Friday, April 9, 1965: The Astrodome

HOUSTON, Tex. -- There was a bomb scare but President Johnson showed no concern Friday night as he and 47,876 other fans watched air conditioned baseball. An anonymous report that a bomb had been placed in the $31.6 million Harris County Domed Stadium proved false but it caused the President and the first lady to be late for the opening of the all-weather structure. They saw 7 1/2 innings as the Houston Astros opened their astrodome by beating the New York Yankees 2-1 in 12 innings. The President told newsmen he was impressed with the stadium, which permits professional baseball to move indoors for the first time. Because of the bomb scare, the presidential party watched the game from the private suite of Roy Hofheinz and R.E. (Bob) Smith, owner of the Astros. The suite is 30 feet above the right field pavilion and the crowd saw the President and Mrs. Johnson only through its windows. They did not go down on the playing field.

     -- Story from Associated Press

     -- Photo from Houston Chronicle; caption reads: A photo taken from the Astrodome's gondola shows the stadium's baseball field on April 1, 1965.

* "First Game in the Astrodome" (www.astrosdaily.com): @

* "Rain or shine -- play ball!" (Life magazine, April 9, 1965): @
* "What a Wonder! What a Blunder!" (Life magazine, April 23): @
* Summary from Texas State Historical Association: @

* Summary from American Historic Engineering Record, National Park Service: @
* Overview from "Housing the Spectacle: Dome Case Studies" (Columbia University): @
* "Game Over for the Astrodome, 'Stadium of the Future' " (New York Times, March 2015): @ 

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1964: Gentrification

Writing in the book "London: Aspects of Change," British sociologist Ruth Glass coins the term and explains the concept:

     One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes -- upper and lower. Shabby, modest mews and cottages -- two rooms up and two down -- have been taken over, when their leases have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences. Larger Victorian houses, downgraded in an earlier or recent periods -- which were used as lodging houses or were otherwise in multiple occupation -- have been upgraded once again. Nowadays, many of these houses are being sub-divided into costly flats or "houselets" (in terms of the new real estate snob jargon). The current social status and value of such dwellings are frequently in inverse relation to their size, and in any case enormously inflated by comparison with previous levels in their neighbourhoods. Once this process of "gentrification" starts in a district, it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed.

* Text of Glass' essay (from "The Gentrification Debates: A Reader," edited by Japonica Brown-Saracino, 2013): @

* Glass biography (from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography): @

* "Gentrification" (Oxford Bibliographies): @

* "The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City" (Neil Smith, 2005): @

* "There Goes the 'Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up" (Lance Freeman, 2006): @

* "Gentrification" (Loretta Lees, Tom Slater and Elvin Wyly, 2008): @

* "As 'Gentrification' Turns 50, Tracing Its Nebulous History" (curbed.com, 2014): @

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Friday, April 10, 1964: Polo Grounds

A massive steel ball crashed against the grandstand wall of the Polo Grounds Friday with a thud -- unlike the sharp crack of a bat on a ball. The thud started the demolishing of the old diamond home of such greats as John J. McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott and Willie Mays to make way for 30-story apartment buildings.
     -- "Historic Polo Grounds Comes Tumbling Down in New York" (Associated Press; full story: @)
     -- Top photo from www.ballparksofbaseball.com; bottom photo from ESPN

* "Wrecker's Ball Tolls Knell at Polo Grounds" (Associated Press): @

* History of ballpark (Society for American Baseball Research): @

* Entry from www.ballparks.com: @
* Entry from www.ballparksofbaseball.com: @
* Entry from www.andrewclem.com: @
* "Classic Shots of the Polo Grounds" (Sports Illustrated): @
* "Polo Grounds, and Its Former Tenants, Emerge From the Shadows" (New York Times, January 2011): @
* "Land of the Giants: New York's Polo Grounds" (Stew Thornley, 2000): @ 

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Monday, October 28, 1963: Penn Station

NEW YORK -- With not a pause for sentiment, wreckers Monday began demolishing lofty, drafty Pennsylvania Station to make way for a giant new Madison Square Garden.
     But the trains ran as usual, and they will continue to run during the wrecking, the construction and afterward. All the tracks are below ground.
     For 53 years, nine-acre Penn Station has stood, a monument of neoclassic architecture in which untold millions of travelers have moved.

