, died in 1609, and lies buried in the same vault as his father in this church, leaving one son Sir Thomas Smythe, of Westenhanger, K. B. who was in 1628 created Viscount Strangford, of Ireland, whose grandson Philip, viscount Strangford, dying about 1709, Henry Roper, lord Teynham, who had married Catherine his eldest daughter, by his will, became possessed of the manors of Ashford, Wall, and Esture. By her, who died in 1711, he had two sons, Philip and Henry, successively lords Teynham; notwithstanding which, having the uncontrolled power in these manors vested in him, he, on his marriage with Anne, second daughter and coheir of Thomas Lennard, earl of Sussex, and widow of Richard Barrett Lennard, esq. afterwards baroness Dacre, settled them on her and her issue by him in tail male. He died in 1623, and left her surviving, and possessed of these manors for her life. She afterwards married the hon. Robert Moore, and died in 1755. She had by lord Teynham two sons, Charles and Richard-Henry, (fn. 4) Charles Roper, the eldest son, died in 1754 intestate, leaving two sons, Trevor-Charles and Henry, who on their mother's death became entitled to these manors, as coheirs in gavelkind, a recovery having been suffered of them, limiting them after her death to Charles Roper their father, in tail male; but being infants, and there being many incumbrances on these estates, a bill was exhibited in chancery, and an act procured anno 29 George II. for the sale of them; and accordingly these manors were sold, under the direction of that court, in 1765, to the Rev. Francis Hender Foote, of Bishopsborne, who in 1768 parted with the manor of Wall, alias Court at Wall, to John Toke, esq. of Great Chart, whose son Nicholas Roundell Toke, is the present possessor of it; but he died possessed of the manors of Ashford and Esture in 1773, and was succeeded in them by his eldest son John Foote, esq. now of Bishopsborne, the present owner of them. There are several copyhold lands held of the manor of Ashford. A court leet and court baron is regularly held for it.

THE TOWN OF ASHFORD stands most pleasant and healthy, on the knoll of a hill, of a gentle ascent on every side, the high road from Hythe to Maidstone passing through it, from which, in the middle of the town, the high road branches off through a pleasant country towards Canterbury. The houses are mostly modern and well-built, and the high-street, which has been lately new paved, is of considerable width. The markethouse stands in the centre of it, and the church and school on the south side of it, the beautiful tower of the former being a conspicuous object to the adjoining country. It is a small, but neat and chearful town, and many of the inhabitants of a genteel rank in life. Near the market place, is the house of the late Dr. Isaac Rutton, a physician of long and extensive practice in these parts, being the eldest son of Matthias Rutton, gent of this town, by Sarah his wife, daughter of Sir N. Toke, of Godinton. He died in 1792, bearing for his arms, Parted per fess, azure, and or, three unicorns heads, couped at the neck, counterchanged; since which, his eldest son, Isaac Rutton, esq. now of Ospringeplace, has sold this house to Mr. John Basil Duckworth, in whom it is now vested. In the midst of it is a large handsome house, built in 1759, by John Mascall, gent. who resided in it, and died possessed of it in 1769, and was buried in Boughton Aluph church, bearing for his arms, Barry of two, or, and azure, three inescutcheons, ermine; and his only son, Robert Mascall, esq. now of Ashford, who married the daughter of Jeremiah Curteis, esq. is the present owner, and resides in it. At the east end of the town is a seat, called Brooke-place, formerly possessed by the family of Woodward, who were always stiled, in antient deeds, gentlemen, and bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, sable, between three grasshoppers, or; the last of them, Mr. John Woodward, gent. rebuilt this seat, and died possessed of it in 1757; of whose heirs it was purchased by Martha, widow of Moyle Breton, esq. of Kennington, whose two sons, the Rev. Moyle Breton, and Mr. Whitfield Breton, gent. alienated it to Josias Pattenson, esq. the second son of Mr. Josias Pattenson, of Biddenden, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Felix Kadwell, esq. of Rolvenden; he married Mary, daughter of Mr. Henry Dering, gent. of this parish, and widow of Mr. John Mascall above-mentioned, by whom he has no issue, and he is the present owner of this seat, and resides in it. There have been barracks erected lately here, which at present contain 4000 soldiers. The market is held on a Saturday weekly, for the sale of corn, which is now but little used; and a market for the sale of all sorts of fat and lean stock on the first and third Tuesday in every month, which has been of great use to prevent monopolies. Two fairs are annually held now, by the alteration of the stile, on May 17, and Sept. 9, and another on Oct. 24; besides which, there is an annual fair for wool on August 2, not many years since instituted and encouraged by the principal gentry and landholders, which promises to prove of the greatest utility and benefit to the fair sale of it. That branch of the river Stour which rises at Lenham, runs along the southern part of this parish, and having turned a corn mill belonging to the lord of this manor, continues its course close at the east end of the town, where there is a stone bridge of four arches, repaired at the expence of the county, and so on northwards towards Wye and Canterbury. On the south side of the river in this parish, next to Kingsnoth, within the borough of Rudlow, is the yoke of Beavor, with the hamlet and farm of that name, possessed in very early times, as appears by the register of Horton priory, by a family of that name, one of whom, John Beavor, was possessed of it in the reign of Henry II. and was descended from one of the same furname, who attended the Conqueror in his expedition hither. The parish contains about 2000 acres of land, and three hundred and twenty houses, the whole rental of it being 4000l. per annum; the inhabitants are 2000, of which about one hundred are diffenters. The highways throughout it, which not many years ago were exceeding bad, have been by the unanimity of the inhabitants, which has shewn itself remarkable in all their public improvements, a rare instance in parochial undertakings, and by the great attention to the repairs of them, especially in such parts as were near their own houses, are now excellent. The lands round it are much upon a gravelly soil, though towards the east and south there are some rich fertile pastures, intermixed with arable land, and several plantations of hops; but toward the west, the soil is in general sand, having much quarrystone mixed with it, where there is a great deal of coppice wood, quite to Potter's corner, at the boundary of this parish.

