Sun Supplies Heat For This House
OLD SOL provides the heat for the hot water system in this new sun laboratory, recently completed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research on using the sun rays for house heating and power generation. The man on the roof is Dr. Byron B. Woertz, research assistant, who is inspecting energy collectors, or “heat traps,” in which circulating water is heated by sunlight and stored in a large basement tank for future use.

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Corner Windows Feature of New Gotham Skyscraper

A NEW step in office building construction has been marked with the completion of a new 34-story skyscraper in New York City. The most noteworthy feature of the building is that the supporting steel framework does not extend to the corners of the structure, these corners being left entirely clear, and windows being placed at each floor with only a thin metal window sash at the angle. The additional light thus available in the corner offices makes these suites desirable especially in the upper stories beyond reach of street noises.

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Haywire House

By R.W.K

I’VE been there, I’ve seen, I’ve taken pictures—but I still don’t see how such things are possible.

The Editors of MI heard some wild stories about a place called the House of Mystery. What stories! People go around ten degrees off the vertical! A golf ball thrown straight up comes down several inches to one side! A bottle rolls uphill! A broom stands by itself—at an angle to the floor! People grow taller or shorter, depending on where they stand! All this happens in Oregon, in a peculiar area called the Oregon Vortex, a circle, or rather a sphere, exactly 165 feet 4-1/2 inches in diameter up in the Gold Hill country!

The Editors, always hot after new science angles but suspecting trickery,, arranged that I be sent up after the . story. Right off, I’d better say I’m not a trained scientific writer at all, but a photographer. I got the assignment because I wasn’t born yesterday and because I know my camera angles. They figured if there was any optical trickery involved I’d catch it.

I’ll say right here that the House of Mystery is still a house of mystery to me.

I was plenty skeptical when I arrived. Right away John Litster, owner of the works, looked me in the eye. “Keep alert here,” he warned. “You’ll need all your skill. I won’t promise that your pictures will come out. You may have to come back several times.”

I certainly tried to be alert.

First he took me to a place where there were two concrete blocks a couple of feet apart, separated by a line. The line, he said, marked the edge of the Vortex, one block being outside and one in. He stood me on one block and himself stood on the other.

“Now, sight along a line level with your eyes and see what part of my face comes into view,” he directed. I did it, and found myself looking at the top of his head. I was the taller one.

“Now let’s swap positions,” he said. We did that—and now I found myself looking squarely into his eyes! I couldn’t help myself! I was amazed! He was taller! I tried it again. I experimented. The concrete blocks were level and even with each other in the ground!

^While I was trying to fathom the secret, a dozen tourists gathered to be token through the House, and I joined them. As we stood outside the Screwy Circle, Litster told us to cross over carefully, then stop and stand perfectly still, and we’d actually feel the change of balance. We did it. He was right! It were as though a strong wind were blowing us over toward magnetic north! We were to remain at this odd angle, sometimes greater than 10 degrees, during all our stay.

After this we were led through a rickety gate in a high board fence, and inside found ourselves in a small yard flanked on one side by the House of Mystery itself, left just as it had fallen during an earth slide many years ago. The crooked doorway captured our eyes. One elderly woman, livid with fear, refused to go a step farther.

At the doorway our guide told us to watch our balance carefully when entering because we could very easily fall up! At this advice a few ladies giggled and one old gent smiled and expertly arced a gob of tobacco juice between two rotting boards. But when we filed in we found he spoke the truth! The floor was at an angle, and standing was made difficult by the pull of some mysterious force!

In the House the experiments began. A girl was told to push a 28-pound weight, suspended from the ceiling, in a certain direction. She did it with ease. But when she tried to push it the opposite way it took all her strength! A golf ball tossed straight up fell inches to one side! These aberrations were due to the magnetic pull of the vortex of electrons, according to Litster, who says the House of Mystery puzzle is based on the same principle as a vortex. I looked up that word “vortex” as soon as I back, and I guess I’d better put down what

the dictionary, It was: “1. A mass of fluid, especially of a liquid, having a whirling or circular motion tending to form a cavity or vacuum in the center of the circle, and to draw toward this bodies subject to its action. 2. A supposed collection of particles of very subtle matter endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or a planet. Descartes attempted to account for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it, by a theory of vortexes.”

That same golf ball, put on the floor, began rolling uphill! And it was uphill: any customer who doubted that could check it with a level.

A girl, on instructions from the guide, was told to back slowly up into a corner. She did so, but couldn’t control her momentum; she suddenly felt herself “fall up,” and slammed noisily against the wall!

At one place there were two poles marked off in inches. On one, a man’s height would be six feet, say, but on the other, only a few feet away, there would be a difference of an inch, and sometimes more!

A plumb line was suspended from the branch of a tree. Normally the bob and cord would hang straight down—but when we stood in back of it with the bob between our feet, the cord passed nearly in front of one ear!

I learned that many years ago the Indians regarded the area of the Vortex as a place of evil spirits. It is said that horses shied when they neared the place. The House of Mystery was erected as an assay office when the white man first came that way in search of gold, and its present owner, John Litster, claims he discovered the oddities of the area some 17 years ago and now stars them in a roadside sideshow to finance his study of the region.

I must say that the place seems a very profitable attraction, and I also must say that Litster was very friendly and cooperative.

These, then, are the highlights of the story. You see the pictures, just as my camera caught them.

To me, the House of Mystery is still a mystery. I’m not enough of a physicist to understand just what this vortex force is. I bought Litster’s “Notes and Data” booklet on it, but I bet Einstein himself couldn’t make head or tail of that.

The Editors of MI smile whenever I tell how wonderful everything was, and when I ask why, they smile even more—but they won’t tell me a thing. Maybe they’re putting on an act, but I don’t know. I was there. I saw these things. What can account for what happens?

House Shaped Like Elephant
A HOUSE built in the shape of an elephant is located at Margate City, N. J. Erected in 1882 by James V. Lafferty, the novel home is said to be the only one of its kind. The body is 38 feet long, the circumference, 80 feet. The head is 26 feet long and 48 feet around. Legs are 22 feet long with a diameter of 10 feet. Glass eyes have an 18-inch diameter.