     Leading New York architects fought to save the stately structure, designed after the Roman baths of Caracalla by Stanford White's noted architectural firm and built with tons of imported Italian marble.

     -- Associated Press. Full story: @

     -- 1962 photo from Library of Congress.

* "Farewell to Penn Station" (New York Times editorial, October 30): @

* Entry from New York Preservation Archive Project: @

* Entry from www.greatbuildings.com: @

* Entry from www.nyc-architecture.com: @

* Photos (from Business Insider): @

* Videos (from Gothamist): @

* "Conquering Gotham -- A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels" (Jill Jonnes, 2007): @

* "The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station" (Lorraine B. Diehl, 1985): @ and @

* "The Destruction of Penn Station" (photos by Peter Moore, 2000): @ 

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Friday, July 12, 1963: Movie multiplex

Stanley H. Durwood opens the two-screen Parkway Twin in a shopping center in Kansas City, Missouri, with both theaters showing "The Great Escape." While not the first multiplex, it helped popularize the business concept of having several screens under one roof.
* "The Multiplex is Born" (The Kansas City Public Library): @

* "The Many Births of the Multiplex" (cinelog.org): @

* " 'A revolutionary concept in screen entertainment' : The emergence of the twin movie theatre, 1962-1964" (Christofer Meissner,  Post Script, Essays in Film and the Humanities, 2011): @
* "Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture" (Charles R. Acland, 2003): @
* Durwood obituary (Variety, 1999): @

* Durwood obituary (New York Times): @

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Friday, July 5, 1963: Endangered buildings

Life magazine publishes a photo essay titled "America's Heritage of Great Architecture is Doomed ... It Must Be Saved," with photos by Walker Evans. The introduction:

     Above the scurry and tumult of travelers, clocks tick away the final hours of a grand and historic monument. New York's Pennsylvania Station is doomed. Its herculean columns, its vast canopies of concrete and steel will soon be blasted into rubbish to make way for a monstrous complex -- sports arena, bowling alley, hotel and office building. The disaster that has befallen Penn Station threatens thousands of other prized American buildings. From east to west, the wrecker's ball and bulldozer are lords of the land. In the ruthless, if often well-intentioned, cause of progress, the nation's heritage from colonial days onward is being ravaged indiscriminately -- for highways, parking lots, new structures of modernized mediocrity. Some 2,000 buildings classified by the government as major landmarks of history and beauty have vanished in the past 25 years. At this very moment most of the buildings shown on these pages are endangered -- and others have been saved only by fights. Unless citizens and officials act to halt the holocaust, the noble, the picturesque and all that is beautiful in America's architectural heritage will be memories and a handful of dust.

* Complete issue of Life magazine (article begins on page 52): @

* Slideshow (from life.time.com): @

* Penn Station entry from www.nyc-architecture.com: @ (Demolition began on October 28, 1963.)

* Walker Evans biography (from Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art): @.  (The museum acquired Evans' personal archives in 1994; it can be searched at www.metmuseum.org.) 

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Tuesday, February 12, 1963: Gateway Arch

Construction begins on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, symbolizing the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century. (The structure would be completed in October 1965; photo from July 1965.)

* www.gatewayarch.com: @

* Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (from National Park Service): @

* "The Incredible Gateway Arch" (Popular Mechanics, December 1963): @

* Exhibit on Eero Saarinen, who designed the arch (www.eerosaarinen.net): @

* "Eero Saarinen: An Architecture of Multiplicity" (Antonio Roman, 2006): @ 

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Undated: 'Little Boxes'

Written by Malvina Reynolds, the song mocks suburban development and residents; Reynolds wrote the song after driving through Daly City, California, just south of San Francisco. A version by Pete Seeger would reach No. 70 on Billboard's Hot 100 music charts in February 1964. The term "ticky-tacky" -- in the context of the song, meaning low-quality building materials used for standardized housing -- also entered the language (and dictionaries).

