The top of the Arc d’ Triomphe does a pretty spectacular job too. Really cool as, when I was there, there was a band playing down below. You can look right down the Champs, slightly above roof level, and see the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame.
Being from the home of the skyscraper, as I am, it was quite the contrast.
Anybody found the naked lady yet?
I have taken that picture. If you look at the river to the left and above that is where the passenger jet managed to safely land several years ago.
Thanks for all of the replies and info, guys. And RichVR, I totally envy you being up in the spire. I read that that there once was a place up there to dock a Zeppelin. Does that place still exist?
While looking for more photos, I happened across this historical bit (with photos) regarding the Old City Hall Subway Station, now abandoned. Fascinating!
And don’t even get me started on the Chrysler Building. I could look at photos of that magnificent structure all day.
I think I need to visit NYC some day. Last time I was there was in 1977, when I was 17, on a family trip. Six of us crammed into a 1966 Plymouth Valiant station wagon. We did go to Manhattan, but I don’t remember too much of it, as we didn’t hit any of the places I wanted to go. I do remember it was on a Sunday morning that we arrived there, and I was struck by how empty the highways were. And that it cost a small fortune to park the car (IIRC, it was $8 - for what length of time I don’t recall - and Dad just about had a fit).
And this article about the Brooklyn Bridge and its history is even more fascinating.
The single greatest wonderment of the Brooklyn Bridge is not its size, beauty, function or even technology, but the fact that it was created by hand. When construction began, neither the light bulb nor the telephone (nor the jackhammer) had been invented. It is truly the Great Pyramid of bridges.
Construction of the Brooklyn caisson hit bedrock after around 44 feet and was filled with concrete to create the base. The Manhattan caisson was much more dangerous. The plan was originally to lower it 106 feet to hit the bedrock, but as they got lower and lower, and the dangers became more apparent, Washington Roebling made probably the riskiest decision of the entire construction. By taking soil samples he discovered that the soil hadn’t shifted in millions of years, and so he decided that it was stable enough itself to hold the bridge. To this day one tower of the Brooklyn Bridge rests on bedrock, while the other rests on sand.
In the caissons, fires, explosions and the bends (caisson disease) took the lives of 20 men. A case of the bends nearly killed Roebling himself. He survived, but became crippled, confined to his house for the remainder of his life.
The bends? From working in a caisson? I had never heard of this before.
Edit: Oh, I see. Some caissons are pressurized. I had thought it was open at the top.
http://www.cliffhouse.com/store/images/thumbnails/0/120/sf_034.jpg
This place has fascinated me ever since it showed up on the front cover of BOC’s Imaginos album, in this form:
Imaginos! I really liked that album, with its understated skein of narrative and all that good stuff. Silly, to be sure, but fun too.
I hated that album when I first bought it, because it was so very different from their earlier work. It was leaning much more toward metal than anything they had done before, and while I had a love for hard rock, I had little tolerance for metal. At the time, anyway.
Occasionally, I’d fire it up in hopes that it would take, but it didn’t, until about 10 years later, after I started actually getting into some milder metal. Then at some point, it finally clicked, and it became one of my favorite BOC albums, even though it was recorded when the band (in that incarnation) wasn’t getting along, and technically weren’t even together at that point. Supposedly, it was almost painful to record.
I don’t play it often these days, but I still like it.
And that cover photo is striking. I initially thought it was a painting. Eventually, I found out it was an actual place; a restaurant of all things, called “Cliff House”. It was rebuilt about five times. That particular version was only around for a few years, burning down in 1907.
That house by the cliff is really creepy and I don’t understand the trend of building such huge mansion back then. Are these for the rich and famous? Some sort of escapade that was later abandoned and became haunted houses? If it weren’t for the cliff, I’d have imagine that as Overlook Hotel in The Shinning.
Cliff house (Wiki link) was a restaurant. It still is, but in a different form. It’s got a long and fascinating history. The first incarnation was built in 1858 using the lumber from a ship that had wrecked on those rocks down below.
