Municipal Building - One Centre Street at Chambers Street - by McKim, Mead & White

[thomasjfletcher]

My favourite building in New York-
McKim, Mead & White's Municipal Building of 1914.











The Municipal Building in downtown New York impressed Josef Stalin so much that the Moscow University main building (1949-1953) and its accompanying "Seven Sisters" was later based on it -- as well as, in general, the whole grandiose public building style in the Soviet Union and its worldwide empire.











cheers tom

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SCC/SCC030a.htm

[TLOZ Link5]

Eat your heart out, Stalin; nothing can top the original.

[JonY]

^^ True, but it's also said that mimicry in the arts is the highest compliment.

Looks like Stalin's architects extended on the ideas.

[Jack Ryan]

Those mugs sure weren't no Stanford Whites!

[JonY]

lol

[TLOZ Link5]

Regardless, very dramatic and majestic. The regime the sisters glorify, however, is another story.

[UrbanSculptures]

I think the NYC Municipal building was built on mashy ground and they had to put in pneumatic caissons or some kind for the foundation.
Read the story somewhere and think it's on a plaque on the wall.

[ManhattanKnight]

I think the NYC Municipal building was built on mashy ground and they had to put in pneumatic caissons or some kind for the foundation.
Read the story somewhere and think it's on a plaque on the wall.

Correct, basically. The story of the foundation work is told extensively in Landau and Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper 1865-1913 (Yale Univ. Press 1996), which concludes that "[c]onstruction of the building . . . posed the most difficult foundation problems ever encountered in any New York City structure because of the extreme depth of the bedrock, the great variation in its depth, and the presence of the subway station and lines." (pp. 371-72)

BTW, I always thought that Stalin's model wasn't the Municipal Building but Cleveland's Union Terminal Tower (1930):

[TLOZ Link5]

The Terminal Tower was based on the Municipal Building, as were the Fisher Building in Detroit and the Wrigley Building in Chicago.

[thomasjfletcher]

very interesting styletype.

the ones I can think of-

The Helmsley Building Warren & Wetmore 1929


Cleveland Union Terminal
and Terminal Tower 1930
Graham, Anderson, Probst and White



wrigleg building Chicago Graham, Anderson and Probst 1921


which turns out was based on the Giralda tower of the cathedral in Sevilla from 1568


what a complicated story! If Stalin only knew....
anybody know of any others that look like this?

[thomasjfletcher]

how could I have forgotten this???

[thomasjfletcher]

I did some research into the whole Giralda Tower thing (for those interested in history...)-

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/ARCH...-municipal.htm

[FRED]

[lofter1]

The Municipal Building seen through a winter fog from City Hall Park ...

[Luca]

Can one go to the top of the municipal building? Is there any osbervatory or even a window you can look out of?