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Compared to the narrative complexity of earlier skyscrapers such as the Woolworth Building, the Empire State Building's interior and exterior were exaltingly simple in their message. The one-hundred-foot-long, three-storey-high navelike vestibule of stainless steel, marble, and glass terminated in a map of the New York metropolitan area and was surmounted by a portrait of the building itself, thereby dedicating the building to its place as it celebrated its towering mass as a worthy object of veneration - a transcendent symbol in its own right,cosmically tied to the earth by radio waves emanating from its peak. The tower within the tower also relieved one of the principal ironies of building skyscrapers in Manhatten's grid:when the man on the street came close enough for an unencumbered view, he could only see a foreshortened image;inside the Empire State's lobby, he could master a full-lenght silhouette. The architects of the Cities Services Building (1930-32), Clinton & Russell, took this reorienting gesture further by using a model of their tower to frame the building's portal.
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon's Empire State design, a paradigm of symmetrical massing, was remarkable for its central shaft, 725 feet of unvarying fenestration and wall that contemporary critic Douglas Haskell described as having " something positively brutal in the monotony, but something inevitable and hypnotic too". Haskell theorized that the Empire State Building was exciting because of its contradictions: " It was caught at the exact moment of transition-between metal and stone, between the ideal of ' monumental mass' and that of airy volume, between handicraft and machine design. " Here was a commercial architecture that went beyond the ballyhoo of Chrysler to achieve a genuine modern synthesis of technology and romance-an incomparably sublime mass masonry monumentalized in heroic height.
For its visitors, the building was hypnotically brutal less because of its unornamented shaft than because of the violent shift the street to the observation deck, where for an hour or two visitors could become the gilded citizens of Hugh Ferriss's vision, looking down from a lofty perch of perfect peace onto the teeming city of traffic and shadows a quarter mile below. Though the Empire State Building was "user Friendly", with lobbies and shops at ground level and observation decks at its peaks, it was terrifying as well, a fact that the pulp novels and movies of the day exploited to the fullest. In The movie King Kong (1933), New york City's insatiable appetite for new sensations brings Kong to the Broadway stage, where the bright lights provoke his destructive rampage. Kong embodies the terrors inherent in Manhattan's everyday frenzy by grabbing Fay Wray through her hotel room window, wrecking an elevated train, and climbing the Empire State Building, Ultimate Symbol of New York's lust for architectural thrills. In the end, the skyscraper city's own greed has released the force that would destroy it, an animal almost as big and surely as proud as the towers themselves. At the moment when the economy crashed and all the civilization it had supported seemed dangerously close to crashing along with it, only Fay and the airplanes, flying free of the dangerous city-the symbolic alliance of beauty and mechanical strength-could save the city from itself.
1. Answer the following questions:
1. What does the word " skyscraper" mean?
2. What principle is laid in the construction of the skyscrapers?
3. What was built in 1860?
4. What was the first true skyscraper?
5. What was the tallest load - bearing building?
6. How many stories did it have?
7. What was the reason of building skyscrapers in Chicago?
8. What is the total height of the Empire State building?
9. Why was the Empire State Building exciting after the words of Haskell?
10. What movie is this building associated with?
11. Empire State Building isasymbol of New York city isn't it?
2. Give the Russian equivalents to the following words and word combinations:
skyscraper; rigid frame; girder; load - bearing wall; cast - iron column; wrought - iron beams; full - lenght silhouette handicraft; destructive rampage; shaft.
3. Complete the following sentences:
1. Unlike the Crystal Palace it had to be built without... because the boats had to be moved around.
2. Chicago Insurance Building had supporting...
3. William le Baron Jenney developed the...
4. The structure of the store is of...
5. Sheerness Naval Boat Store was the direct... of the modern skyscraper.
6. Empire State's design was remarkable for...
7. Empire State Building was exciting because of its...
8. For its visitors, the building was...
4. State the form and the syntactical function of the participles in the following sentences:
1. It had supporting brick wall.
2. Almost all its mass, including the brick walls, was supported by the frame.
3. The 21 - story Masonic Building in Chicago was the tallest skyscraper when completed in 1892.
4. Compared to the narrative complexity of earlier skyscrapers, the Empire State Building was simple in its message.
5. This was a building cosmically tied to the earth by radio waves emanating from its peak.
5. Find the infinitives in the text and State their forms and functions.
6. Retell the text.
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