Bureau-Shaped Building Houses Bureau of Information
AS a novel means of advertising their town’s chief industry, the manufacture of furniture, the local Chamber of Commerce of High Point, N.C, has erected a building resembling a huge bureau to house its headquarters. The novelty of the structure lies in the sign on the mirror, for the building is actually a bureau—a bureau of information. This unique building was erected by popular subscription and is located in the heart of the town.

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Latest in Homes Has Skyscraper Frame and Glass Walls

CUBICAL in construction and designed to build for $2500 or less, the model house shown in the photo at the left has just been completed in Syosset, Long Island. It is intended to serve the needs of families whose income is $1800 a year or less.

Simple modernistic lines, with no fancy and expensive curlicues, characterize the design. Steel is used for the framework, giving it the durability of a skyscraper skeleton. Much glass is used to admit plenty of light.

A garage is on the first floor, with laundry rooms adjoining, and a porch alongside, open to the outdoors. The second floor has a living room, dining room, kitchenette, and one bed room. The third floor has two bed rooms and a closet, in addition to a large sunny terrace open to the sky for the children’s playground.

A small furnace for heating is also installed at the rear of the garage, and practically all the usual home conveniences are provided at a minimum of expense and slight costs of repair and upkeep.

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CITY WITHIN A CITY

Equal in size to ten 10-story buildings, New York’s Interstate Commerce Center will have an Indoor highway.

THEY gasped when Tom Mix rode his horse right through the swinging doors and into .a western saloon. They laughed when Olsen and Johnson drove a midget car into the elevator of a modern building and then through the halls to a lawyer’s office. (In Hollywood, anything can happen.) But within a few months, New Yorkers will see the start of a building which, when finished, will swallow whole fleets of large trucks, trailers, and cars—said vehicles calmly driving into the building and thence upward on a spiral, four-lane indoor highway to whatever floor their business is on.

This unique “in-building highway,” 32 feet wide and three-quarters of a mile long, and rising at a grade of only 6%, will be one of the outstanding features of the proposed Interstate Commerce Center building to be constructed by the Tishman Realty and Construction Company of New York. Thirteen stories high and covering an area of four square blocks strategically located on the threshold of the world’s commercial marts and routes on lower Manhattan, the new building will be a revolutionary step in architectural design aimed at helping industry meet the inevitable changes and expansions of the postwar industrial era.

“Industry,” observes David Tishman, President of the Tishman Realty and Construction Company, “is now confronted with a problem never before encountered—a problem that will necessitate drastic changes and improvements in business procedure. There are the tremendous potentialities of domestic and foreign markets; accumulated demands for new and replacement goods; an enormous expansion in aggregate buying power; revised distribution methods; and a labor supply far greater than that of the last prewar year.

“It is to coordinate this unprecedented demand, increase efficiency of operation in all branches of business and thus bring about lowered production and distribution costs, that the Interstate Commerce Center was designed.”

The $15,000,000 building, which will be larger than the Port of New York Authority Building and second only to Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, will be a veritable “city within a city,” housing not only industries but also restaurants, beauty parlors, barber shops, and retail stores for the 25,000 persons expected to work there. Each organization, leasing one or more floors, will have its own private entrance on the street floor leading to a private lobby with accommodations for reception clerks and switchboard personnel. Each firm will have its own private express passenger elevators, operated by a single button and stopping only at its own floor. Each floor will provide its tenant with over four acres of operating capacity, an area equal to the total floor space of a ten-story building of 100×175 feet. This tremendous area will permit the centralization on a single floor of all branches of a great organization: executive, production, merchandising, and shipping.

But, when it comes to the most amazing feature of the “Center,” the “in-building highway” will cop all honors. Its gentle 6% grade will permit trucks and trailers of maximum size to drive up at high speeds directly to loading platforms on any of the thirteen floors. Sidewalk deliveries, loading and unloading of freight into elevators, traffic-congested streets, jangled nerves and dented fenders will be a thing of the past, because each floor will have adequate loading space and facilities to accommodate at least twenty large trailer trucks. Loading and unloading these trucks will take place at these indoor platforms with a maximum of comfort, night and day, rain or shine.

Greenhouse Goes Modern

WHAT is considered as the last word in green houses recently has been completed in St. Louis at a $120,000 cost. Unlike the average greenhouse of today, the roof is practically hail proof, the top being made of an unbreakable composition.

The glass panels are made up of 24 by 26-inch panes covering 15,000 square feet, and are fastened in place with copper glazing strips.

Prefabricated House For Defense Needs
THIS radical-looking prefabricated house is one of the many types which have’ been submitted to the Division of Defense Housing Coordination as a quick, cheap method of housing defense workers. The house weighs only a ton, and can be constructed in six days by one man. At the right is an interior view of the novel “defense” house.

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The House That Death Built

by Dean S. Jennings

DEAD leaves, whipped from stark lonely trees by the valley wind, sing a dirge in the night glow of a winter’s moon.

Behind the skeleton screen of withered oaks whose rotting limbs droop to pungent ground, you can see the house, gabled and gaunt, rising wraith-like against a blue shadowed mountain backdrop.

They call it the “mystery house,” and “the house that death built” or “ghost house.”

It’s the strangest structure in the world, a rambling labyrinth of 160 rooms, a $5,000,000 mass of wood and masonry set down in the heart of the peaceful Santa Clara Valley in California. Its mahogany halls have been empty these many years, its dusty rooms hollow and sad.

But there was a time when hammers pounded and saws whined; when a wrinkled old woman, listening to the commands of ghostly whispering voices, shuffled through the house and gave orders to workmen which resulted in blind stairways, chimneys without stoves, closet doors with closets, pillars upside down and many other peculiar things.

“You will live,” the voices had told her decades before, “only as long as it takes to build your house. When hammers are quiet, then death will come.”

Frantic, desperate, the woman summoned an army of workmen, drove them to ceaseless toil with her bulging purse. For 38 years they labored and the house grew, like some monstrous tumor, spreading octopus-like over the estate. And it was still unfinished when death snatched her away.

