I love the fact that Frank Lloyd Wright called the air intakes he designed “nostrils”.

‘Golf Tees’ Support Roof of Windowless Office

Above you see no model of building of future, but the office of S. C. Johnson & Son, Racine, Wis. Two air intakes at top are called “nostrils” by architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Skylights and unseen fixtures supply light in the windowless building.

Above, the circular “bird-cage” elevator. Radiant floors heat the building, steam pipes being laid under the four-inch concrete slab. Without a conventional front door, entrance is through a roofed-over auto driveway. Near by is a “carport” for parking, and on its roof a theater and a squash court.

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Sunlight Cast into Dark Rooms by Automatic Reflector

Several hours of sunlight can be cast into dark rooms of city apartments and hotels by means of an automatic reflector. The device follows the sun whenever it is visible, sets its mirrors to catch its rays and. then reflects them by a complicated series of prisms and mirrors to any 1,300-foot square area desired. The machine may be set up on the roof of an adjoining building to reflect the sunlight into rooms located on inside courts or perhaps on air shafts of large buildings.

Hillside House Hangs in Space

BY RUNNING a big arch right through the house, two young designer-contractors were able to build a home on a clifflike lot offering a magnificent view from the Hollywood hills, and yet avoid expensive foundation work. Inside, the arch forms the railing for a dining balcony that projects into the two-story living room.

The arch, made of laminated Douglas fir that was electronically glued, is the type Widely used to support the roofs of airplane hangars and warehouses. Only the living-room wing hangs on the arch. The rest of the house, designed by L. C. Guthrie, Jr. and R. O. Spencer, sits on a foundation.

Air Raid Shelter In Garden
THE beauties of a rock garden hide a reminder of war’s grimness. During the Sudeten scare of September, 1938, an English dentist constructed this concealed shelter from enemy bombers. It is ten feet long, three feet eight inches wide, and the walls are of solid concrete one foot six inches thick.

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Home on a Train

SOME hobbyists let their hobby occupy them night and day. Well, the reverse is true of Dr. John Payne Roberts. He occupies his hobby!

For Dr. Roberts and his wife make their home in an old railroad car which is a prize exhibit of the Museum of Transport, located in Kirkwood, on the western outskirts of St. Louis. The Museum contains a remarkable collection of old railroad equipment.

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Hurricane House Turns with Wind

WEATHER-VANE DWELLING DESIGNED FOR BOTH SAFETY AND COMFORT

By CARL WARDEN

WHEN raging storms whip across the land, accompanied by violent gales that uproot trees, tear the roofs from houses, and turn a trim countryside into a scene of desolation, there could probably be no safer refuge than the interior of a novel hurricane house designed by Edwin A. Koch, New York City architect. Streamline in the form of a mammoth teardrop, this amazing dwelling would revolve automatically to face into the oncoming storm, meeting it like the wing of an airplane and passing it smoothly around its curving sides toward its pointed tip.

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Giant Truck Will Carry “Mail Order” House

For the delivery of complete prefabricated houses to all parts of the United States, a special tractor-trailer unit is planned. The trucking arrangement is intended to serve a house manufacturing company in which Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors and other industrialists are interested. According to plans, each of the 1,500 proposed vehicles will carry one complete house ready for assembly, two drivers, a master mechanic and a building supervisor. Sleeping accommodations above the seat will enable the crew to travel night and day, speeding up the movement from one site to another. Local labor will erect the houses, supervised by the crew from the factory or distribution point. The houses, which will be low-cost, modern residences, can be completely assembled, ready for occupancy, in two weeks.

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Tricks of the House-Wreckers

by ALFRED ALBELL

Have you ever watched a huge factory chimney being leveled to earth with a charge of dynamite? If you have, you will have wondered how the wrecking crew was able to make sure in advance that the shattered chimney would fall to the ground in a spot where it would miss adjacent buildings. The trade of house-wrecking has its full complement of tricks which are explained in this fascinating article by Mr. Albelli.

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Biggest Post Office TO BE BUILT IN CHICAGO

CHICAGO is to have the largest post office in the world. The fifty-acre, twelve-story building will be completed and ready for occupancy within about a year and a half, according to a recent announcement of the United States Post Office Department. It will be able to care for the 19,000.000 letters a day expected by 1943, in addition to the parcel post packages and newspapers.

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Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright no less.

First All-Glass Building Soon to Rise in City of New York

FROM designing the Imperial Hotel in Tokio, Japan—the only structure of any importance that stood up under the earthquake a few years back—to building the first all-glass house in the heart of New York City is a pretty long step. But it is being taken by Frank Lloyd Wright, world-famed architect, who proposes to erect a building along the lines of that shown in the illustration, at Second Avenue and 11th Street. It is the first of several that Mr. Wright plans to build within the next few years.

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Pleasure-Tower Half Mile High

Towering almost half a mile above the ground, dwarfing such gigantic structures as the Empire State Building and the Eiffel tower, a huge concrete tower 2300 feet high, surmounted with a beacon and built with a spiral ramp for autos to climb up its sides, stuns the imagination with its vastness. It is the design of the French engineer, M. Freyssinet, intended for the 1937 Paris Exhibition.

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This would be cool. When I was a kid, I loved looking through the cracks in the wall to watch the construction on new buildings.

Windows in Builders’ Fence Permit Public to Watch
Recognizing the interest which the public takes in watching others work, a construction company built windows into the fence around the job on which its employes were working recently. The windows permit passers-by to watch, in complete safety.