Photo by Rondal Partridge ("Housing, Daly City, California, late 1960s"). More of Partridge's work: @ and @

* Entry from "Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems": @

* Lyrics as published in Broadside magazine (February 1963, PDF): @

* Remembrance of Reynolds by her daughter: @

* History of Daly City: @

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Tuesday, June 12, 1962: Underground school / fallout shelter

Abo Elementary School in Artesia, New Mexico, is dedicated. The school, built entirely underground, also functions as a fallout shelter. Classes would begin on August 28.

From the 2011 book "Artesia," by Nancy Dunn and Naomi Florez of the Artesia Historical Museum & Art Center:

Conceived at the height of the Cold War and the era of bomb-shelter construction, the school was built 18 feet underground and covered by a 21-inch thick, steel-reinforced concrete slab. Heavy steel doors said to be designed to hold up under a nuclear explosion were placed inside the aboveground entrances. The school's campus covered 10 acres, and the roof doubled as a playground. Besides having traditional school features, such as classrooms for 540 students, a cafeteria/multipurpose room, and modern restrooms, Abo School boasted an emergency entrance equipped with a shower to remove fallout particles, an air-conditioning system designed to filter out radioactivity, a generator to supply emergency power, and a morgue. Emergency rations were stored in the teachers' room. By 1989, the rations, outdated medical supplies, and body bags were discarded, and the morgue was used to store cafeteria supplies. Abo School was replaced by Yeso Elementary School in 1995. ... Because the school was underground, it was felt that students would be able to concentrate better on their lessons, as there were no windows to look out of, and the air-conditioning system was thought to help children with allergies and asthma.

* Excerpt from "Underground Buildings: More Than Meets the Eye" (book by Loretta Hall, 2004): @

* Excerpt from "Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America" (book by Tom Vanderbilt, 2010): @

* Excerpt from "Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War" (book by David Monteyne, 2011): @

* "Incorporation of Shelter Into Schools" (Office of Civil Defense, November 1962): @

* "Civil Defense Shelter Options for Fallout and Blast Protection (Dual-Purpose)" (IIT Research Institute, May 1967): @

* "460 Atomic-Age Kids in Underground School" (Sarasota Journal, August 1962): @

* "Underground School is Fallout Shelter" (Popular Science, October 1962): @
* Earlier post on fallout shelters (September 1961): @

* Earlier post on fallout shelter sign (December 1, 1961): @

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Saturday, April 21, 1962: World's Fair

The Seattle's World Fair opens, built around the futuristic theme "Century 21."

From "The Washington Journey," a 2009 textbook for 7th-graders:

The Space Needle, now an emblem for downtown Seattle, was built for the World's Fair in 1962. The Space Needle was a symbol of the nation's space program, which was pushing hard to get a man on the moon before the Soviets did. The World's Fair was a chance to show what the future might bring in science and technology. A huge science exhibit stressed more science eduation for American students. The monorail was an example of future transportation. It still operates in downtown Seattle.

* Essay from www.historylink.org (Washington state history site): @

* www.62worldsfair.com: @

* "Seattle World's Fair: Then and Now": @

* Anniversary coverage from The Seattle Times: @

* Newsreel on fair's opening: @

* "Let's Go to the Fair" (CBS report with Walter Cronkite): @

* "Century 21 Calling" (Bell System video): @

* Time-lapse video of Space Needle construction: @

* Life magazine, February 9: @

* Life magazine, May 4: @

* "Seattle's 1962 World's Fair" (2010 book by Bill Cotter): @

* "What'll It Be Like in 2000 A.D.?" (Popular Science, April 1962): @

* "Journey to the Stars" (American Cinematographer, 1963): @

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Friday, December 1, 1961: Fallout shelter sign