Today, the house once more echoes to soft footsteps, the voices of unseen beings chatter in ancient rooms, and they say the spirits—which fled when the old woman died—have returned once more.

Before I take you through this nightmare of architecture, let’s turn the calendar back for a moment. . . .

In New Haven, Connecticut, William Wert Winchester, scion of the famous rifle manufacturing family, was building a new home for his lovely wife, Sarah, and their baby daughter. Just as the house was finished, the sinister shadow over the family made its first appearance. Winchester and the baby girl died suddenly and Mrs. Winchester, stunned by the tragedy, fell into a coma so serious that physicians despaired of her life.

Finally she recovered and, at a friend’s suggestion, visited a medium. During a seance, according to those familiar with her story, she received a communication from her dead husband in which he said: “Sarah dear, if our house had not been finished, I would still be with you. I urge you now to build a home, but never let it be finished, for then you will live. . . .”

Fearful of electric storms so common in the East, the young widow hurried to California, bought 160 acres of land and an eight-room house. There, hiding herself from the world, she began the incredible task which led to the creation of what is now known as “The Winchester Mystery House.”

Mrs. Winchester’s income was $1,000 a day. Most of it was spent on salaries to workmen, on carloads of building materials from every corner of the world, rare woods, exquisite marble, costly glass, fixtures— many of which were never used and still repose in storage rooms. Beautiful floors were inlaid one week, ripped out the next. There were many servants, but only one ever came in contact with the eccentric widow. In fact, when the late Theodore Roosevelt visited California, officials in San Jose called on Mrs. Winchester.

“The President of the United States is anxious to meet you and visit your home,” they said excitedly.

The woman, peering through the front door of her mansion, shook her head.

“I have never bothered anyone,” she said acidly, “I expect no one to bother me. Good day!”

Ignoring the pleas of the officials, Mrs. Winchester walked slowly back to her “blue” room, the tiny bare chamber where, in the dark hours of the night, she communed with invisible friends.

Sarah Winchester, cloistered in supreme loneliness, died on September 5, 1922. The builders gathered up their tools, the great rambling structure gathered dust and age. But she left an astonishing heritage which, in summary form, looks like this: 160 rooms.

13 bathrooms.

47 fireplaces.

Thousands of windows and doors.

Five Tiffany windows costing $1,000 each.

A front door worth $2,000.

3 elevators.

40 stairways.

5 separate heating systems.

9 kitchens.

Transparent floors, screens on inside doors, doorknobs and fixtures of gold, silver and bronze.

One has the macabre realization that these rooms were made for spirit guests; that no human being was ever destined to sleep in the bedrooms of dazzling beauty, or^sit down in any of the vast reception rooms, whose walls are covered with embossed wall paper studded with bits of crystal.

Sarah Winchester had a weakness for the number thirteen. All the stairways are constructed in series of 13 steps, walls have 13 panels, glass doors have 13 pieces, chandeliers have 13 lights. On one chandelier, having no room for a thirteenth light, Mrs. Winchester punched a hole in the gold conduit pipe and fastened therein a plain iron gas jet.

You can find dozens of closet doors that open on blank walls, stairways that end in mid-air, trap doors, blind chimneys, secret passages, screens placed on blank walls, doors with knobs on only one side. The house was so arranged that carriages or automobiles could be driven inside, with no prying eyes able to watch the silent widow step out.

The mansion is indeed a remarkable feat of the builders’ art. For, although few of the rooms are on a level with one another, the structure stands solidly, rising to a maximum height of five stories in spots, stretching out like a village in others.

Sarah Winchester’s burning zeal to “keep building” is reflected everywhere, particularly in one stairway, with 44 steps 2 inches high and seven turns in a total rise of only ten feet.

If you were taken to the center of the house and left there alone, it might easily take a day to find the way out.

Today, with Sarah Winchester but a memory, with the age-browned halls and rooms deserted shells of once busy hours, strange phenomena have aroused the countryside to a furore of gossip. The spirits, which must have followed the old woman to her marble tomb in New Haven, are once more flitting through the labyrinth . . .

Weird rappings filter down from above to the caretaker’s room on the ground floor. Footsteps, soft, gentle, come and go through the night in padding cadence. Sibilant whispers, they say, swirl around your ears . . .

A woman who went through the house recently, said in hushed awe: “Someone—some unseen guide—was at my side as I walked into Mrs. Winchester’s room. Another time, I felt a gentle pressure on my arm. Superstitious? Not a bit. But I can’t understand it. I could feel this invisible thing in every room.”

Many other recent visitors have reported similar puzzling experiences, paralleling familiar psychic demonstrations in other parts of the world.

The late Harry Houdini, prince of magicians, went through the mansion in the dead of night some years ago but gave out no public impression of his visit. He had planned, however, to return and spend a week within its mystic walls.

Has Sarah Winchester come “home”?

What does it mean—the unearthly tramp-tramp of unseen feet, the eerie cry of voices from shadowy, cobwebbed eaves?

Who knows?

The dead leaves fall, the lonely trees bend to the wind, the blue mountain gazes down sphinxlike on the house where Sarah Winchester looked alone at her soul . . .

TENT CITY ON HOTEL ROOF IN SAN DIEGO, CALIF.
An unusual method of coining dollars from the waste space on the roof of a building is shown in this view of the U. S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, where about twenty tents have been pitched far above the city. The view is fine, the air good, and as the elevator and other hotel service is at hand, the guests enjoy camp life and city advantages together. The proprietor receives a good rate for these quarters, so that the novel idea is beneficial all around.

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PLAYGROUNDS IN THE SKY

Here is MI’s hold plan to fight juvenile delinquency and get kids off the street.

THE scene is your city on a sticky, sweltering twilight in midsummer. Lights are beginning to wink on and kids are starting to gather in the streets after the evening meal.

A few years ago this was the danger hour in your city. You remember it well—the nightly muggings would begin about now and young girls would be afraid to venture out alone. Beatings were commonplace and gang wars, fiercely fought with knives and zip-guns, were a frequent occurrence. But things are different now.

