World Architecture
World Architecture is a art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.
21. Beijing Hangzhou Canal
China
The Grand Canal Chinese, Da Yunhe in China is the worlds longest artificial waterway and the oldest canal still in existence. The 1,121-mile-long 1,794-kilometer series of linked channels extends from Hangzhou on the southeast coast to the capital, Beijing, in the north. As an engineering achievement of the ancient Chinese, the canal compares with the more familiar Great Wall. It passes through twenty-four sophisticated locks and is crossed by sixty bridges. Most of Chinas large rivers, including the Huai, the Huang Ho, the Wei, and the Yangtze flow from the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and the north-south Grand Canal provides a vital connector between their systems. That fact in itself presented a challenge to which the ancient builders were equal: the gradient of the canal was carefully designed and maintained by dredging to ensure that the seasonal flooding of the rivers did not inundate agricultural land along the artificial waterway. In places, dikes and levees provided further protection. The Grand Canalonce known as the Grand Imperial Canalhad a simple reason for being. Successive emperors wanted to secure communication between the heavily populated politico- military centers of North China and the rice-producing regions of the south. This meant constructing a link that enabled the rapid deployment of troops and provided a faster, safer corridor for transporting grain and freight, free from the threat of the pirates who preyed on coastal shipping. During the Song dynasty a.d. 960 1279, the annual grain traffic on the canal exceeded 3J 0,000 tons 3J 5,J J 0 tonnes, carried by fleets of up to forty barges, lashed together up to four abreast and towed by water buffalo. Suggested dates for the commencement of the canal vary from the fourth to the sixth century b.c. The 1J 0-mile 225-kilometer section traditionally known as the Shanyang Canal, from K ingjiang in northern Jiangsu to the Yangtze, probably was constructed sometime in that period and extended almost a thousand years later, during the Northern K i dynasty a.d. 550 576, when existing waterways were linked to form a single system. The second Sui emperor, Yang Di, launched an intensive building program between 605 and 610. He is said to have employed 6 million peasants constructing links between the Huang Ho and Yangtze Rivers. By thus joining the north and south of China, the canal allowed for the development of an integrated national economy and reestablished the power of the imperial civil service. Therefore, it is not surprising that it retained its importance during the Tang dynasty 618 907, when China was at the height of its power. The canal was a key to trade expansion under the Tang and Song, and around 800 the center of political and economic activity slowly began to move to the south. By the twelfth century, Jiangsu arid L hejiang Provinces had become the heart of China, and the Southern Song dynasty 1127 1279 established a capital at Hangzhou in 1138. In 1282, under the Mongols, another canal was built between the Huang Ho and the Ta-ching River in northern Shantung, but several attempts to join it to the sea proved unsuccessful. Eventually the Hui-tung Canal was built to join the Huang Ho and the Wei Rivers. The Ming dynasty 1368 16J J reigned from Yingtian until 1J 21, after which the capital was returned to Beijing. The whole Grand Canal, comprising six main sections, was dredged and repaired. Since then it has been widened repeatedly, the last changes being made at the beginning of the Ching dynasty in the middle of the seventeenth century. Early in the twentieth century the Grand Canal began to fall into disuse for reasons that included the frequent flooding of the Huang Ho the move to coastal shipping the construction of major north- south railroads and not least, general neglect as a result of political turmoil. However, the Communist regime started rehabilitation in 1958, and over the next eight years the canal was dredged, straightened, and widened, and a new J 0-mile 6J -kilometer section was built. But it was not until the late 1980s that plans were put in hand to dredge the entire Grand Canal, reinstating it as an important highway for local and medium-distance freight vessels, especially in the south. Shallow- draft vesselsmostly barges and tourist boatscan now navigate the stretch south of the Yangtze all year-round. The section north of the Yangtze is seasonably navigable, and major works are in progress to allow bulk carriers to reach M uzhou beyond that, the canal remains impassable.
The Grand Canal Chinese, Da Yunhe in China is the worlds longest artificial waterway and the oldest canal still in existence. The 1,121-mile-long 1,794-kilometer series of linked channels extends from Hangzhou on the southeast coast to the capital, Beijing, in the north. As an engineering achievement of the ancient Chinese, the canal compares with the more familiar Great Wall. It passes through twenty-four sophisticated locks and is crossed by sixty bridges. Most of Chinas large rivers, including the Huai, the Huang Ho, the Wei, and the Yangtze flow from the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and the north-south Grand Canal provides a vital connector between their systems. That fact in itself presented a challenge to which the ancient builders were equal: the gradient of the canal was carefully designed and maintained by dredging to ensure that the seasonal flooding of the rivers did not inundate agricultural land along the artificial waterway. In places, dikes and levees provided further protection. The Grand Canalonce known as the Grand Imperial Canalhad a simple reason for being. Successive emperors wanted to secure communication between the heavily populated politico- military centers of North China and the rice-producing regions of the south. This meant constructing a link that enabled the rapid deployment of troops and provided a faster, safer corridor for transporting grain and freight, free from the threat of the pirates who preyed on coastal shipping. During the Song dynasty a.d. 960 1279, the annual grain traffic on the canal exceeded 3J 0,000 tons 3J 5,J J 0 tonnes, carried by fleets of up to forty barges, lashed together up to four abreast and towed by water buffalo. Suggested dates for the commencement of the canal vary from the fourth to the sixth century b.c. The 1J 0-mile 225-kilometer section traditionally known as the Shanyang Canal, from K ingjiang in northern Jiangsu to the Yangtze, probably was constructed sometime in that period and extended almost a thousand years later, during the Northern K i dynasty a.d. 550 576, when existing waterways were linked to form a single system. The second Sui emperor, Yang Di, launched an intensive building program between 605 and 610. He is said to have employed 6 million peasants constructing links between the Huang Ho and Yangtze Rivers. By thus joining the north and south of China, the canal allowed for the development of an integrated national economy and reestablished the power of the imperial civil service. Therefore, it is not surprising that it retained its importance during the Tang dynasty 618 907, when China was at the height of its power. The canal was a key to trade expansion under the Tang and Song, and around 800 the center of political and economic activity slowly began to move to the south. By the twelfth century, Jiangsu arid L hejiang Provinces had become the heart of China, and the Southern Song dynasty 1127 1279 established a capital at Hangzhou in 1138. In 1282, under the Mongols, another canal was built between the Huang Ho and the Ta-ching River in northern Shantung, but several attempts to join it to the sea proved unsuccessful. Eventually the Hui-tung Canal was built to join the Huang Ho and the Wei Rivers. The Ming dynasty 1368 16J J reigned from Yingtian until 1J 21, after which the capital was returned to Beijing. The whole Grand Canal, comprising six main sections, was dredged and repaired. Since then it has been widened repeatedly, the last changes being made at the beginning of the Ching dynasty in the middle of the seventeenth century. Early in the twentieth century the Grand Canal began to fall into disuse for reasons that included the frequent flooding of the Huang Ho the move to coastal shipping the construction of major north- south railroads and not least, general neglect as a result of political turmoil. However, the Communist regime started rehabilitation in 1958, and over the next eight years the canal was dredged, straightened, and widened, and a new J 0-mile 6J -kilometer section was built. But it was not until the late 1980s that plans were put in hand to dredge the entire Grand Canal, reinstating it as an important highway for local and medium-distance freight vessels, especially in the south. Shallow- draft vesselsmostly barges and tourist boatscan now navigate the stretch south of the Yangtze all year-round. The section north of the Yangtze is seasonably navigable, and major works are in progress to allow bulk carriers to reach M uzhou beyond that, the canal remains impassable.