The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a large handsome building, consisting of three isles, with a transept, and three chancels, with the tower in the middle, which is losty and well proportioned, having four pinnacles at the top of it. There are eight bells in it, a set of chimes, and a clock. In the high chancel, on the north side, is the college John Fogge, the founder of the college here, who died in 1490, and his two wives, the brasses of their figures gone; but part of the inscription remains. And formerly, in Weever's time, there hung up in this chancel six atchievements, of those of this family whose burials had been attended by the heralds at arms, and with other ceremonies suitable to their degrees. Underneath the chancel is a large vault, full of the remains of the family. On the pavement in the middle, is a very antient curious gravestone, having on it the figure in brass of a woman, holding in her left hand a banner, with the arms of Ferrers, Six masctes, three and three, in pale; which, with a small part of the inscription round the edge, is all that is remaining; but there was formerly in brass, in her right hand, another banner, with the arms of Valoyns; over her head those of France and England quarterly; and under her feet a shield, being a cross, impaling three chevronels, the whole within a bordure, guttee de sang, and round the edge this inscription, Ici gift Elizabeth Comite D' athels la file sign de Ferrers . . . dieu asoil, qe morust le 22 jour d'octob. can de grace MCCCLXXV. Weever says, she was wife to David de Strabolgie, the fourth of that name, earl of Athol, in Scotland, and daughter of Henry, lord Ferrers, of Groby; and being secondly married to John Malmayns, of this county, died here in this town. Though by a pedigree of the family of Brograve, she is said to marry T. Fogge, esq. of Ashford; if so, he might perhaps have been her third husband. Near her is a memorial for William Whitfield, gent. obt. 1739. The north chancel belonged to Repton manor. In the vault underneath lay three of the family of Tuston, sometime since removed to Rainham, and it has been granted to the Husseys; Thomas Hussey, esq. of this town, died in 1779, and was buried in it. In the south chancel are memorials for the Pattensons, Whitfields, and Apsleys, of this place; and one for Henry Dering, gent. of Shelve, obt. 1752, and Hester his wife; arms, A saltier, a crescent for difference, impaling, on a chevron, between three persons, three crosses, formee; and another memorial for Thomasine, wife of John Handfield, obt. 1704. In the north cross are several antient stones, their brasses all gone, excepting a shield, with the arms of Fogge on one. At the end is a monument for John Norwood, gent. and Mary his wife, of this town, who lie with their children in the vault underneath. The south cross is parted off lengthways, for the family of Smith, lords of Ashford manor, who lie in a vault underneath. In it are three superb monuments, which, not many years since, were beautified and restored to their original state, by the late chief baron Smythe, a descendant of this family. One is for Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, in 1591; the second for Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, his son, and Elizabeth his wife; and the third for Sir Richard Smyth, of Leeds castle, in 1628: all which have been already mentioned before. Their figures, at full length and proportion, are lying on, each of them, with their several coats of arms and quarterings blazoned. In the other part of this cross, is a memorial for Baptist Pigott, A. M. son of Baptist Pigott, of Dartford, and schoolmaster here, obt. 1657, and at the end of it, is the archbishop's consistory court. In the south isle is a memorial for Thomas Curteis, gent. obt. 1718, and Elizabeth his wife; arms, Curteis impaling Carter. Under the tower is one for Samuel Warren, vicar here forty-eight years, obt. 1720. The three isles were new pewed and handsomely paved in 1745. There are five galleries, and an handsome branch for candles in the middled isle; the whole kept in an excellent state of repair and neatness. There was formerly much curtious painted glass in the windows, particularly the figures of one of the family of Valoyns, his two wives and children, with their arms. In the south window of the cross isle, and in other windows, the figures, kneeling, of king Edward III. the black prince, Richard, duke of Gloucester, the lord Hastings. Sir William Haute, the lord Scales, Richard, earl Rivers, and the dutchess of Bedford his wife, Sir John Fogge, Sir John Peche, Richard Horne, Roger Manstone, and—Guildford, most of which were in the great west window, each habited in their surcoats of arms, not the least traces of which, or of any other coloured glass, are remaining throughout this church. Sir John Goldstone, parson of Ivechurch, as appears by his will in 1503, was buried in the choir of this church, and gave several costly ornaments and vestments for the use of it.

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol7/pp526-545

Unafraid Arne Hovmand Olsen Danish Mid Century Modern Dining Chairs for Mogens Kold (Denmark, 1960s) by All Day Kenny K

Visually spectacular. I LOVE exceptional chairs, and these are special. Insane original condition.

JunkShop Character by Dan Huff

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Visually foretelling an age of self-directed genetic diversity within the human/alien sphere. if you know what i mean. wink, wink.