Look at the kids emerging from their homes. Instead of congregating at the candy store and pool parlor hatching * up new forms of violence out of boredom, they are now heading for the center of the block. They funnel into a large entrance and are swallowed up inside.

Follow them. They tile into elevators and are whisked upstairs. The doors open and they step into a fantasy land.

There, a few yards from the tenements where they live, on their very roofs, in fact, is a regulation-size baseball diamond with real springy turf! But the kids aren’t interested just now—they played ball all afternoon. Instead, they enter the locker room and in a few minutes are cavorting noisily in a big, broad and very cool swimming pool. Afterwards, they troop onto the ball field, where chairs have been set up, and watch a movie under the stars.

What’s it all about? “This magic land for kids doesn’t exist in my city,” you say. No, it doesn’t—yet!

But it darn well could! It could exist in your town and in hundreds of other communities throughout the nation. Every city could construct huge, all-encompassing playgrounds and recreation centers, using the enormous, readily available space now going completely to waste on the rooftops of their congested areas!

The erection of these play centers on the nation’s rooftops is Mi’s plan to counterattack juvenile delinquency. Granted, it’s a bold, dramatic proposition. It might also, at first glance, border on the impossible. Immense and breath-taking, yes—but impossible? We don’t think so at all.

Does the idea intrigue you? It should because teen-age terrorism is costing you many hundreds of additional tax dollars every year, not to mention the hours of worry for the safety of self, family and property.

Already a million youngsters get into trouble with the police every year. The Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee has just made the startling prediction in a report that by 1960 the figure will skyrocket to 2,250,000!

Listen again to the authorities: “If communities throughout the nation provided more wholesome recreational facilities for their young people, delinquency could be curtailed.” This comes from FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and his conviction that recreation is a big answer is echoed by judges, child guidance experts and police officials from coast to coast.

MI believes the obvious solution is in rooftop playgrounds. No miracles of engineering are needed. Technically, with the know-how we possess right now, no insurmountable problem exists. Declares Henry Kohler, a prominent New York architect who is editor of the Bulletin of the Brooklyn chapter of the American Institute of Architects: “Certainly it can be done. Even though roofs are of different heights, even though some buildings are narrower than others, there is no limit to the size of the playground which can be built. You can build a gym up there or you can construct a center big enough for a baseball field, grandstand included!”

Mr. Kohler, who spent four years with the Seabees designing athletic areas of all types for military personnel in the South Pacific, points out that a 200×250-foot center would be ample to contain all the necessary facilities.

The floor would be a reinforced concrete slab built up from the highest level. Let’s explain: Suppose the site selected consists of five apartment houses—three of them five stories high, two only four stories high. From the top height of five stories, steel supports could be spanned horizontally, meeting similar supports which come up vertically from the lower height of four stories. The reinforced concrete floor is then constructed upon these supports.

The concrete slab would contain radiant heating units for two major reasons: this is the best way of heating a large area and no other plumbing for heating purposes would be necessary. And there is a third reason which the teen-agers would say leads all the rest: In the winter a refrigerant such as freon could be put into the tubing. This would freeze water and the kids would have themselves a fine skating rink.

Now suppose the roof area of the five apartment houses is too small—suppose the entire area just doesn’t add up to a 200×250 playground. Have we met an impasse? Not at all, says Mr. Kohler. The answer: Cantilever out. This means that horizontal supports are extended outward from the edge of the roof and cantilever supports are introduced from the sides of the building.

When the dust of construction work clears away, what will the finished product be like?

There would be a baseball field for the playing area. Wooden flooring could be applied in sections over the turf and in a short time the baseball diamond could be transformed into a basketball court, a floor for a track meet or a dance floor. Along the sides removable stands could accommodate hundreds of spectators for neighborhood tournament games.

There would be a swimming pool, showers, locker rooms and even a solarium. There could easily be an ice skating rink in winter, as previously explained, tennis and handball courts, a raised stage for amateur theatricals, ping-pong, shuffleboard and gymnasium equipment.

Off to the sides, behind huge folding doors, there could be separate, smaller rooms. These would be studios for arts and crafts, painting, sculpture, photography, music and rehearsals. There could be a wood and metal working shop, a library and study rooms.

The total cost for a playground like this? An estimated $1,000,000, and a bargain at the price.

There would be some problems to surmount, of course. Legal questions, such as liability in case of accidental injury, would have to be straightened out in advance. Zoning problems would have to be handled. Code requirements of the local departments of housing and buildings would have to be met. Money must be raised.

Recently, four reform school teeners appeared before a youth forum in New York and, sitting behind a screen to protect their identities, advised their elders on how to deal with kids. Their unanimous conclusion: More young people would stay out of trouble if they were loved by their parents and “had decent l and interesting places to play after school.”

Anyone who has ever had a taste of the misery, degradation and boredom of an alley adolescence can testify that this is a realistic suggestion. The clincher came when the New York State Attorney General told the youths that their suggestion was the same as that offered by a panel of social workers and public officials not long before at a hearing on the problems of juvenile delinquency.

How about it? Had a bellyful of terror in your city’s streets? Then why not give rooftop playgrounds some long and serious thought? •

Basement Penthouse

A veritable dean of home craftsmen, Norman Brokenshire practices what he preaches on his TV show in which he offers advice to all homeowners who get fed up with the expense of calling outside help for home renovations.

Deciding to put the basement of his home to practical use, Brokenshire tore out the battered plaster walls and ceiling. Installing the necessary wood framing, he applied plywood paneling to completely cover the walls and used Weldtex squares for the ceiling. Tiling was used for the floor.
Brokenshire,. setting an example for other home craftsmen, has created an unusually attractive, livable basement penthouse from once neglected space.—Robert Karen

HOUSE FOR THE ATOMIC AGE (Aug, 1953)

Mr. Hayes Builds His Dream House
HAL B. HAYES, Los Angeles bachelor, pulled out all the stops when he built his home on a hill in Beverly Hills. A designer and contractor by profession, he has always liked to entertain in a fanciful setting. This time, with a “little” imagination, he has realized his greatest dream much to his guests’ delight.