A press release issued on this date by the Department of Defense:

The National Fallout Shelter Sign will be a familiar sight in communities all over the United States next year. It will mark buildings and other facilities as areas where 50 or more persons can be sheltered from radioactive fallout resulting from a nuclear attack. The sign will be used only to mark Federally-approved buildings surveyed by architect-engineer firms under conract to the Department of Defense. The color combination, yellow and black, is considered as the most easily identified attention getter by psychologists in the graphic arts industry. The sign can be seen and recognized at distances up to 200 feet. The shelter symbol on the sign is a black circle set against a yellow rectangular background. Inside the circle, three yellow triangles are arranged in geometric pattern with the apex of the triangles pointing down. Below the fallout symbol, lettered in yellow against black, are the words FALLOUT SHELTER in plain block letters. Yellow directional arrows are located directly underneath the lettering which will indicate the location of the shelter.

"An Indelible Cold War Symbol: The Complete History of the Fallout Shelter Sign" (from conelrad.blogspot.com): @

* Signs page from Civil Defense Museum: @

* Signs page from Health Physics Instrumentation Museum Collection (Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Tennessee): @

* "Protection Factor 100" (1963 Office of Civil Defense film about National Fallout Shelter Survey Program): @

* "September 1961: Fallout shelters" (blog entry): @

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Tuesday, November 21, 1961: Revolving restaurant

From The New York Times:

Honolulu's tallest office building has a revolving restaurant perched on its roof. The saucer-shaped restaurant, opened last week, offers diners a panoramic view of the city. A sixteen-foot-wide ring set into the floor of the restaurant, called La Ronde, makes one compete revolution every hour. Windows completely circle the restaurant and are tilted outward to reduce glare. The dining facilities are on the roof of the twenty-two-story Ala Moana Building. The office building, restaurant and an adjoining shopping center were designed by John Graham & Co., Seattle and New York architects. The restaurant seats 162 persons on the revolving floor. The seventy-two-foot-wide restaurant is cantilevered from a thirty-eight-foot-diameter concrete core which contains stairwells, elevators, kitchen and other facilities for La Ronde. A three-horsepower motor moves the floor of the restaurant. Two additional motors have been installed for emergency use."

From "Some Construction and Housing Firsts in Hawaii," by the Hawaiian Historical Society:

La Ronde is a revolving restaurant on the twenty-third floor of the Ala Moana Building, 1441 Kapiolani Boulevard. Opened to the public on November 21, 1961, it was variously described as "one of the first of its kind in the United States" and even as "the first revolving restaurant in the United States."

* Entry from "Firsts: Origins of Everyday Things That Changed the World" (book): @

* "Revolving Restaurants in the Americas" (from InterestingAmerica.com): @

* "Revolving architecture: A History of Buildings That Rotate, Swivel and Pivot" (book): @

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October 1961: 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities'

The influential book by urban activist Jane Jacobs is published. In it, the New York resident takes direct aim at urban planning policies. From a 2011 article in The Guardian newspaper: "Jacobs, a housewife, mother and part-time architectural journalist, had been drawn into the campaign to prevent New York's dictatorial planning boss Robert Moses -- who had already ripped up swaths of the city -- from driving a highway through her native Greenwich Village. ... But her book did not just dwell, negatively, on the harm New York's car-obsessed, modern-minded planners were doing. Building on close observeration of her own and other neighborhoods, she mounted a thorough and original defense of traditional city forms against both the garden city movement and modernist city planning. She argued that dense, mixed-income mixed-use neighborhoods, designed around short city blocks with busy amenity-lined streets and small parks, had a huge range of benefits unappreciated by modern urban planners, who mistakenly associated the old city with all the evils of the 19th-century slum."