22. Borobudur Temple
Indonesia
Borobudur Temple stands on the plain of Kedu, about 25 miles 40 kilometers northwest of the modern city of Yogyakarta on the Indonesian island of Java. Its name is derived from Hhumtcambharabudara the mountain of the accumulation of virtue in the ten stages of Bodhisatva. Crowning a 150-foot 46-meter hill, this largest of all Buddhist buildings is a masterpiece of religious architecture. One of the worlds best-preserved ancient monuments, it was built about 300 years before many of the great Christian cathedrals of western Europe and the famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia, some of whose temples are thought to have been influenced by it. Sometime before the fifth century a.d., Hinduism and Buddhism spread along maritime trade routes between the Asian mainland and Java, Sumatra, and Bali. By about the seventh century Mahayana teachings dominated Buddhist thought in East Asia, and Java eventually became an important center of monastic scholarship. Mahayana Buddhist precepts constrained the form of such edifices as Borobudur. Built from more than 1 million carved blocks of gray andesite lava quarried at nearby Mount Merapi, Borobudur was initiated as a Hindu precinct, probably a Siva temple, around a.d. 775. The lower two terraces had been completed when a shift in power to the Buddhist Sailendra dynasty brought the project to a halt. Naturally, the finished stages were unsuited to the liturgical needs of Buddhism on the other hand, such a huge structureits several levels are 17,800 square yards 15,000 square meters in total areawas a powerful evocation of Hinduism, so after about fifteen years work resumed to convert the building into the largest stupa ever built. The stupa as a building type is almost exclusive to Buddhism: in essence it is a square base surmounted by an inverted circular bowl and capped with a spire. It was almost complete in 832 when the Hindu Sanjaya dynasty set out to reunify central Java and took over all religious buildings. Because most of the population was Buddhist, Borobudur remained a focus of that religion. Influenced by the Gupta architecture of fourth-century India, the Borobudur Temple modeled the Buddhist concept of the cosmos, organized around the mythical Mount Meru, theAxis of the World, which rose from the Waters of Chaos. The whole precinct, standing on a 670-foot-square 200-meter platform, represented a lotus flower, sacred to Buddha. Its three stages represented the major divisions of the universe: the material world, the world of thought, and the world of cosmic order and balance. From the eastern gateway, 3 miles 5 kilometers of open galleries bore pilgrims through 10 levels of clockwise ascent to the topsymbolically, from the physical world to nirvana, the sought-after annihilation. Much of that processional way was lined with more than 24,000 square feet 2,500 square meters of relief panels. The lower five terracesthe world of desirewere square in plan, with 160 richly ornamented relief panels providing cautionary Buddhist tales, stories of Buddhas journey toward enlightenment, and a lively documentation of daily life in ninth-century Java. The next three terraces, circular in plan, had no wall reliefs, symbolizing the world of thought. A total of seventy-two bell-shaped, stone-latticework stupas was spaced evenly along them, each containing a statue of Buddha. The uppermost stage of the temple, originally rising to a height of 140 feel: 42 meters, was a large central stupa crowned with a spire. Representing nirvana, it was empty. Borobudur remained the spiritual center of Javanese Buddhism for about 150 years, until about 1,000 years ago, when it was suddenly abandoned. The reasons are probably complex. Its demise could have been due to natural disaster: soon after the building was finished. Mount Merapi erupted, depositing thick layers of ash over a large region and partially burying Borobudur. And at least in part, the departure from the site must be linked with the gradual transfer of power from central Java to the east, through the tenth and eleventh centuries. The jungle quickly reclaimed the great temple. In 1814, Thomas Stamford Raffles, British lieutenant-governor of Java, hearing reports of the ruins, sent the Dutch engineer H. C. Cornelius to investigate. Cornelius found Borobudur so long neglected that his large work team took six weeks to clear vegetation and dirt enough to uncover only its outline. Spasmodic recovery work continued until the 1870s, when the last reliefs were exposed. But once the protective layer of soil was removed, the stone face began to deteriorate rapidly. Dr. Theodore van Erp began serious restoration in 1907, but it was discontinued after only four years. The newly independent Indonesian government took responsibility for preservation in the late 1940s, and a few years later it asked UNESCO for assistance. Consequently a major rescue projectcosting U.S.$21 million and funded by the Indonesian government, UNESCO, private citizens, and foreign governments-was initiated in 1971. The restoration of the monument was completed by February 1983.
Borobudur Temple stands on the plain of Kedu, about 25 miles 40 kilometers northwest of the modern city of Yogyakarta on the Indonesian island of Java. Its name is derived from Hhumtcambharabudara the mountain of the accumulation of virtue in the ten stages of Bodhisatva. Crowning a 150-foot 46-meter hill, this largest of all Buddhist buildings is a masterpiece of religious architecture. One of the worlds best-preserved ancient monuments, it was built about 300 years before many of the great Christian cathedrals of western Europe and the famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia, some of whose temples are thought to have been influenced by it. Sometime before the fifth century a.d., Hinduism and Buddhism spread along maritime trade routes between the Asian mainland and Java, Sumatra, and Bali. By about the seventh century Mahayana teachings dominated Buddhist thought in East Asia, and Java eventually became an important center of monastic scholarship. Mahayana Buddhist precepts constrained the form of such edifices as Borobudur. Built from more than 1 million carved blocks of gray andesite lava quarried at nearby Mount Merapi, Borobudur was initiated as a Hindu precinct, probably a Siva temple, around a.d. 775. The lower two terraces had been completed when a shift in power to the Buddhist Sailendra dynasty brought the project to a halt. Naturally, the finished stages were unsuited to the liturgical needs of Buddhism on the other hand, such a huge structureits several levels are 17,800 square yards 15,000 square meters in total areawas a powerful evocation of Hinduism, so after about fifteen years work resumed to convert the building into the largest stupa ever built. The stupa as a building type is almost exclusive to Buddhism: in essence it is a square base surmounted by an inverted circular bowl and capped with a spire. It was almost complete in 832 when the Hindu Sanjaya dynasty set out to reunify central Java and took over all religious buildings. Because most of the population was Buddhist, Borobudur remained a focus of that religion. Influenced by the Gupta architecture of fourth-century India, the Borobudur Temple modeled the Buddhist concept of the cosmos, organized around the mythical Mount Meru, theAxis of the World, which rose from the Waters of Chaos. The whole precinct, standing on a 670-foot-square 200-meter platform, represented a lotus flower, sacred to Buddha. Its three stages represented the major divisions of the universe: the material world, the world of thought, and the world of cosmic order and balance. From the eastern gateway, 3 miles 5 kilometers of open galleries bore pilgrims through 10 levels of clockwise ascent to the topsymbolically, from the physical world to nirvana, the sought-after annihilation. Much of that processional way was lined with more than 24,000 square feet 2,500 square meters of relief panels. The lower five terracesthe world of desirewere square in plan, with 160 richly ornamented relief panels providing cautionary Buddhist tales, stories of Buddhas journey toward enlightenment, and a lively documentation of daily life in ninth-century Java. The next three terraces, circular in plan, had no wall reliefs, symbolizing the world of thought. A total of seventy-two bell-shaped, stone-latticework stupas was spaced evenly along them, each containing a statue of Buddha. The uppermost stage of the temple, originally rising to a height of 140 feel: 42 meters, was a large central stupa crowned with a spire. Representing nirvana, it was empty. Borobudur remained the spiritual center of Javanese Buddhism for about 150 years, until about 1,000 years ago, when it was suddenly abandoned. The reasons are probably complex. Its demise could have been due to natural disaster: soon after the building was finished. Mount Merapi erupted, depositing thick layers of ash over a large region and partially burying Borobudur. And at least in part, the departure from the site must be linked with the gradual transfer of power from central Java to the east, through the tenth and eleventh centuries. The jungle quickly reclaimed the great temple. In 1814, Thomas Stamford Raffles, British lieutenant-governor of Java, hearing reports of the ruins, sent the Dutch engineer H. C. Cornelius to investigate. Cornelius found Borobudur so long neglected that his large work team took six weeks to clear vegetation and dirt enough to uncover only its outline. Spasmodic recovery work continued until the 1870s, when the last reliefs were exposed. But once the protective layer of soil was removed, the stone face began to deteriorate rapidly. Dr. Theodore van Erp began serious restoration in 1907, but it was discontinued after only four years. The newly independent Indonesian government took responsibility for preservation in the late 1940s, and a few years later it asked UNESCO for assistance. Consequently a major rescue projectcosting U.S.$21 million and funded by the Indonesian government, UNESCO, private citizens, and foreign governments-was initiated in 1971. The restoration of the monument was completed by February 1983.