Twin towers, 110 stories high, world’s tallest

Two 1,350-foot buildings, planned for New York City’s World Trade Center, will top the Empire State Building by 100 feet, not counting its TV antenna. Each of the 110-story towers will have twice the office space of the Pan Am Building’s 2.4 million square feet, now the world’s most spacious.

The two towers, a plaza, and smaller buildings will occupy 16 acres in downtown Manhattan.

Construction will cost the Port of New York Authority $350 million. Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the Science Pavilion at the Seattle World’s Fair, and Emory Roth & Sons are the architects.

Portable “tree” apartment house
An easy-to-assemble “tree” apartment house with cabins on its branches has been designed by Hoist Dollinger, German architect. The building is intended for temporary accommodations. The 320-foot concrete mast has a base only 16-1/2 feet square. An internal elevator and stairs provide access to the cabins. One of the structures is planned for the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair.

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MODERN WONDERS of an Ancient Art Part II

By H. W. MAGEE

Part II

IMAGINE a metal house coated with glass, a home with all the delicate coloring and enduring beauty, inside and out, of age-old cloisonne.

The development of porcelain enameled iron for architectural purposes makes such a home both possible and practical. As a building material, porcelain enameled iron—actually a form of glass fused on to a metal base—offers an admirable union of utility and beauty for it possesses the strength of metal plus the hardness and permanence of glass. It can be produced in any hue or combination of hues in the mineral spectrum, it is colorfast, impervious to weather, non-porous, rustproof and can be made acid-resisting. And it is good for a lifetime of service.

In the past six or seven years, several types of buildings have been designed iii which preformed porcelain enameled panels are laid over a steel or wood frame, or its equivalent in the frameless type of construction. Architects also have applied the material successfully to interior surfaces and obtained a rare combination of permanence and lasting beauty.

One of the earliest uses of porcelain enameled metal for exterior construction work was in the form of roofing shingles. Produced in a variety of designs and colors, this permanent and fireproof roof covering indicated the possibilities of the same material for exterior wall surfaces. One of the first problems faced by builders attempting to cover walls with procelain enameled iron was how to attach the panels to the frame.

At least half a dozen independent methods of fastening the sheets to the framework have been devised, ranging from patented keylocking attachments fabricated into the framework to interlocking channel sections and metal strips of special design to accommodate and secure the panels. Most types of porcelain enameled building panels are backed with insulation and provision also is made in most cases for a layer of insulating material between the enameled panels and the wall framework. Model homes with exterior surfaces of porcelain enameled metal were exhibited at Chicago’s Century of Progress, one house having enameled panels held in place by wall beads of simple design, while another had panels backed by a cement-like base.

Porcelain enamel as a material for sheathing the exteriors of buildings has been found to supply all the permanence of glass, while at the same time offering a welcome solution to the modern demand for color. While thus far it has been used mostly as an exterior surface for small buildings, many architects see a bright future for it in great commercial structures, notably as a decorative tool. That porcelain enamel lends itself admirably to ornamentation is exemplified by the huge mural ornaments, eighteen feet in diameter, decorating the outer walls of Radio City, sixty feet above the sidewalk. Perhaps mull ions, spandrels, moldings, pillars, pilasters, sills, sash, trim and extruded shapes in door panels and walls in our office buildings of the future may be endowed with the grace and beauty of this ancient material.

The material is finding an even wider application for interior finish and decoration. The kitchen which once boasted a porcelain enameled sink or stove and a few pans now may be porcelain enamel from floor to ceiling. Multi-tone wall panels of porcelain enameled metal offer an opportunity for design and color treatment which can transform kitchens and bathrooms into cubicles of arresting beauty. Properly used, porcelain enamel with a natural wood or marble finish also finds its way into other rooms.

One of the first architectural applications of porcelain enamel, and one of the most important today, was in the construction of gasoline filling stations. It was found that the material was adaptable to ornate design, colors were permanent and could be carried out in the same material in signs and pumps, construction was simple and the entire building could be taken apart and moved to a new location, if necessary, at comparatively low cost.

Another early application of the material by builders, and one constantly gaining favor, was in the designing or remodeling of shop and store fronts. Since there is no limit to the colors or designs in which porcelain enamel can be fashioned, and since it has a high reflectance, it offers an opportunity for a pleasing alliance between architecture, lighting and advertising appeal in planning a shop to stop the shoppers.

In addition to helping get the customers into the shop, porcelain enamel is aiding in selling them after they enter. In shops where cleanliness, durability and “eye appeal” are particularly desirable, fixtures, counters, display cases and walls are often of porcelain enamel. In such places as drug stores, barber shops, meat markets and restaurants, it has been found that the material, in addition to being sanitary and easy to keep clean, adds to the attractiveness of the shops, particularly where pleasing color contrasts in enamel are employed.

Heretofore, porcelain enameled sinks and bath tubs have been made of cast iron porcelain enameled. Porcelain enameled pressed metal sinks and bath tubs are now also available. The pressed metal products claim light weight as their chief advantage.

When it is considered that only a century ago porcelain enamel was virtually unknown except as a finish for costly jewelry and ornaments, it is difficult to predict the future of this product which was ancient when Columbus discovered America. Many of its architectural applications still are in the experimental stage, but in view of what has already been accomplished it is not unreasonable to expect that its field of usefulness will be extended even farther in the next decade than in the past one.

So, since you may expect porcelain enamel to serve you in more and more ways, here are a few simple things to keep in mind in buying and using porcelain enameled products: In the first place, know you are getting porcelain enameled ware when you ask for it, and not something covered with “enamel” paint. Porcelain enamel cannot be cut or scratched by a coin or pin scraped across its surface, whereas paints and lacquers fail under such a test.

On such products as table tops and sinks, where fruit juices and other acids come in contact with the working surfaces, it is desirable to ask for “acid resisting” porcelain enamel, which is especially designed to resist the action of such acids.

One of the outstanding features of porcelain enamel is the ease with which it may be cleaned. A damp cloth or one dipped in soapy water cleans a porcelain enameled surface quickly and easily. If the dirt or grime is a bit tenacious, however, ordinary cleaning compounds can be used.