The photo shows Jacobs at a December 1961 news conference of the Committee to Save the West Village. (From the New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Collection, Library of Congress)

* Short biography (from Project for Public Spaces): @

* New York Times review (November 5, 1961): @

* "Cobblestone Conservative: How Jane Jacobs saved New York City's Soul" (The American Conservative, October 2011): @

* Symposium on book and its impact (From The American Conservative): @

* "Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the story of 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' " (book by Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch): @

* "Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City" (book by Anthony Flint): @

* "Downtown is for People" (1958 article by Jacobs in Fortune magazine): @

* New York Times obituary (2006): @

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October 1961: 'Waterfall'

Dutch artist M.C. Escher completes the lithograph "Waterfall," which appears to depict the never-ending movement of water. The illusion makes use of the Penrose Triangle, a so-called "impossible object" that seems plausible when viewed 2-dimensionally but can't be replicated in 3 dimensions.

* Official Escher website: @

* "M.C. Escher's Legacy: A Centennial Celebration" (book): @

* Video of reconstructed "Waterfall": @

* "Escher for Real": @

* More about Penrose Triangle: @

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Sunday, June 25, 1961: Los Angeles International Airport

A dedication ceremony is held for the Los Angeles Jet Age Terminal Construction Project, an expansion of the airport. Among the new structures, the most notable was the futuristic-looking Theme Building (left), which housed a restaurant and observation deck. (People often mistook it for the control tower.) It remains a classic example of "Googie" architecture.

* More about Theme Building: @ and @

* More about Walt Disney Imagineers' work in 1990s on Theme Building: @

* 2010 New York Times article on Theme Building restoration: @

* "Los Angeles International Airport" (book): @

* Encounter Restaurant website: @

* Flight Path Learning Center and Museum: @

* Googie Architecture Online: @

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May 1961: Archigram

Six London architects publish their ideas for transforming cities in a series of influential magazines, the first of which appeared in May 1961 (left). The collective and the magazine, both titled Archigram (combining ARCHItecture and teleGRAM), outlined projects that mixed urban planning with pop culture, futurism and fun.

* Summary from London's Design Museum: @

* Summary from School of Architecture, University College London: @

* Official website: @

* The Archigram Archival Project: @

* "Archigram: Architecture without Architecture" (book by Simon Sadler): @

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Saturday, October 1, 1960: The Climatron

The first geodesic dome to be built for use as a greenhouse, the Climatron opens as part of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. The structure, covering a half-acre, incorporates the pioneering principles of inventor-engineer-futurist R. Buckminster Fuller.

* More about the Climatron: @ and @ and @

* Videos from Missouri Botanical Garden: @

* More about geodesic domes: @

* "The Birth of the Geodesic Dome": @

* More about domes in general: @

* More about R. Buckminster Fuller: @

* Buckminster Fuller Institute: @

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Saturday, June 4, 1960: Danish Embassy opens

Denmark's King Frederick IX and Queen Ingrid attend the official opening of the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington. The building is hailed as the first "modern" embassy in design; many countries had simply bought large mansions to house their embassies.

* More about the embassy: @

* Interior photos: @

* Embassy Row tour: @

* Overview of Danish architecture: @

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Tuesday, May 24, 1960: Pan Am's Worldport

Pan American World Airways opens Terminal 3 at New York's Idlewild Airport. The futuristic-looking building is variously described as an umbrella (Time magazine), a parasol and a mushroom (New York Times) and a flying saucer. It was designed to keep passengers dry as they go from the terminal to the airplane (in the days before boarding bridges). Pan Am would rename it the Worldport in 1971.

* Pan Am history websites: @ and @

* Maps: @

* Pictures: @

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Thursday, April 21, 1960: Brasilia is born

Brazil's new capital city, built from scratch in about 3 and a half years, is officially inaugurated. It was constructed so that the capital would be in a more central part of the country than the previous capital, Rio de Janeiro. The new capital was known for its urban planning and its modern architecture; at left is the city's Cathedral.

* More about Brasilia: @

* More on history of Brasilia: @

* Graphic of city's key features: @

* Panoramic views of the city: @

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