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

A few years ago I posted a much longer article about this amazing house. Among its rather unique features is an underwater tunnel connecting the outdoor pool to the one inside. This was designed to double as a method of decontamination in case of a nuclear war, but seems more like a gimmick. If anyone knows if this house is still standing, please do tell.

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.

You can read part I here.

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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.
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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. Read the rest of this entry »

“Slums”

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.
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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. Read the rest of this entry »

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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. Read the rest of this entry »