Porcelain enamel is essentially glass and any cleaners or solutions that you would ordinarily use on a plate-glass mirror can be safely used for cleaning it.

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Are Skyscrapers Bombproof?

American Type of Building May Be Answer to Raiders

AMERICAN skyscrapers, often the butt of foreigners’ jokes, stand ready to attain a new and indispensable usefulness. In the view of experts, they constitute a highly satisfactory, if not impregnable, defense against all types of bomb attacks. Even without added safeguards, they can safely protect millions of city dwellers and workers from explosives, gas, and incendiaries. And by the addition of sandbags and steel in vital sectors, they can be made almost as safe as the most elaborate shelter.

Those same Europeans who have laughed at our huge towers of steel and reenforced concrete regard them enviously today, for they have seen their own buildings of wood, brick, and masonry crumble to dust and rubble, graveyards for their hapless occupants. Their few modern structures, however, have withstood the heaviest assaults of incendiary and demolition bombs. Residents of New York with its Empire State, Chrysler, Bank of Manhattan, and forty other towers more than 400 feet high; Chicago, where the Board of Trade, Temple, and almost a dozen others top 500 feet; Detroit, with the Penobscot, and Pittsburgh, with the Gulf Building, enjoy ample protection. Every American city has buildings that afford a large degree of safety.

In the opinion of Ely Jacques Kahn, eminent architect of New York City, skyscrapers are “naturals” as a bomb defense. The common demolition bomb of 550 pounds will penetrate a maximum of eight stories through a steel roof and steel and reenforced concrete floors. With the added protection of sandbags the penetration may be limited to three floors. The most powerful explosive, upon hitting the street, will not hurl fragments able to penetrate modern walls higher than three stories. Poison gas cannot rise more than two or three floors above street level. Incendiaries, weighing only a few pounds, may not penetrate even through a modern building’s roof. Even if they do, they must burn through almost completely fireproof floors and walls.

Refugees in a skyscraper, then, provided they remain three floors above the street and five or six floors below the roof, are safe from anything except a direct hit which may be directed at them slantwise. For bombs never fall straight; they strike whatever is in their path at an angle. Experience abroad, however, has shown that even a hit like this is a minor catastrophe. It will undoubtedly kill or wound persons sheltered at that level. Striking at the 25th floor, for example, it may penetrate diagonally down to the 20th, killing and maiming en route. But the building’s steel frame is flexible; it will take the shock without collapsing.

No surface structure, modern or otherwise, can be made impervious to a direct hit except at terrific cost, and it is likely that skyscrapers will have to continue to take that risk. Important safeguards such as sandbagging on the top floors, placing sandbags between floors and windows to protect against flying fragments, and bracing windows or covering them with metal sheets, will add greatly to the general safety.

The skyscraper’s defense role however is not limited to protection alone. Military experts concede that the heavily reenforced roofs would easily support antiaircraft-gun emplacements, and shelters for gun crews.

Unique and permanent underground shelters may be the solution in our cities’ most crowded areas. In emergencies they may be used as shelters for almost indefinite periods, completely equipped with food-storage, sanitary, and dormitory facilities; power units for lighting, heating, and ventilating; and ample ingress and egress motorways. A seven-foot layer of reenforced concrete, and reenforced concrete walls, would give them protection against demolition bombs.

In time of peace these subterranean palaces, acres in area, may be transformed into useful civic projects. Thousands of automobiles may find storage and parking space there, new municipal markets, theaters, skating rinks, swimming pools, gymnasiums, auditoriums, and schools may be located there, far from dirt, noise, and traffic.

Ely Jacques Kahn together with his partner, Robert Allan Jacobs, has even envisaged these combination war-and-peace villages as the modern answer to the problem of slum clearance. Mr. Kahn is famous for the designing of many of New York’s best-known buildings and department stores, such as the Squibb Building, 120 Wall Street, Bon-wit Teller, Bergdorf-Goodman, and Jay Thorpe. Slums, he says, are peacetime hazards; they are worse in wartime. Raze them, therefore, and in their stead erect vast areas of parks, playgrounds, and apartment houses, with permanent shelters beneath them.

New Suntrap Apartments

Homes where everyone will get his share of sunlight, with roads and gardens elevated well above street level, are shown in model form at the Modern Architectural Research Group Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London, England. The occupants of these apartments will get their full measure of daylight regardless of the position of the sun in the skies.

Structures such as these are to be erected in “slum” areas.

Homes Reflect Owners’ Curious Whims

TAKING their cue from the celebrated old woman who lived in a shoe, modern home builders, moved by whims or necessity, have fashioned strange dwellings which outrival the most fantastic nursery rhyme.

Perched on the sands of a southern California beach, for instance, is an ocean-going yacht which has never put to sea. It was built as a home, not a ship; yet the nautical influence is complete from ladder entrance and porthole windows to a dummy anchor which has been dropped overboard into the sand. Bunks are substituted for bedrooms and the stern is arranged for garage space.

A niche between two large rocks in the hilly country near Riverside, California, has been utilized to form an unusual home. The V-shaped nook has been enlarged with building blocks and closed with a door, forming a triangular room for its lone occupant and his dog.

An old ship’s funnel in the Oakland estuary in San Francisco bay serves as an ingenious dwelling. The stack lies on its side, the ends closed with a door and window opening, probably the last port of call for an old seaman.

The smallest 18-room house in the world actually occupied by adults is a miniature castle boasting numerous turrets and towers. Owned by a California Scot, the building occupies a space only 14 by 19 feet. The living room is 5 feet by 6, the bedrooms 5 by 6. The kitchen is 4 feet square, housing a sink, cupboard and stove and opens into a 3 by 6 dining room containing the customary furnishings. In addition to these rooms the house boasts a nursery, sun room, study, workshop and various guest rooms.

In Portland, Oregon, a millwright has solved his housing problems with a structure 40 feet long and 7-1/2 feet in diameter. He lives in an old smokestack and finds that he has so much room that he has partitioned off the back half of his strange dwelling, utilizing only the front half for his bedroom and a combination living room and kitchen.

