Evening Star Newspaper, February 16, 1930, Page 89

e —————— e —— The Chrysler Building in New York which has shot up with rocketlike grace 80 1,030 feet and a new record, scraper about 950 feet in height, recessed and set back in the style that zoning laws have now made customary everywhere. Thus, in its essentials, his structure was simply four gigan- tic skyscrapers set on adjacent blocks to form a hollow square. But at this point the architect, Martin: Beck, showed his imagination. On the top of each of these four skyscrapers he designed & steel superstructure 300 feet more in height. Enor- mous arches were flung aloft to connect each of these superstructures with its two nearest . neighbors. Then, over the lofty framework thus formed, a solid platform to serve as land- ing fleld was projected. THIS landing field is square, measuring 1,000 fect.on each side—a sort of giant’s table put up on hollow legs, each leg an enormous building in itself, capable of housing 25,000 or more inhabitants. ; The landing fleld, in turn, would have its own repair shops, hangars, waiting rooms and the like, with express elevators to connect it with the ground levels and the lower floors. Thus the future skyscraper may avold street congestion by providing its own private land- ing field. And if you're able to imagine build- ings of this enormous size, it probably will be no trouble at all for you to imagine, also, that by the time they are built the airplane will have been perfected so that every man will be flying his own plane as casually as he now drives his own automobile. One of the things that the skyscraper age will bring to the American city is a beauty as stricing and breath-taking as the beauty of ancient Greece or Renaissance Florence, ac- cording to Benjamin F. Betts, editor of the American Architect. “The progress of 1929 toward expressing this new architactural form was striking both in design and dimension,” he says. “In 1930 we may well expect a crystallization of this effort, with purer attempts to express in great build- ings the swift, straight lines that are essential in steel skeletons. . “Heavy cornices and protruding ornamenta- - tion are false notes in an architecture that depends on steel framework covered with no more than a curtain of brick stone. Our new architecture is writing in masonry, steel and glass the history of the age in which we live. “Yet there is no sacrifice of beauty. The new designs lend themselves to a splendor of detail as well as a dignity of mass and com- position that proves that the steel skeleton building can be beautiful and yet express its structur-.” N!W YORK, Mr. Betts points out, is not the only city that is doing great things with its Tapers. “In Detroit,” he says, “the Penobscot and Union Trust Buildings are typical of the de- velopments that wm have a marked influence THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON’L D. C, FEIE!UARY 16, 1930. A greater heart for greater New York, the civic center, proposed by the regional s on future architecture. The Fisher s for which Albert Kahn, Inc., received the silver medal of the Architectural League of New York, startled the architectural world with its splendor. “In Chicago the completion of the Chicago Civic Opera, the Chicago Daily News Building, the Carbon and Carbide Building and the Palmolive Building made architectural history. With such precedent it is reasonable to expect greater advances of the Chicago school in 1930. “In smaller cities, on the Pacific Coast and in the South, last year saw marked character- intic, individual and daring disregard for prec- edent in favor of new forms that would ex- press our civilization.” E New York regional plan’s advocacy of a 1,000-foot building for the city govern- ment came as a bit of a surprise, in view of the fact that this committee, in the past, had sharply criticized the tendency to seek greater heights in new buildings. The committee points out, however, that the city government's home ought to be the city’s domnating build- ing, and that the only way to get dominance in a New York building, is by making it taller than anything in its neighborhood. Further- more, it says that the region about New York's present City Hall Park is admirably adapted for such a building. ; In additicn, the committee points out that it is not opposed to skyscrapers as such. “The fundamental thing is space about build- ings, and not limitation of height,” says Thomas Adams, director of the regional plan staff. “We have listed high buildings as one of several causes of congestion, but never have imagined that the remedy would be found in the yardstick method of arbitrarily limiting the skyward development of a city. “The main problem in Manhattan, for in- stance, is that too much of each block is covered with buildings. The real reason for hel(htllmlhtbnhthct&etthntudnqusfieopm space has not been reserved on private land. u'l‘mmnl the greatest emphasis in all discussion of building on private land should be placed on the question of i proper balance and proportion ‘between ing bulks and the spaces around them.” Thus, Mr. Adams points out, the evils of the skyscraper do not come because the skyscraper is 50 high; they come because too many sky- scrapers are jammed close together. which every building was exactly 10 height, he says, would have much more congestion, and much less light and air in its streets, than one which has a small number of 50-story buildings with a great many three four story buildings scattered between them. ‘Already, he indicates, New York real estate build- plan committee. It will tower 1,000 feet high. Trust Building recently leased the air rights over & much lower building that stands next to it—the idea being to prevent a tall building from being erected where it would cut off the Equitable tenants’ light and air. .In the same way the Bank of Manhattan Co. recently paid $700,000 for air rights over an adjacent five-story building. The regional plan, however, adds the sober- ing reminder that it will not be the architects and the buildings who will bring this aerial city of the future into existence—if it ever does come into existence; it will be the city’s transportation system. “N!w YORK and its skyscrapers,” says the plan’s report, “have been created more by transportation than. by any other means. The city will attract industry, business and inhabitants in proportion to its main- tenance of efficiency in transportation by ship, train, motor or foot. In other words, New York depends for its growth chiefly on the main- tenance of ‘a high degree of accessibility. Sky- scrapers will increase in number only as the tyrant transportation permits them to increase, and not as the property owners themselves desire.” N!.'VIRTB!LESB. the regional plan commit- tee believes that New York—and, to a lesser degree, every other metropolis—will be better off if it bullds up to the 100-story level—for this reason: resent condtiions, and traffic congestion be as bad as it is now, where 25 and buildings stand in long ranks on almost of New York's principal streets. - Armen Tashjian president of the Cleveland Chapter of the American Institute of Archi- tects, is another authority who believes that the coming of the city of skyscrapers is inevi- table. “We shall live vertically instead of hori- sontally,” iie declares. population back into cities as the only solution. There is & limit to how far population can, spread from a commercial center. Here again, the development of transportation is the de- " terming factor. “Yesterday, 45 people In every hundred lived in cities; today the figure is 55; by the end of the next 35 years it will be 65 in every hundred. “Alwm'mc'wnn will take this new form and new direction—a sky-reaching form of masses in which the science of engineering will play a dominant part. T 111 fi; 88 ., LS AL[. which is simply absurd, unnecessary wasteful. Massive weight is waste. as modern manufacturing is “I believe that the 150-story skyscraper is now physically possible. The materials for builds ing this sky-reaching tower, which would be double the height of the tallest man-made structure now in existence, are now actually available, if the profession could shake off the fetters of the past. “The 150-story building of the future will be constructed with special alloy steel skeletom framing, the supporting members of which need not be much larger than those now used i T5-story buildings. Architects are now de- veloping and using a floor system for skyscrap- ers which saves 60 per cent of the dead weight of the floors, yet carrying the same loads, with the same factor of safety. “So the 150-story skyscraper, useing light floor constructions, will have a not much more serious problem in the way of supporting col- umns than we have had in the 75-story builde ing of the present day. “Again, thé 150-story building will use for its inclosing walls exclusively aluminum alloy sheet metal backed up with lightweight, highly efficlent insulating materials, all units shope made, delivered ready to be snapped on in place, requiring one-tenth the time and labor of the present masonry inclosures, and weigh- ing probably one-twentieth of the masonry it replaces. “Such metallic inclosure, I believe, can be made as attractive and pleasing as the archi- tect may fancy. They will certainly be more weuflwr-tkl:.w better .insulated and probably more econo once they are made by mass “wwh i bi ’ L1 SR