23. Braslia
Brazil
Braslia, the inland capital of Brazil, stands in a largely isolated region nearly 750 miles 1.200 kilometers northwest of Rio de Janeiro. The design and construction of the city in such a remote place, uninhabited before 1956, was a major logistical achievement in planning and urban design. Conceived on the scale and in the grand manner of LEnfants Washington, D.C., of 1789?1791, it followed in the tradition of such cities as New Delhi, India Lutyens and Baker, 1911?1931, and Canberra, Australia Walter arid Marion Griffin, 1913?1920. With its tall blocks in expansive landscaped parks, Bras?lia translated into reality for the first time the radical urban theories only envisioned in H. Th. Wijdevelds Amsterdam 2000 1919?1920 and a little later in Le Corbusiers O ille Radieuse. The plan to move Brazils capital from Rio de Janeiro to an inland site, secure from naval attack, had been mooted first around 1789, and it was continually revived for the next thirty turbulent years. In 1823, soon after independence from Portugal was proclaimed, Jose Bonif?cio presented the Constituent Assembly with a bill to fulfill the intention and to name the new city Bras?lia. Social and political upheavals dotted the rest of the century: burgeoning population rapid economic growth the spread of railroads revolts and insurrections civil and foreign war the rise and fall of the Brazilian Empire and, over thirty-five years, the abolition of slavery. The republic was proclaimed at the end of 1889, and the constitution of the United States of Brazil was adopted in February 1891. That document defined the general location of the future Federal District: somewhere within the state of Goias on the sparsely inhabited 3,609-foot-high 1,200-meter Central Plateau. The Exploring Commission of the Brazilian Central Upland was appointed, and it selected a 5,700-square-mile 14,400-square-kilometer areatheCruls Quadrilateral named for the commissions Belgian leader, Louis Cruls. In 1953 a 2,300-square-mile 5,800-square-kilometer section of it was chosen as the general site for the new capital. The announcement was expected to encourage a population movement westward into what was largely unused land, relieving urban congestion in Rio de Janeiro. In September 1956 President Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, promising Brazilians an economic development plan that he ambitiously calledFifty Years in Five, initiated the foundation of Bras?lia. A design competition for a Plano Piloto pilot plan attracted forty-one entries from twenty-six architects and urbanists, and in March 1957 that of the Brazilian L?cio Costa was announced as winner. His design was described by the president of the competition jury. British architect-planner William Holford, asa work of genius and one of the greatest contributions to contemporary urbanism. The importance of Costas plan has been largely eclipsed by the beautiful, even spectacular, public architecture of another Brazilian, Oscar Niemeyer, who had been his student at the Escola National de Belas Artes early in the 1930s. They had collaborated before, and Niemeyer had also worked on urban design commissions for Kubitschek, when the latter was mayor of Belo Horizonte. For Bras?lia, Niemeyer designed the Congress Building the law courts the cathedral the university the National Theater the Pal?cio do Planalto the Pal?cio dos Arcos and the presidents residence, Pal?cio da Alvorada Palace of the Dawn. It is interesting to note that construction of this presidential residence, and the airport, began in 1956, before Costas success became public. The internationally reputed Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx, who had previously worked with both Costa and Niemeyer, planned the major landscaping elements, a critical aspect of the capital. Despite the general popularity of the vision, partly whipped up by the media, there was also strong dissension. But Kubitschek was determined to continue. Under the direction of Novacap, the corporation created to manage the project, the center of the city was built in the remarkably short period of three years. On 21 April 1960, Bras?lia was officially inaugurated as the capital. Soon after, Kubitschek was briefly replaced by J?nio da Silva Quadros, who solved national economic problems with draconian spending cuts, including projects at Bras?lia. That hiatus continued under the next president, reformer Jo?o Goulart. Then in March 1964 Goulart was overthrown in an army coup that brought military rule for the next twenty years. Although pressure would persist through most of the decade to return the seat of government to Rio, Bras?lia was confirmed as the national capital during the 1964?1966 presidency of General Humberto Castelo Branco. The public cost of building the city remains unknown some sources put it as high as U.S.$100 billion. The ways in which the money was raised and the efficiency with which it was spent are also under a cloud. It is claimed, for example, that the Banco do Brasil simply printed money for Novacap, almost on demand, and there were rumors that, at the start of the project, Brazilian air force transport airplanes carried equipment and building materials for the Pal?cio da. Alvorada. Soon, a massive road-building program was initiated and highways were constructed to S?o Paulo and Belo Horizonte in the south, Belem in the north, and eventually westward to the Mato Grosso. What of the urban form? In presenting his Plano Piloto, Costa explained that he intended to make a city that was monumental yet comfortable, efficient yet welcoming and intimate, spacious yet neat, rustic yet urban, and lyrical yet functional. The cruciform layoutsome critics have compared it to a swept-wing aircraft, an analogy accepted by the plannerhas its framework defined bytwo axes, two terraces, one platform, two broad highways running in one direction, one super highway in the other. The Monumental Axis runs east-west. At its eastern end, on the shores of Lake Parano? formed by damming the Paran? River, is the Plaza of the Three Powers. Around it are located the Supreme Court and the Congress Building with its twin twenty-eight-story towers and two striking hemispheres housing the Senate in a dome and the Chamber of Deputies in a bowl. The group is completed by the Pal?cio da Alvorada, surrounded by an inverted colonnade of white marble. The startling cathedral, redolent of a crown of thorns, and the university, are nearby. The lake wraps around the Plano Piloto, its shores dotted with embassies, private clubs, and sports facilities. From this grand focus, the broad Esplanade of the Ministries, flanked with buildings housing the bureaucracy, leads west to the central business district at the intersection of the main axes. Each arm of the sweeping north-south Residential Axis is surrounded by nine bands of subdivision flanking an elevated highway. Those closer to the city core accommodate 780-foot-square 240-meter residential superquadras superblocks, most of which contain between eight and sixteen rectangular concrete-and-glass apartment buildings, usually six but sometimes three stories high, set in traffic-free parks. Each group was designed as a self-contained, middle-class neighborhood unit for an average of 3,000 residents, with shops, churches, schools, and playgrounds. Other recreational facilities serve a number of adjacent superblocks. The taller apartment buildings are raised on pilotis, so that at ground level the parks are uninterrupted. Open green space makes up about 60 percent of Bras?lias total areaabout five times as much per capita as, say, S?o Paulo. As elsewhere in the world, the imposition of an international modernist ideal on house form has not been socially successful while doubtless well intentioned it is not well received because it denies the tradition of household organization developed over centuries. The extensive, more upmarket residential developments, mostly one-family houses, are on the peninsulas known as Lago Norte and Lago Sud, across the lake. Most of the people who work in support industriesdomestic servants and otherslive in one of the fifteen nearby satellite towns within the Federal District and commute by bus to the Plano Piloto. Some of the satellites are planned developments others have grown laissez-faire. They have very little open space, and some have social problems stemming from high unemployment. Of course, government is Bras?lias primary function, but it was inevitable that banking and commerce would flourish. Mainly because of the famous plan and architecture, tourism has also developed. Construction is an important part of the industrial infrastructure, but apart from that, only light industry is permitted. Originally designed for 500,000 people. Bras?lia has grown rapidly. The 1960 population was around 90,000, and by 1980 it had increased to more than 411,000. A 1996 census showed that it had reached just over 1.8 million, and it probably rose to 2 millionmostly civil servants and businesspeopleby the turn of the century. Since about 1990 traffic problems such as gridlock and inadequate parking space have arisen in Bras?lia. A Y-shaped, partly underground rail system was started in 1992. Linking the south wing of the Plano Piloto with five of the satellite towns and with a total length of 26 miles 42 kilometers, it was designed to cater to two-thirds of the population. Commercial operation has been promised several times, but it still had not begun by 2001. In 1987, Bras?lia was inscribed on UNESCOs World Heritage List. According to some residents, that was a mixed blessing for a living city: while it certainly increased tourist revenue and helps preserve the quality of life for some, at the same time it inhibits the character of future expansion.
Braslia, the inland capital of Brazil, stands in a largely isolated region nearly 750 miles 1.200 kilometers northwest of Rio de Janeiro. The design and construction of the city in such a remote place, uninhabited before 1956, was a major logistical achievement in planning and urban design. Conceived on the scale and in the grand manner of LEnfants Washington, D.C., of 1789?1791, it followed in the tradition of such cities as New Delhi, India Lutyens and Baker, 1911?1931, and Canberra, Australia Walter arid Marion Griffin, 1913?1920. With its tall blocks in expansive landscaped parks, Bras?lia translated into reality for the first time the radical urban theories only envisioned in H. Th. Wijdevelds Amsterdam 2000 1919?1920 and a little later in Le Corbusiers O ille Radieuse. The plan to move Brazils capital from Rio de Janeiro to an inland site, secure from naval attack, had been mooted first around 1789, and it was continually revived for the next thirty turbulent years. In 1823, soon after independence from Portugal was proclaimed, Jose Bonif?cio presented the Constituent Assembly with a bill to fulfill the intention and to name the new city Bras?lia. Social and political upheavals dotted the rest of the century: burgeoning population rapid economic growth the spread of railroads revolts and insurrections civil and foreign war the rise and fall of the Brazilian Empire and, over thirty-five years, the abolition of slavery. The republic was proclaimed at the end of 1889, and the constitution of the United States of Brazil was adopted in February 1891. That document defined the general location of the future Federal District: somewhere within the state of Goias on the sparsely inhabited 3,609-foot-high 1,200-meter Central Plateau. The Exploring Commission of the Brazilian Central Upland was appointed, and it selected a 5,700-square-mile 14,400-square-kilometer areatheCruls Quadrilateral named for the commissions Belgian leader, Louis Cruls. In 1953 a 2,300-square-mile 5,800-square-kilometer section of it was chosen as the general site for the new capital. The announcement was expected to encourage a population movement westward into what was largely unused land, relieving urban congestion in Rio de Janeiro. In September 1956 President Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, promising Brazilians an economic development plan that he ambitiously