Tiny Prompter for Public Speakers

A PROMPTING device consisting of a reel of paper, on which notes are typed, contained in a case small enough to be held unseen in the palm of the hand, has been patented by a railway official who was embarrassed by lack of notes in making public addresses. A small wheel turned by the thumb operates the paper reel.

Mud Skyscrapers of Desert Built Long before Log Cabin
Mud skyscrapers that were hundreds of years old when log cabins began to dot the American wilderness still stand in the ancient city of Shibam in southern Arabia. The modern steel skyscraper is only fifty years old. Shibam was a thriving city of tall buildings in the time of the Queen of Sheba, and still is a busy desert metropolis today. So constructed as to withstand the raids of hostile Arab tribesmen, with windows high above the ground, the Shibam skyscrapers were of mud mixed with straw and maize, dried and hardened by the desert sun.

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SKYSCRAPERS DOOMED by UNDERGROUND CITIES?

by WILLIAM JENNINGS

SAFE from bomb attacks—free from disease and changing temperatures—living in cities a mile beneath the surface of the earth—such is the dream of science for the man of the future, a not impractical dream which may doom the towers of Manhattan and every other large city to destruction.

Despite its towering skyline, the trend of building construction in New York City has been ever downward. Today the island of Manhattan and its surroundings are honeycombed with a vast network of underground facilities. There are more than 130 tunnels and underground areas in the metropolitan district; more than 2800 miles in the subterranean sewage system, and about GOO miles of subway trackage carrying 5,000,000 passengers every day.

With habitable space growing more scarce every year in the crowded centers, architects and scientists freely predict that vertical cities, built from the earth’s surface downward, may eventually supplant the skyscrapers of today. The reasons for their belief in the practicability of such a plan lies in the recent successful tests of a machine known as the “centrifuge” invented by Professor Philip B. Bucky, of Columbia university.

Explained in its most simple terms, Professor Bucky’s machine is a device into which accurate scale models of underground structures may be placed and whirled about in such a way that the centrifugal force equals the actual earth stress to which full sized construction would be subjected.

Built of the same materials as the structure to be tested, the model is placed on the centrifuge and whirled at speeds up to 4000 revolutions a minute until the centrifugal force tends to pull the model apart. A movie camera simultaneously records each revolution of the machine. When the film is run off on the screen it shows up the stress and strain under varying degrees of force up to the collapse of the model. Heralds New Building Era From these technical tests a new science of foundation engineering is expected to develop. Lack of a yardstick with which to measure the stresses of the earth has hitherto kept architects from planning extensive underground projects.

Testing depths up to 6000 feet, the centrifuge opens up an amazing, vista of life in the future. It will be possible to have business blocks under airports with the surface left clear for planes. Vast subterranean caverns could be constructed, capable of sheltering entire populations against enemy bomb attacks. Office buildings, factories, homes and theaters—all could be sunk into bedrock.

Life underground would be different only in the respect that conditions, under scientific control, would be more sanitary and healthful. Conditioned air would prevail and the sun’s absence compensated for by the use of ultra-violet lamps. The temperature would be constant at about 62 degrees. Coal bills would no longer worry the householder and bacteria would be killed.

Professor Bucky does not venture to make extravagant predictions. His centrifuge does not construct; it merely tests. The advantage of the machine lies in the fact that the safety of underground buildings may be absolutely proven by testing miniature models.

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Grotesque Figures Carved on Modern Skyscrapers

A BOY with a bean shooter, a lone fisherman, rats climbing up hawsers are among the strange objects that be found upon modern skyscrapers or apartment houses. Thousands of people have passed through the buildings thus adorned without ever having seen these figures, or if seen there was no recognition of their purpose. Sometimes the architect has played a joke upon the unsuspecting owner, installing a queer figure in so inaccessible a place that only a person with a telescope could examine it. In other cases, the figures have a real, if unconventional, symbolism and are, in a way, the modern equivalents of the gargoyles and statues of medieval architecture.

A whimsical architect is said to be responsible for a group of figures in the ceiling of the main entrance to a fashionable church in Fifth Avenue, New York. These are placed high enough to be all but invisible. They are believed to depict the types of people that the architect expected to attend the church; among those represented are the comic-paper symbols for the banker, the merchant, the professional man, the idle millionaire, and even the waster with his monocle! One expensive apartment house, with an ultra-modern scheme of decoration, presents a series of panels carved to satirize the landlord, the automobile mechanic, the stenographer, and the modern girl, the iceman, and the comedy figure of a janitor.

Photographs on these pages show what unusual sculpture our cameraman found on a tour of New York City’s newest and most famous buildings.

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The MAGIC Palace of RADIO CITY

JUST a few weeks ago in a building covering three New York City blocks from Forty Eighth to Fifty First street, tycoons of the electrical, radio, motion picture, entertainment and art world sat down in company with 1200 select guests to dedicate the completion of the Rockefeller financed monument to the 13 year old industry of broadcasting—Radio City.

Built to accommodate and anticipate rapidly outgrown and outgrowing needs of the broadcasting industry, this modern engineering wonder tops all superlatives. The industry it represents has grown the fastest toward national import, in the shortest space of any industry of our time. The first national broadcast occurred but 13 years ago when Dr. Frank Conrad, of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company put on the air the events of the Harding election from station KDKA, set up informally in his garage in Pittsburgh. The building is our biggest, has the most “mosts.”

So gigantic has the radio broadcasting industry become that the need for housing the nationally important broadcasting companies, with their attendant production and executive offices, has called for the building of this skyscraper group in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Over 22,000 people is the potential tenancy of the “City.” As they go about their daily work in connection with the business of broadcasting—these people equal the population of Freeport, Ill., Vicksburg, Miss., Jackson, Tenn., or Boise, Idaho. All buildings connected with the enterprise are biggest. All studios are biggest. There is the greatest number of biggest things one can possibly imagine.

The central auditorium or broadcasting studio, where the dedicating tycoons and guests met, is 75 by 132 feet, and has stages which are reversible.

Any brief description of Radio City must of necessity be a statistical parade. This “City” is the western part of the Rockefeller center which occupies three square city blocks, so valuable that the yearly rental is $3,000,000 for land alone.