The Victorian style mansion in the photos above is the third Cliff House built on that location. It was built in 1896, and although it survived the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake, it was destroyed by fire in 1907.
I believe the restaurant located there now is the fifth Cliff House.
New York water system only gives you water pressure until 6th floor, so any buildings taller than 5 stories need a tower. I may be off by a floor or two.
They are apparently very poorly maintained. They are supposed to be checked yearly, but many of them have holes, bird feathers, rodent feces:
“The city’s own surveys suggest that nearly 60 percent of the owners do not comply. And the city has done little to make them.”
Well now I know where the next 10 minutes of my life are going. . .
I never knew anything about this and kinda figured all the rooftop battles/scenes w/ egregious water tower placement were just a trope! Fascinating
A photochrom (Wikipedia link) of Bergen, Norway circa the 1890’s. Full-sized image here.
Photochrom of Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, circa 1890’s. Full-sized image here.
Well, I do now.
Here’s a cool map of Venice that I really like exploring. In fact, I shall now proceed to spend the next two hours doing just that. Never been there of course. In fact, I haven’t been outside of North Dakota’s borders for many years, although we do visit Fargo once or twice per year, which is near a border.
@Giles_Habibula, good to hear you’re from North Dakota? What part? And were you close enough to Minnesota that you caught a bit of this last weather front with snow?
I’m up your way a lot, between Fargo, Bismarck or a number of smaller places for work. I’ll never get over how flat things are and how straight and long the roadways are, unless there is a river in the way. Even here in Charlotte, where the highest elevation is only 750’, the hills and trees make everything much more spread out and hard to see and drive through. To me anyway, the area you live in is no less crazy to look at and try to understand.
That sums up my travel experiences in a nutshell. Getting to see things so much different than what we are used to and understand.
Bismarck. And we’ve had so many storms come through here this year, that I can’t be sure which one you’re referring to, but we haven’t had a bad storm in 3 or 4 weeks, so things are currently looking good here. I’ve been to NC exactly once, in 1996, but I remember it being a pleasant place.
This thread started because I was impressed by a single photograph, but I’m afraid I’ve turned it into the “Touring The World Via The Internet” thread instead. Which is a wave I will ride as long as you all can put up with it, as I’ve really been enjoying talking with you all about it. I rarely get outside my small area of the country, and there are so many beautiful places I have never, and will never actually see with my own eyes. Thus I also have been enjoying you guys’ photography thread.
One of my favorite books as a child belonged to my father, and had been long forgotten in his library. It was an old (1940’s or 50’s I’m guessing) book of black and white pictures called “Around The World In 1000 Pictures” or something like that. I haven’t seen it since, but I remember being fascinated by the rest of the world, and transfixed by all of those photos for hours at a time. My childhood fascination has not changed, except now I do it online.
If you ever get the chance to try Google Earth in the Vive – you can tour around a high-def 3D photo-generated version of Venice. It’s pretty amazing. In fact, if you know somebody with a Vive, you should try to find time to go check it out. There are plenty of other cities to tour around, too. Tokyo and Hong Kong are pretty awesome.
I’m there a lot. My boss works there, which can be fun when your boss is that far away. Bismarck is a great place. I got to see Air Force One land there when Obama came through on the way to the reservation a few years back.
I’ll contrast your story of your father’s book with my grandma, who had a lifetime subscription to National Geographic magazine. She kept all of them in a small upstairs room she had at the house. It was one of the favorite rooms of all of her grandchildren, me included. Getting to spend time up there just picking random issues and looking at all the pictures of the world. It was awesome.
It’s Isle Of The Dead by Arnold Bocklin.
There is even music by Rachmaninoff inspired by the black and white version of this painting.
That does sound amazing. I don’t know anyone with a Vive, but this will be the first thing I do if I get the chance.
Oh yes. My grandmother and my father both had collections, and I can definitely relate.