calledFifty Years in Five, initiated the foundation of Bras?lia. A design competition for a Plano Piloto pilot plan attracted forty-one entries from twenty-six architects and urbanists, and in March 1957 that of the Brazilian L?cio Costa was announced as winner. His design was described by the president of the competition jury. British architect-planner William Holford, asa work of genius and one of the greatest contributions to contemporary urbanism. The importance of Costas plan has been largely eclipsed by the beautiful, even spectacular, public architecture of another Brazilian, Oscar Niemeyer, who had been his student at the Escola National de Belas Artes early in the 1930s. They had collaborated before, and Niemeyer had also worked on urban design commissions for Kubitschek, when the latter was mayor of Belo Horizonte. For Bras?lia, Niemeyer designed the Congress Building the law courts the cathedral the university the National Theater the Pal?cio do Planalto the Pal?cio dos Arcos and the presidents residence, Pal?cio da Alvorada Palace of the Dawn. It is interesting to note that construction of this presidential residence, and the airport, began in 1956, before Costas success became public. The internationally reputed Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx, who had previously worked with both Costa and Niemeyer, planned the major landscaping elements, a critical aspect of the capital. Despite the general popularity of the vision, partly whipped up by the media, there was also strong dissension. But Kubitschek was determined to continue. Under the direction of Novacap, the corporation created to manage the project, the center of the city was built in the remarkably short period of three years. On 21 April 1960, Bras?lia was officially inaugurated as the capital. Soon after, Kubitschek was briefly replaced by J?nio da Silva Quadros, who solved national economic problems with draconian spending cuts, including projects at Bras?lia. That hiatus continued under the next president, reformer Jo?o Goulart. Then in March 1964 Goulart was overthrown in an army coup that brought military rule for the next twenty years. Although pressure would persist through most of the decade to return the seat of government to Rio, Bras?lia was confirmed as the national capital during the 1964?1966 presidency of General Humberto Castelo Branco. The public cost of building the city remains unknown some sources put it as high as U.S.$100 billion. The ways in which the money was raised and the efficiency with which it was spent are also under a cloud. It is claimed, for example, that the Banco do Brasil simply printed money for Novacap, almost on demand, and there were rumors that, at the start of the project, Brazilian air force transport airplanes carried equipment and building materials for the Pal?cio da. Alvorada. Soon, a massive road-building program was initiated and highways were constructed to S?o Paulo and Belo Horizonte in the south, Belem in the north, and eventually westward to the Mato Grosso. What of the urban form? In presenting his Plano Piloto, Costa explained that he intended to make a city that was monumental yet comfortable, efficient yet welcoming and intimate, spacious yet neat, rustic yet urban, and lyrical yet functional. The cruciform layoutsome critics have compared it to a swept-wing aircraft, an analogy accepted by the plannerhas its framework defined bytwo axes, two terraces, one platform, two broad highways running in one direction, one super highway in the other. The Monumental Axis runs east-west. At its eastern end, on the shores of Lake Parano? formed by damming the Paran? River, is the Plaza of the Three Powers. Around it are located the Supreme Court and the Congress Building with its twin twenty-eight-story towers and two striking hemispheres housing the Senate in a dome and the Chamber of Deputies in a bowl. The group is completed by the Pal?cio da Alvorada, surrounded by an inverted colonnade of white marble. The startling cathedral, redolent of a crown of thorns, and the university, are nearby. The lake wraps around the Plano Piloto, its shores dotted with embassies, private clubs, and sports facilities. From this grand focus, the broad Esplanade of the Ministries, flanked with buildings housing the bureaucracy, leads west to the central business district at the intersection of the main axes. Each arm of the sweeping north-south Residential Axis is surrounded by nine bands of subdivision flanking an elevated highway. Those closer to the city core accommodate 780-foot-square 240-meter residential superquadras superblocks, most of which contain between eight and sixteen rectangular concrete-and-glass apartment buildings, usually six but sometimes three stories high, set in traffic-free parks. Each group was designed as a self-contained, middle-class neighborhood unit for an average of 3,000 residents, with shops, churches, schools, and playgrounds. Other recreational facilities serve a number of adjacent superblocks. The taller apartment buildings are raised on pilotis, so that at ground level the parks are uninterrupted. Open green space makes up about 60 percent of Bras?lias total areaabout five times as much per capita as, say, S?o Paulo. As elsewhere in the world, the imposition of an international modernist ideal on house form has not been socially successful while doubtless well intentioned it is not well received because it denies the tradition of household organization developed over centuries. The extensive, more upmarket residential developments, mostly one-family houses, are on the peninsulas known as Lago Norte and Lago Sud, across the lake. Most of the people who work in support industriesdomestic servants and otherslive in one of the fifteen nearby satellite towns within the Federal District and commute by bus to the Plano Piloto. Some of the satellites are planned developments others have grown laissez-faire. They have very little open space, and some have social problems stemming from high unemployment. Of course, government is Bras?lias primary function, but it was inevitable that banking and commerce would flourish. Mainly because of the famous plan and architecture, tourism has also developed. Construction is an important part of the industrial infrastructure, but apart from that, only light industry is permitted. Originally designed for 500,000 people. Bras?lia has grown rapidly. The 1960 population was around 90,000, and by 1980 it had increased to more than 411,000. A 1996 census showed that it had reached just over 1.8 million, and it probably rose to 2 millionmostly civil servants and businesspeopleby the turn of the century. Since about 1990 traffic problems such as gridlock and inadequate parking space have arisen in Bras?lia. A Y-shaped, partly underground rail system was started in 1992. Linking the south wing of the Plano Piloto with five of the satellite towns and with a total length of 26 miles 42 kilometers, it was designed to cater to two-thirds of the population. Commercial operation has been promised several times, but it still had not begun by 2001. In 1987, Bras?lia was inscribed on UNESCOs World Heritage List. According to some residents, that was a mixed blessing for a living city: while it certainly increased tourist revenue and helps preserve the quality of life for some, at the same time it inhibits the character of future expansion.
24. Bricks
The Indus valley
The humble brick literally shaped the face of world architecture. The Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus River valleys were the locations of what has been calledthe urban implosion, the sudden emergence of cities from the neolithic villages that lined the waterways. The alluvial expanses on whose agricultural produce the new urban centers burgeoned had little naturally occurring stone, so the city walls, the buildings within, and even the royal palaces were built of brick. Packed clay had been used for centuries, and as it does in parts of the Arab world today, it yielded soft, curvilinear free forms. The advantage of the brick was that it was a prefabricated modular building unit, made easy to handle by its size and weight. Its shape and standard sizefunctions of the manufacturing process inevitably generated a rectilinear architecture and affected the way people built by assembling units rather than allowing the building to grow as well as limiting such details as proportion and the subdivision of surfaces. Those causes and effects persist until this day. Sun-dried bricks were made from puddled clay, perhaps containing a little sand or gravel, reinforced with a fibrous material usually straw that minimized cracking as the bricks dried. The mixture was packed into wooden molds, without tops or bottoms, that were removed once initial hardening had occurred. The bricks were then stacked and left to dry in the sun, sometimes for as long as two years, before being used in buildings. They were usually set in beds of wet mud, although the ancient Egyptians are known to have used gypsum-based mortar. The Babylonians employed hot natural bitumen, imported from lakes at Id on the Iranian Plateau every several courses, the bed joints were reinforced with woven reeds. The dry climates of the river valleys presented few problems with weathering, but sometimes walls were plastered over with mud. The Indus valley culture employed kiln-fired bricks long before its contemporaries, in buildings, pavements, and drains. Fired bricks also appeared a little later in Mesopotamia, where they were employed only in such special situations as decorative facings with colored glazes of public buildings or copings on walls. Timber for building was in short enough supply, and it was unreasonable to use it unnecessarily to fuel kilns. In the land between the rivers, sophisticated brick technology was early applied to massive structures like King Ur-Nammus ziggurat at Ur ca. 2100 b.c.. It was mainly of sun-dried brick, with thick facings of fired brick. Sixteen centuries later the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II built his new city, with an 11-mile-long 17-kilometer outer wall and an inner wall wide enough to allow two chariots to be driven abreast on its top. Both of these huge structures were of sun-dried brick, and the northern Ishtar Gate was faced with blue glazed brick, ornamented with colored brick relief figures of bulls, dragons, and other beasts. Nebuchadnezzar also refaced the Marduk zigguratthought by some to be the Tower of Babelwith a 50-foot-thick 15-meter fired brick casing. Because the successive cultures that later dominated the region were builders in stone, the value of brick architecture was overlooked for centuries, to appear again in the Roman world. For the pragmatic Romans, brick construction was more economical than stone, so the material was widely used, Brick making became a major industry that eventually was nationalized. To maintain quality control, brick makers were obliged to stamp their products with the brick makers name and the place and date of manufacture. Flat Roman bricks, laid in thick beds of lime mortar, were used to build arches and principally aslost formwork in the ubiquitous concrete structures, in which they were covered with marble, mosaic, or stucco. Although it was maintained as a decorative material in the Byzantine Empire, with the decline of the Western Roman Empire, brick again went out of fashion. For several centuries after about a.d. 400, the only bricks used in western Europe were recycled from Roman buildings. It was only when those supplies were exhausted by about the beginning of the twelfth century that brick was again revived. As had been the case in the protohistoric river civilizations, necessity gave birth to invention, and brick architecture reappeared in the stone-poor Low Countries. Trade routes through Flanders were integral to the spreading use of bricks and clay roof tiles as building materials, and they moved as trade goods or as ballast in ships. Even toward the end of the Middle Ages, English architects and their clients regarded the brick as an exotic, luxurious, and somewhat suspicious building material.