The central tower, or RCA building in which is housed NBC’s new headquarters, dominates the whole community. It is 70 stories high, rising 836 feet in the air.

Strange Bridges

A shopping district is housed in the Ponte Vecchio, over the Arno River at Florence Italy. The roofed bridge is lined with stores’ Building this viaduct across the gorge of a small stream near Nice, France, engineers saw that a central vertical support would clog the gorge. So they devised an unusual masonry arch support set at right angles to the span.

Natives of Yunnan province, China, built this sturdy suspension bridge of tough wistaria vines, proving the plant useful for more than its flowers.

On the grounds of the Summer Palace of former Chinese rulers at Peking stands this ornate bridge, humped like a camel.

The covered bridge, like the covered wagon, has all but vanished in America. Here is one of the last of the line, battered by the ravages of time but still creaking under traffic three miles from Covington, Va.

You couldn’t jump from this bridge if you tried. Savages in jungle country of India built it across a swift-moving mountain stream, using homemade ropes for the main cables, interwoven with withes.

Passing the 1,000 Foot Mark

HIGHER and higher soar the metropolitan skyscrapers as if aspiring to pierce the clouds and support the very heavens. The latest of these massive monoliths to rear its huge bulk on the New York skyline is the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. The claim is made for it that it is the tallest structure of any kind in the world. From the street to the roof of the 84th floor is 1043 feet, not including the observatory roof above this level or the mooring mast designed to extend 200 feet higher. There are 85 stories above 34th street arid two stories below the grade. The land and building are valued at $50,000,000.

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Your Own Inflatable Dome: Make It from a Kit

PS brings bubble buildings into the realm of the do-it-yourselfer: Take your choice of kits in three sizes—or start from scratch if you like By A. J. HAND / PS Home Workshop Editor

You’ve read about the new air-supported buildings that can cover hundreds of acres [PS, Mar. "73]. Now take a look at some pneumatics designed with you in mind. They’re inexpensive, easy to build, and adaptable to a whole range of uses.

The basic single-skin plastic dome, inflated by a small blower, can be used as a studio, greenhouse, pool cover, outdoor rec room, camping or vacation shelter, portable classroom, or storage facility.

The 25-footer shown here packs down small enough to fit your car’s trunk. Two men can set it up and inflate it in less than 30 minutes. Total weight is under 300 pounds.

If the 25-footer doesn’t fit your size needs, how about a 16- or a 34-footer? All three are available as kits. None of these is your size? Then you can design your own with help from a plans booklet.

To bring you these kits, and the plans booklet, we turned to Poor Willie Productions—a Boston-based design-development firm. They produced our prototype 25-footer, they’re supplying the kits, and they created the instruction booklet, too.

The basic skin used for all the dome kits is 12-mil vinyl film. Colored sections are nylon-reinforced Dura-Tuff (Duracote Corp., Ravenna, Ohio). Clear sections are Union Carbide’s Krene, a special vinyl formulated for greenhouses.

Both films are extremely tough.

Outdoor lifespan runs from five to 10 years. Rips and punctures are rare, but easy to fix with vinyl patches and cement.

The gore design. This is one of many solutions to the problem of building a dome from a membrane fabric that is initially flat.

The dome is broken down into small, curved sections called gores. When inflated, the gores take on a compound curvature, flowing smoothly into a dome. These gores are welded together with a heat-resistant vinyl adhesive and solvent: Bostik #7130 and methyl ethyl ketone (MEK).

The door. Although large pneumatics often require air locks at doors to prevent depressurization and collapse during heavy in-out traffic, the 25-foot prototype remains inflated even when the door is left open. The door in this case is a five-foot nylon zipper that opens and closes a slit-type entrance.

The blower. The air for all three structures is supplied by a Dayton direct-drive, squirrel-cage blower. Its 1/4-hp motor has more than enough muscle to keep the dome pumped up.

Where wind loads are small, internal air pressure can be kept low. Two psf will do. Where wind loads are more severe, you increase internal pressure. Poor Willie calculates that 10 psf will support the dome in winds up to 80 mph.

Holding the dome down. The same air pressure that supports the dome would lift it off the ground if you didn’t anchor it. Attached around the 80-foot perimeter of the prototype is a catenary sleeve of vinyl film, used to stake the dome down. Through this sleeve Poor Willie threads lengths of one-inch plastic pipe, joined to form a giant hoop. This can be staked to the ground, or fastened to a wood or plywood deck via plumber’s strap and nails or screws.

Putting a dome together. Making a Poor Willie inflatable is pretty much a scissors-and-glue operation. A full-scale gore pattern guides the cutting of the 18 gores. Patterns in the plans booklet outline the window, door, and catenary pieces.

Once you have all parts cut out, prepare the gores for assembly. This involves cementing in window inserts, and outlining all the weld seams with masking tape. Next comes assembly of the door panel. This requires repeat passes with a sewing machine, but the rest of the assembly is the normal solvent-welding procedure. After the door panel is set, assemble the catenary sleeve, blower tube, floor, and cap parts.

Now you can weld together the two gores that will take the door assembly. All gores are welded on a curved track that’s easily made from plans in the booklet. You can’t weld the gores together on a flat surface— their edges won’t meet.

After gores are joined cut out the circular hole for the door panel and cement it in place. Then cement the blower tube into its gore.

Once the door and blower-tube gores are done, weld together the remaining gores, taking care to keep the gore bottoms aligned. It’s best to start all welds at the bottom and work toward the top. Don’t stretch the fabric, or the windows and catenary’s seam lines may not line up.

Main dome assembled? The catenary goes on next. It’s followed by the floor—if you’re using one. After you finish the final floor weld, let the dome sit for a few hours; better yet, overnight.

Next day you can lay the dome out, stake it down, and hook up the blower. In minutes you’ll experience the unique feeling of standing inside your own bubble building.

‘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.

Center, glass-inclosed bridge linking two buildings. Above, glimpse of tapering “golf tee” columns which support roof. Circular stairways between floors save space. Reception hall is seen below.

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.