For Architecture Buffs: National Building Museum's Building Brain Busters

January 2010

Q: A. James Speyer (1913-86) was a man of exceptionally diverse talents. A practicing architect and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and other universities, he also served for 25 years as curator of twentieth-century painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, a role in which he became highly influential in the museum world. Despite these lofty credentials, however, his most widely recognized work is a detached garage belonging to a single-family house in Highland Park, Illinois. What made this garage so famous?

A: It was featured in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), as the garage in which the father of Ferris’s best friend, Cameron Frye, kept his vintage Ferrari. In the climactic scene of the movie, the valuable car — actually a fiberglass replica — crashes through one of the huge panes of glass enclosing the sleek, minimalist structure and goes flying into the ravine below. The structure is, in fact, a garage intended for the display and storage of vintage cars and art. It and the main house were designed by Speyer and architect David Haid for client Ben Rose, and were completed in 1953.

November 2009

Q: What is unusual about the mortar used in the construction of the Puente de Piedra (Bridge of Stone) that connects Lima and Rimac, Peru?

A: The mortar was supposedly mixed not with water but with the whites of some 10,000 sea birds’ eggs. As a result, the structure, designed by Spanish architect Juan del Corral and built in the early 17th century, is nicknamed the Bridge of Eggs.

September 2009

Q: In 1890, the year in which How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, by Jacob Riis, was published, what was the average number of residents per dwelling in New York City?

A: According to the 1890 U.S. Census, there were 18.52 people per dwelling in New York City. By some estimates, nearly 80 percent of the city’s population lived in tenements or other substandard housing.

July/August 2009

Q: Andrea di Pietro della Gondola is better known by what surname?

A: Palladio. One of the most influential architects in history, Palladio (1508-80) was given the new name by his mentor, Gian Giorgio Trissino, who chose it to evoke Pallas Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and crafts (as well as war). Images of some of Palladio’s works are included in the National Building Museum’s exhibition Form and Movement: Photographs by Philip Trager, on view from July 11, 2009 through January 3, 2010.

June 2009

Q: What do the Golden Gate Bridge, San Antonio River Walk, LaGuardia Airport, and presidential retreat Camp David have in common?

A: They were all projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the most famous of the New Deal agencies established in the 1930s. Collectively, the workers employed by the various New Deal agencies built more than 50,000 bridges, built or renovated thousands of schools, hospitals, airports, and other institutional structures, and planted some three billion — yes, billion — trees!

May 2009

Q: The Haughwout Department Store building in New York, built in 1857, has a beautiful cast iron façade, but that's not why it made history. Why is this building so important?

A: The Haughwout was home to the world’s first “passenger safety elevator,” installed by Elisha Otis in April 1857. Contrary to popular belief, Otis did not invent the elevator — basic mechanical hoists had existed for centuries — but he did invent a braking device that made such machines safe for passengers. The Haughwout still stands, though the original elevator has been removed.

April 2009

Q: When Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was appointed to restore the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 1847, what then-innovative technology did he employ to document the existing conditions of the building?

A: He used daguerreotypes, which he commissioned in large numbers to record as much detail as possible. The project thus became one of the first architectural restorations to employ documentary photography in a systematic way.

March 2009

Q: While packing your bags for a business trip to another city, you call the mechanical engineer who is hosting the meeting and ask her how you should plan to dress based on the weather there. She responds casually, "Oh, one Clo should be fine," and hangs up. What do you pack?

A: A regular business suit should suffice, with no overcoat needed. A "Clo" is an informal measure of the thermal insulation of clothing, sometimes used by mechanical engineers and other building professionals when assessing comfort levels in various spaces. One Clo is equal to the amount of insulation provided by a typical men's or women's business suit. If someone invites you to a place where the standard of dress is zero Clo, assume it's a nudist camp.

February 2009

Q: The Pharos (Lighthouse) off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is believed to have been destroyed by a series of earthquakes in the 14th century, but if the tower still existed today and estimates of its height are accurate, how would it rank among the tallest lighthouses in the modern world?

A: It would be first. The tallest lighthouse in the world today is the Yokohama Marine Tower, in Japan, which stands 106 meters (348 feet) tall. Even the more conservative estimates of the Pharos’s height put it at 115 meters (377 feet).

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