The humble brick literally shaped the face of world architecture. The Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus River valleys were the locations of what has been calledthe urban implosion, the sudden emergence of cities from the neolithic villages that lined the waterways. The alluvial expanses on whose agricultural produce the new urban centers burgeoned had little naturally occurring stone, so the city walls, the buildings within, and even the royal palaces were built of brick. Packed clay had been used for centuries, and as it does in parts of the Arab world today, it yielded soft, curvilinear free forms. The advantage of the brick was that it was a prefabricated modular building unit, made easy to handle by its size and weight. Its shape and standard sizefunctions of the manufacturing process inevitably generated a rectilinear architecture and affected the way people built by assembling units rather than allowing the building to grow as well as limiting such details as proportion and the subdivision of surfaces. Those causes and effects persist until this day. Sun-dried bricks were made from puddled clay, perhaps containing a little sand or gravel, reinforced with a fibrous material usually straw that minimized cracking as the bricks dried. The mixture was packed into wooden molds, without tops or bottoms, that were removed once initial hardening had occurred. The bricks were then stacked and left to dry in the sun, sometimes for as long as two years, before being used in buildings. They were usually set in beds of wet mud, although the ancient Egyptians are known to have used gypsum-based mortar. The Babylonians employed hot natural bitumen, imported from lakes at Id on the Iranian Plateau every several courses, the bed joints were reinforced with woven reeds. The dry climates of the river valleys presented few problems with weathering, but sometimes walls were plastered over with mud. The Indus valley culture employed kiln-fired bricks long before its contemporaries, in buildings, pavements, and drains. Fired bricks also appeared a little later in Mesopotamia, where they were employed only in such special situations as decorative facings with colored glazes of public buildings or copings on walls. Timber for building was in short enough supply, and it was unreasonable to use it unnecessarily to fuel kilns. In the land between the rivers, sophisticated brick technology was early applied to massive structures like King Ur-Nammus ziggurat at Ur ca. 2100 b.c.. It was mainly of sun-dried brick, with thick facings of fired brick. Sixteen centuries later the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II built his new city, with an 11-mile-long 17-kilometer outer wall and an inner wall wide enough to allow two chariots to be driven abreast on its top. Both of these huge structures were of sun-dried brick, and the northern Ishtar Gate was faced with blue glazed brick, ornamented with colored brick relief figures of bulls, dragons, and other beasts. Nebuchadnezzar also refaced the Marduk zigguratthought by some to be the Tower of Babelwith a 50-foot-thick 15-meter fired brick casing. Because the successive cultures that later dominated the region were builders in stone, the value of brick architecture was overlooked for centuries, to appear again in the Roman world. For the pragmatic Romans, brick construction was more economical than stone, so the material was widely used, Brick making became a major industry that eventually was nationalized. To maintain quality control, brick makers were obliged to stamp their products with the brick makers name and the place and date of manufacture. Flat Roman bricks, laid in thick beds of lime mortar, were used to build arches and principally aslost formwork in the ubiquitous concrete structures, in which they were covered with marble, mosaic, or stucco. Although it was maintained as a decorative material in the Byzantine Empire, with the decline of the Western Roman Empire, brick again went out of fashion. For several centuries after about a.d. 400, the only bricks used in western Europe were recycled from Roman buildings. It was only when those supplies were exhausted by about the beginning of the twelfth century that brick was again revived. As had been the case in the protohistoric river civilizations, necessity gave birth to invention, and brick architecture reappeared in the stone-poor Low Countries. Trade routes through Flanders were integral to the spreading use of bricks and clay roof tiles as building materials, and they moved as trade goods or as ballast in ships. Even toward the end of the Middle Ages, English architects and their clients regarded the brick as an exotic, luxurious, and somewhat suspicious building material.
25. Brihadisvara Temple
Thanjavur, India
The so-called Big Temple, the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur Tanjore in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was built between a.d. 1003 and 1010. It is the epitome of Dravidian temple architecture and a wonderful gallery of South Indian art and craft. Vijayalaya Cholan a.d. 846 871, founder of the Chola dynasty, chose the well-established settlement beside the River Kaveri as his capital, and for four centuries Chola influence on Indian religion, culture, art, and architecture spread from the royal city. Thanjavur is now a country town of about 200,000 people. Chola dominion was extended under Vijayalayas son Aditya I, the beginning of an empire that reached its apogee of power and prosperity under the greatest Chola ruler, Rajaraja Arunmozhivarma, soon after he became king in a.d. 985. By about 1005 he subjugated much of southern India, and the dynasty eventually controlled the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and parts of Sri Lanka. His conquests complete, until his death in 1014 Rajaraja turned his thoughts to religion and the arts, initiating many temples and replacing older brick shrines with ones of stone. Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur, India architects unknown, 1003 1010. Inner and outer eastern gatehouses. Although remarkably open-minded in religious matters, Rajaraja was a pious devotee of Siva, and the greatest of his cultural achievements was a masterpiece of South Indian art and architecture, the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur also known as Peruvudaiyar Koil. He named it Rajarajeswaram. The temple precinct occupies most of the Sivaganga Fort, which was enclosed within perimeter walls in the sixteenth century. The fort is now bounded on the east and west by moats, and on the south by the Grand Anaicut Channel, part of an extensive eleventh-century irrigation, system. To the north is the Sivaganga Garden, which also postdates the temple. The Brihadisvara Temple stands within two concentric rectangular spaces. The outer court, measuring 793 by 397 feet 238 by 119 meters, is entered at its eastern end through a magnificent towered gatehouse, flanked by shrines dedicated to Ganapathi and Mrurgan. Facing the outer gatehouse is a similar structure, 90 feet 27 meters high, that gives access to the carefully planned 500-by-250-foot 150-by-75-meter stone- and brick-paved inner courtyard, at whose western end stands the main shrine of Sri Brihadisvara. The temple proper, so to speak, is a complex suite of several elements. Although they are separate structures, they form an entity, the garbhagrihamthat is, the holy of holiessurrounded by a 1,500-foot 450-meter colonnaded cloister prakaram. The cloisters two levels, although, dimly lit, are decorated with brilliantly colored frescoes from the Chola period, depicting the lives of the sixty-four Nayanmars Saivite saints, the sacred bull nandi, and the ceremonial mount of Siva. There are also sculptured panels showing the Bharata Natyam dance postures karanas and the manifestations of Siva known as Sivalingams. Altogether, there are about 250 Sivalingams throughout the temple complex: the largest, 29 feet 8.7 meters high, is set in a two- story sanctum. The main shrine also includes a large hall with open aisles Maha-mandapam, intended for religious discourse another terraced hall enclosing the shrine of Sri Thyagarajar and various ancillary halls for storing religious trappings and housing musicians. Standing in an elaborately decorated open hall in the inner court is a massive monolithic nandi, 12 feet 3.6 meters high and nearly 20 feet 6 meters long. There are several subshrines in the complex, but only one seems to have been built at the same time as the main temple. The inner court is dominated by the 96-foot-square 29-meter granite base of the vimana, a tower that rises through fourteen diminishing stories to a height of almost 220 feet 66 meters. Its facades are encrusted with hundreds of stucco figures of the myriad Hindu gods, standing in niches between carefully wrought pilasters. The vimana is crowned with an octagonal dome sikaram resting on an 80-ton 7.3-tonne granite structure contrary to popular accounts, it is not a single block, enriched with nandis at each corner. Rising above the dome is a 12.5-foot 3.8-meter finial kalasam ending in a copper pot overlaid with gold plate, a gift of King Rajaraja. The generous endowments of the devout king and his sister Kundavai to the temple are recorded in inscriptions on the walls of the vimana. Everywhere, the surfaces of the building provide a vehicle for Chola art, making the Brihadisvara more than just an architectural masterpieceit is also a magnificent repository of the highest artistic and craft skills of a golden age. Someone has said that the Chola artists conceived like giants and finished like jewelers. The temple was added to UNESCOs World Heritage List in 1987. Beginning with Rajaraja the Great, the piety of the Chola dynasty is evidenced by more than seventy temples built in and near Thanjavur over the next two centuries. Noteworthy among them were Gangaikondacholisvaram Temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, whose vimana was a little shorter than that at Thanjavur the more diminutive Airavateswarar Temple at Darasuram, described by one critic asa sculptors dream re-lived in stone and the Kampahareswarar Temple at Tribhuvanam. In each of the four, the vimana was tallerusually much tallerthan the towers of the entrance gates after them, Chola architects returned to their traditional forms, in which the relative heights were reversed.
The so-called Big Temple, the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur Tanjore in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was built between a.d. 1003 and 1010. It is the epitome of Dravidian temple architecture and a wonderful gallery of South Indian art and craft. Vijayalaya Cholan a.d. 846 871, founder of the Chola dynasty, chose the well-established settlement beside the River Kaveri as his capital, and for four centuries Chola influence on Indian religion, culture, art, and architecture spread from the royal city. Thanjavur is now a country town of about 200,000 people. Chola dominion was extended under Vijayalayas son Aditya I, the beginning of an empire that reached its apogee of power and prosperity under the greatest Chola ruler, Rajaraja Arunmozhivarma, soon after he became king in a.d. 985. By about 1005 he subjugated much of southern India, and the dynasty eventually controlled the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and parts of Sri Lanka. His conquests complete, until his death in 1014 Rajaraja turned his thoughts to religion and the arts, initiating many temples and replacing older brick shrines with ones of stone. Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur, India architects unknown, 1003 1010. Inner and outer eastern gatehouses. Although remarkably open-minded in religious matters, Rajaraja was a pious devotee of Siva, and the greatest of his cultural achievements was a masterpiece of South Indian art and architecture, the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur also known as Peruvudaiyar Koil. He named it Rajarajeswaram. The temple precinct occupies most of the Sivaganga Fort, which was enclosed within perimeter walls in the sixteenth century. The fort is now bounded on the east and west by moats, and on the south by the Grand Anaicut Channel, part of an extensive eleventh-century irrigation, system. To the north is the Sivaganga Garden, which also postdates the temple. The Brihadisvara Temple stands within two concentric rectangular spaces. The outer court, measuring 793 by 397 feet 238 by 119 meters, is entered at its eastern end through a magnificent towered gatehouse, flanked by shrines dedicated to Ganapathi and Mrurgan. Facing the outer gatehouse is a similar structure, 90 feet 27 meters high, that gives access to the carefully planned 500-by-250-foot 150-by-75-meter stone- and brick-paved inner courtyard, at whose western end stands the main shrine of Sri Brihadisvara. The temple proper, so to speak, is a complex suite of several elements. Although they are separate structures, they form an entity, the garbhagrihamthat is, the holy of holiessurrounded by a 1,500-foot 450-meter colonnaded cloister prakaram. The cloisters two levels, although, dimly lit, are decorated with brilliantly colored frescoes from the Chola period, depicting the lives of the sixty-four Nayanmars Saivite saints, the sacred bull nandi, and the ceremonial mount of Siva. There are also sculptured panels showing the Bharata Natyam dance postures karanas and the manifestations of Siva known as Sivalingams. Altogether, there are about 250 Sivalingams throughout the temple complex: the largest, 29 feet 8.7 meters high, is set in a two- story sanctum. The main shrine also includes a large hall with open aisles Maha-mandapam, intended for religious discourse another terraced hall enclosing the shrine of Sri Thyagarajar and various ancillary halls for storing religious trappings and housing musicians. Standing in an elaborately decorated open hall in the inner court is a massive monolithic nandi, 12 feet 3.6 meters high and nearly 20 feet 6 meters long. There are several subshrines in the complex, but only one seems to have been built at the same time as the main temple. The inner court is dominated by the 96-foot-square 29-meter granite base of the vimana, a tower that rises through fourteen diminishing stories to a height of almost 220 feet 66 meters. Its facades are encrusted with hundreds of stucco figures of the myriad Hindu gods, standing in niches between carefully wrought pilasters. The vimana is crowned with an octagonal dome sikaram resting on an 80-ton 7.3-tonne granite structure contrary to popular accounts, it is not a single block, enriched with nandis at each corner. Rising above the dome is a 12.5-foot 3.8-meter finial kalasam ending in a copper pot overlaid with gold plate, a gift of King Rajaraja. The generous endowments of the devout king and his sister Kundavai to the temple are recorded in inscriptions on the walls of the vimana. Everywhere, the surfaces of the building provide a vehicle for Chola art, making the Brihadisvara more than just an architectural masterpieceit is also a magnificent repository of the highest artistic and craft skills of a golden age. Someone has said that the Chola artists conceived like giants and finished like jewelers. The temple was added to UNESCOs World Heritage List in 1987. Beginning with Rajaraja the Great, the piety of the Chola dynasty is evidenced by more than seventy temples built in and near Thanjavur over the next two centuries. Noteworthy among them were Gangaikondacholisvaram Temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, whose vimana was a little shorter than that at Thanjavur the more diminutive Airavateswarar Temple at Darasuram, described by one critic asa sculptors dream re-lived in stone and the Kampahareswarar Temple at Tribhuvanam. In each of the four, the vimana was tallerusually much tallerthan the towers of the entrance gates after them, Chola architects returned to their traditional forms, in which the relative heights were reversed.
26. Brooklyn Bridge
New York City, New York
When it was opened on 24 May 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, joining the boroughs of urban Manhattan and semirural Brooklyn across New Yorks East River, was the longest suspension bridge in the worldtwice as long as any previously built. More significantly, it was the first structure of its kind to be supported by cables of galvanized steel wire instead of the usual iron. From the early seventeenth century through most of the nineteenth, the only transport link between Manhattan and Brooklyn was a ferry service, latterly the Fulton Street Ferry. As early as 1802 the New-York State Legislature had been petitioned to build a bridge between Long Island and Manhattan Island, but it was not until 1857a decade before the enabling legislation was passed that serious consideration was given to the project. The German-born engineer John Augustus Roebling had been thinking about an East River bridge since 1852. Supported by influential local politicians Abram Hewitt and William C. Murray, he proposed a suspension bridge, composed of two 800-foot 247-meter spans linked by a 500-foot 153-meter cantilever section over Blackwells Island now Roosevelt Island, close to the site of the present-day Queensboro Bridge. But the economic depression was followed in 1861 by civil war, two events that delayed the project until 1866. Then the New York civil engineer Julius W. Adams proposed a suspension bridge, also on a different site from the final structure. In April 1867, under the entrepreneurship of William C. Kingsley, the New York Bridge Company was founded to build Adamss version ofThe New York and Brooklyn Bridge. His design was superseded a month later by Roeblings scheme, prepared in collaboration with Wilhelm Hildenbrand. Their respective contributions are unknown, but most of the credit has gone to Roebling. The Bridge Company was a private corporation, but legislation provided that the city of New York might subscribe $1.5 million of the total capital, the city of Brooklyn $3 million, and private stockholders $500,000 in the event, more than 60 percent of the private funding came from Kingsley and his connections. The total length of Roeblings bridge, including approaches and land spans, was to be 5,989 feet 1,796 meters as built, it was some 800 feet 245 meters longer. The 1,595-foot-6-inch 479-meter span across the river would enter the tower arches 119 feet 36 meters above the shore. A clearance of 135 feet over 40 meters at midspan would allow even the tallest ships to sail under the graceful arch. Roebling proposed to ran extensions of the New York and Brooklyn elevated, railroad tracks down the center of the bridge they were to be flanked by vehicular carriageways. Above the railroad he designed an elevated pedestrian path. In June 1869 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved over the signature of Ulysses S. Grant the construction of Roeblings bridge. Surveying began without delay. Tragedy was just as immediate: while Roebling was locating the Brooklyn tower, a ferry collided with the Fulton slip on which he stood, crushing his foot. Within about a month, his masterpiece barely started, he died of tetanus poisoning. His son, Washington Augustus Roebling, was appointed chief engineer, and William Kingsley assumed superintendence of construction. In 1870, with the necessary surveying and dredging completed, the foundations of the tower arches were commenced. The two massive timber caissons were built at Webb & Bells Greenpoint shipyard and towed 4 miles 6.4 kilometers to the bridge site. As an indication of size, the smaller measured 168 by 102 feet 50 by 30 meters built of foot-square 300-by-300-millimeter flitches of yellow pine, its roof was 15 feet 4.5 meters and its walls 9 feet 2.7 meters thick. The hollow structures were sunk to the riverbed, piled with the granite blocks of the tower bases, as workers inside them removed the spoil, laboring in very uncomfortable and extremely dangerous conditions. After fourteen months digging, the Brooklyn caisson reached bedrock in March 1871, at just over 40 feet 13 meters under the riverbed. The caisson on the Manhattan side reached firm soil at almost twice that depth, although it was still thirty feet short of bedrock, by May 1872. The pressures experienced at such depths killed some workers, prompting Roeblings decision to go no deeper. Having spent a lot of time in the Manhattan caisson, he also sufferedcaisson disease commonly known as the bends. His whole body was crippled, and by the end of 1872 he was barely able to speak and beginning to go blind. With his wife, Emily Roebling, he sought treatment at a spa in Weisbaden, Germany, remaining for several months. Then they lived for three years in Trenton, New Jersey, the location of the Roebling wire works. In 1877 they returned to New York and took a house with a view of the bridge. From there, with Emilys help, Washington Roebling would supervise the remaining phases of construction. Meanwhile, work continued on the anchorages, towers, and cables. The anchorage at either end of the bridge comprises thousands of tons of masonry, into which are embedded four huge anchor plates, from which 152 anchor bars in each plate take up the enormous tensile loads imposed by the four huge cables that carry the bridges superstructure. The granite neo-Gothic towers, designed to resist the compressive loads exerted on them by the cables, took three years to build. The Brooklyn tower was finished in May 1875, and the Manhattan tower the following July. Rising over 276 feet 83 meters above the riverequivalent to about twenty-eight storiesthey were higher than any building in New York City except the spire of Trinity Church. In August 1876 the two anchorages were linked across the East River by a wire rope. The spinning of the four bridge cables in situtwo outer ones and two near the middle of the 85-foot-wide 25-meter bridgebegan in February 1877 and was completed on 5 October 1878. The process combined 278 galvanized steel wires into a strand, and nineteen strands were bound into an iron-wire-wrapped cable, almost 16 inches 40 centimeters in diameter each cable could support 11,200 tons 10,200 tonnes. Secured at the anchorages and passing over the towers, they hung in a natural curve, or catenary. At the bottom they were attached to the center of the main span of the bridge deck. From the cables, verticalsuspenders, about as thick as a mans wrist, supported the deck along its length, assisted by a system of heavy wire ropes radiating in both directions from the towers. Construction of the understructure, the stiffening trusses, and the roadway began in March 1879. The Brooklyn Bridge, also then known as the Great East River Bridge, was opened on 24 May 1883 when Hewitt formally presented it to the mayors of New York and Brooklyn. He boasted,The cities of New York and Brooklyn have constructed, and today rejoice in the possession of, the crowning glory of an age memorable for great industrial achievements. The New York Bridge Company had been wound up in 1874, when, the project was taken over by the cities of Brooklyn and New York. Instead of the promised three, the bridge took thirteen years to build. And, including a little under $4 million for land acquisition, it cost $15 millionat present values, around $1.5 billioninstead of the estimated $7 million. Until the marginally longer Williamsburg Bridge over the East River was completed in 1903, the Brooklyn Bridge remained the longest bridge in the world. Major reconstruction was undertaken in 1954, when the engineer David Steinman modified the inner and outer trusses and removed the railroad tracks to widen the roadways New approach ramps were built, and augmented in 1969. There has been a major rehabilitation of the main span and the approaches since 1979 and the latest renovation involved emergency redecking completed at a cost of $33.5 million in October 1999. The bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Government in 1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1972.
When it was opened on 24 May 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, joining the boroughs of urban Manhattan and semirural Brooklyn across New Yorks East River, was the longest suspension bridge in the worldtwice as long as any previously built. More significantly, it was the first structure of its kind to be supported by cables of galvanized steel wire instead of the usual iron. From the early seventeenth century through most of the nineteenth, the only transport link between Manhattan and Brooklyn was a ferry service, latterly the Fulton Street Ferry. As early as 1802 the New-York State Legislature had been petitioned to build a bridge between Long Island and Manhattan Island, but it was not until 1857a decade before the enabling legislation was passed that serious consideration was given to the project. The German-born engineer John Augustus Roebling had been thinking about an East River bridge since 1852. Supported by influential local politicians Abram Hewitt and William C. Murray, he proposed a suspension bridge, composed of two 800-foot 247-meter spans linked by a 500-foot 153-meter cantilever section over Blackwells Island now Roosevelt Island, close to the site of the present-day Queensboro Bridge. But the economic depression was followed in 1861 by civil war, two events that delayed the project until 1866. Then the New York civil engineer Julius W. Adams proposed a suspension bridge, also on a different site from the final structure. In April 1867, under the entrepreneurship of William C. Kingsley, the New York Bridge Company was founded to build Adamss version ofThe New York and Brooklyn Bridge. His design was superseded a month later by Roeblings scheme, prepared in collaboration with Wilhelm Hildenbrand. Their respective contributions are unknown, but most of the credit has gone to Roebling. The Bridge Company was a private corporation, but legislation provided that the city of New York might subscribe $1.5 million of the total capital, the city of Brooklyn $3 million, and private stockholders $500,000 in the event, more than 60 percent of the private funding came from Kingsley and his connections. The total length of Roeblings bridge, including approaches and land spans, was to be 5,989 feet 1,796 meters as built, it was some 800 feet 245 meters longer. The 1,595-foot-6-inch 479-meter span across the river would enter the tower arches 119 feet 36 meters above the shore. A clearance of 135 feet over 40 meters at midspan would allow even the tallest ships to sail under the graceful arch. Roebling proposed to ran extensions of the New York and Brooklyn elevated, railroad tracks down the center of the bridge they were to be flanked by vehicular carriageways. Above the railroad he designed an elevated pedestrian path. In June 1869 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved over the signature of Ulysses S. Grant the construction of Roeblings bridge. Surveying began without delay. Tragedy was just as immediate: while Roebling was locating the Brooklyn tower, a ferry collided with the Fulton slip on which he stood, crushing his foot. Within about a month, his masterpiece barely started, he died of tetanus poisoning. His son, Washington Augustus Roebling, was appointed chief engineer, and William Kingsley assumed superintendence of construction. In 1870, with the necessary surveying and dredging completed, the foundations of the tower arches were commenced. The two massive timber caissons were built at Webb & Bells Greenpoint shipyard and towed 4 miles 6.4 kilometers to the bridge site. As an indication of size, the smaller measured 168 by 102 feet 50 by 30 meters built of foot-square 300-by-300-millimeter flitches of yellow pine, its roof was 15 feet 4.5 meters and its walls 9 feet 2.7 meters thick. The hollow structures were sunk to the riverbed, piled with the granite blocks of the tower bases, as workers inside them removed the spoil, laboring in very uncomfortable and extremely dangerous conditions. After fourteen months digging, the Brooklyn caisson reached bedrock in March 1871, at just over 40 feet 13 meters under the riverbed. The caisson on the Manhattan side reached firm soil at almost twice that depth, although it was still thirty feet short of bedrock, by May 1872. The pressures experienced at such depths killed some workers, prompting Roeblings decision to go no deeper. Having spent a lot of time in the Manhattan caisson, he also sufferedcaisson disease commonly known as the bends. His whole body was crippled, and by the end of 1872 he was barely able to speak and beginning to go blind. With his wife, Emily Roebling, he sought treatment at a spa in Weisbaden, Germany, remaining for several months. Then they lived for three years in Trenton, New Jersey, the location of the Roebling wire works. In 1877 they returned to New York and took a house with a view of the bridge. From there, with Emilys help, Washington Roebling would supervise the remaining phases of construction. Meanwhile, work continued on the anchorages, towers, and cables. The anchorage at either end of the bridge comprises thousands of tons of masonry, into which are embedded four huge anchor plates, from which 152 anchor bars in each plate take up the enormous tensile loads imposed by the four huge cables that carry the bridges superstructure. The granite neo-Gothic towers, designed to resist the compressive loads exerted on them by the cables, took three years to build. The Brooklyn tower was finished in May 1875, and the Manhattan tower the following July. Rising over 276 feet 83 meters above the riverequivalent to about twenty-eight storiesthey were higher than any building in New York City except the spire of Trinity Church. In August 1876 the two anchorages were linked across the East River by a wire rope. The spinning of the four bridge cables in situtwo outer ones and two near the middle of the 85-foot-wide 25-meter bridgebegan in February 1877 and was completed on 5 October 1878. The process combined 278 galvanized steel wires into a strand, and nineteen strands were bound into an iron-wire-wrapped cable, almost 16 inches 40 centimeters in diameter each cable could support 11,200 tons 10,200 tonnes. Secured at the anchorages and passing over the towers, they hung in a natural curve, or catenary. At the bottom they were attached to the center of the main span of the bridge deck. From the cables, verticalsuspenders, about as thick as a mans wrist, supported the deck along its length, assisted by a system of heavy wire ropes radiating in both directions from the towers. Construction of the understructure, the stiffening trusses, and the roadway began in March 1879. The Brooklyn Bridge, also then known as the Great East River Bridge, was opened on 24 May 1883 when Hewitt formally presented it to the mayors of New York and Brooklyn. He boasted,The cities of New York and Brooklyn have constructed, and today rejoice in the possession of, the crowning glory of an age memorable for great industrial achievements. The New York Bridge Company had been wound up in 1874, when, the project was taken over by the cities of Brooklyn and New York. Instead of the promised three, the bridge took thirteen years to build. And, including a little under $4 million for land acquisition, it cost $15 millionat present values, around $1.5 billioninstead of the estimated $7 million. Until the marginally longer Williamsburg Bridge over the East River was completed in 1903, the Brooklyn Bridge remained the longest bridge in the world. Major reconstruction was undertaken in 1954, when the engineer David Steinman modified the inner and outer trusses and removed the railroad tracks to widen the roadways New approach ramps were built, and augmented in 1969. There has been a major rehabilitation of the main span and the approaches since 1979 and the latest renovation involved emergency redecking completed at a cost of $33.5 million in October 1999. The bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Government in 1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1972.
27. Cahokia mounds
Illinois
At a time when settlements in the Americas rarely exceeded 400 or 500 inhabitants, the Native American center of Cahokia was as large as contemporary London, a size that no other city in the United States would attain until the nineteenth century. The well-organized aggregation of mounds and residential districts had a population estimated at 10,000 to 30,000some sources claim 40,000. Cahokias distinctive earth mounds there were 120 of them took three forms: conical,ridge top, and, most commonly, platforms, often crowned with ceremonial buildings or the houses of the powerful. At the heart of the city stood the huge ceremonial embankment now known as Monks Mound that was in itself a stupendous feat of planning and engineering. The indigenous American civilization known as Mississippianno one knows what they called themselvessprang up in the American Bottom, an extensive fertile floodplain near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kaskaskia, and Meramec Rivers. Between about a.d. 1000 and 1250, they lived near what is now central and East St. Louis and where the Illinois towns of Fairmont City, Dupo, Lebanon, and Mitchell now stand. This suburban concentration was eclipsed by their greatest achievement: Cahokia, dubbedAmericas lost metropolis. Cahokia was named for the branch of the Illinois people who occupied the region in the seventeenth century, long after the builders had departed. In terms of both agriculture and trade, Cahokia was perfectly located. The predictable annual flooding of farmland enabled planning and replenished the soil so that maize and other crops were sustainable for centuries. The river systems reaching out to much of North America facilitated trade, and there is evidence of commercial traffic over a network that extended from Minnesota in the north to Mississippi in the south Cahokian traders reached west as far as Kansas and east to Tennessee. Raw materials such as copper, seashells, and mica were imported and processed in Cahokia to be exported as copper ornaments and shell beadsindications of a sophisticated manufacturing industry. It was once believed that this productive economic environment led to population growth, as Cahokian civilization slowly flowered. Recently, archeologist Timothy Pauketat has questioned this conclusion, claiming that there is no evidence for it. Although not all his peers agree, he suggests that Cahokia experienced an urban implosion in little more than a decade early in the eleventh century a.d., growing from a village of only 1,000 into a city ten times that size. Based on studies of wider Native American beliefs, that event may have been due to the emergence of a charismatic chief whose arrival prompted villagers to abandon their settlements throughout eastern Missouri and southern Illinois and migrate to Cahokia. It is now widely accepted that the Middle Mississippian area of which Cahokia forms a large part was under some kind of chiefdom government. Each chiefa Brother of the Sunseems to have ruled a territory that depended upon a specific floodplain, and he managed food distribution between the central place and outlying settlements. Perhaps he had other roles, including matters of trade, administration of a civil service, and most probably religio-political duties. Little more is known. However it came into being, the fact of Cahokia is staggering. Its earthen mounds extended over 6 square miles 15 square kilometers. At the heart of the city, defended by a wooden stockade, was the 200-acre 81-hectare precinct of the ruling class, with the great ceremonial flat-topped mound at its center. The engineers and architects built to a master plan that was almost certainly based upon Mississippian cosmologya sort of model of the universe. Cahokians viewed their universe as Father Sky and Mother Earth, and the layout of streets and structures mirrored that. The northern half of the city represented Sky, the southern half, Earth. They were defined by a long east-west street another, running northeast, formed a cross symbolizing north, south, east, and west, its center point just in front of the central mound and at the end of a grand plaza. Archeologists have uncovered four circular solar calendars built of large, evenly spaced red cedar posts at the outer limits of the two streets. Thesewood-henges, so called because they had the same purpose as Stonehenge in England, were essential to the Cahokians agriculture-based economy, both in a practical and a ceremonial sense. From about 1100 the central precinct, containing 17 earth mounds, was protected by a 2-mile-long 3.2-kilometer stockade, constructed from some 15,000 20,000 1-foot-thick 30-centimeter oak and hickory logs. The wall was about 12 feet 3.6 meters high, with projecting bastions every 70 feet 21 meters along its length. Outside it, thousands of single-family houses clustered, organized in small groups around ceremonial poles. Although it may have served as a social barrier between the Cahokian elite and the general population, it is clear from its form and the evidence of some hastily built parts that the palisades main purpose was defense. It was rebuilt three times before 1300. The inner city of Cahokia was dominated by an enormous platform mound, identified as the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas. Surviving today, Monks Mound was named after a Trappist monastery in the vicinity. Its base, measuring 1,037 by 790 feet 291 by 236 meters, extends over 14 acres 5.25 hectares, and the structure rises through four sloping-sided rectangular terraces to a height of 100 feet 30.6 meters. It contains 820,000 cubic yards 692,000 cubic meters of earth, all of which was hand-excavated from largeborrow pits and carried in woven baskets to the site. Monks Mound was built in several stages over about 200 years, with carefully designed strata of sand and clay, and drains to deal with water saturation. Long ago, it was crowned with a 50-foot-high 15-meter thatched-roof building of timber-pole construction, 105 by 48 feet 31 by 14 meters. Some scholars identify it as a temple. It was certainly the chiefs residence, in which the political and religious observances were conducted that ensured the nations continuing prosperity. In effect, the mound was a means of lifting Mother Earth to Father Sky, bringing male and female together. That these ancient builders could set out their city with its streets aligned to the cardinal compass points and construct such a durable monument over generations, without having a written language or the wheel, makes their accomplishment the more marvelous. Around 1200, for reasons that may only be guessed, Cahokia began to decline. Perhaps growth had placed too much burden upon the agricultural hinterland or overloaded the urban infrastructure perhaps deforestation had changed the local ecology. Or perhaps there was civil war over dwindling resources. Other scholars attribute the demise of the city to a mud slide on the great mound, which may have been construed as an omen. No one really knows. And no one knows where the Cahokians went. By 1400 their remarkable metropolis was abandoned. Arriving much later in the area, the first Europeans mistook the mounds, overgrown by then, for natural hillocks. Monks Mound was not discovered until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Modern farming, expanding towns, highways, and pollution continue to threaten those smaller communities around Cahokia that have not already been destroyed. The 2,200-acre 890-hectare Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. It was added to UNESCOs World Heritage List in 1982. Archeological investigation continues. Following major slumps on the east and west sides of Monks Mound in the mid-1980s, attempts were made to reduce internal waterlogging. In January 1998 construction workers, drilling horizontally into the west side, struck a deep layer of limestone or sandstone cobbles 40 feet 12 meters beneath the surface. Further tests were hampered by groundwater, but the find has excited scientists because stone does not naturally occur in the region. There is much more to be revealed at Cahokia.
At a time when settlements in the Americas rarely exceeded 400 or 500 inhabitants, the Native American center of Cahokia was as large as contemporary London, a size that no other city in the United States would attain until the nineteenth century. The well-organized aggregation of mounds and residential districts had a population estimated at 10,000 to 30,000some sources claim 40,000. Cahokias distinctive earth mounds there were 120 of them took three forms: conical,ridge top, and, most commonly, platforms, often crowned with ceremonial buildings or the houses of the powerful. At the heart of the city stood the huge ceremonial embankment now known as Monks Mound that was in itself a stupendous feat of planning and engineering. The indigenous American civilization known as Mississippianno one knows what they called themselvessprang up in the American Bottom, an extensive fertile floodplain near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kaskaskia, and Meramec Rivers. Between about a.d. 1000 and 1250, they lived near what is now central and East St. Louis and where the Illinois towns of Fairmont City, Dupo, Lebanon, and Mitchell now stand. This suburban concentration was eclipsed by their greatest achievement: Cahokia, dubbedAmericas lost metropolis. Cahokia was named for the branch of the Illinois people who occupied the region in the seventeenth century, long after the builders had departed. In terms of both agriculture and trade, Cahokia was perfectly located. The predictable annual flooding of farmland enabled planning and replenished the soil so that maize and other crops were sustainable for centuries. The river systems reaching out to much of North America facilitated trade, and there is evidence of commercial traffic over a network that extended from Minnesota in the north to Mississippi in the south Cahokian traders reached west as far as Kansas and east to Tennessee. Raw materials such as copper, seashells, and mica were imported and processed in Cahokia to be exported as copper ornaments and shell beadsindications of a sophisticated manufacturing industry. It was once believed that this productive economic environment led to population growth, as Cahokian civilization slowly flowered. Recently, archeologist Timothy Pauketat has questioned this conclusion, claiming that there is no evidence for it. Although not all his peers agree, he suggests that Cahokia experienced an urban implosion in little more than a decade early in the eleventh century a.d., growing from a village of only 1,000 into a city ten times that size. Based on studies of wider Native American beliefs, that event may have been due to the emergence of a charismatic chief whose arrival prompted villagers to abandon their settlements throughout eastern Missouri and southern Illinois and migrate to Cahokia. It is now widely accepted that the Middle Mississippian area of which Cahokia forms a large part was under some kind of chiefdom government. Each chiefa Brother of the Sunseems to have ruled a territory that depended upon a specific floodplain, and he managed food distribution between the central place and outlying settlements. Perhaps he had other roles, including matters of trade, administration of a civil service, and most probably religio-political duties. Little more is known. However it came into being, the fact of Cahokia is staggering. Its earthen mounds extended over 6 square miles 15 square kilometers. At the heart of the city, defended by a wooden stockade, was the 200-acre 81-hectare precinct of the ruling class, with the great ceremonial flat-topped mound at its center. The engineers and architects built to a master plan that was almost certainly based upon Mississippian cosmologya sort of model of the universe. Cahokians viewed their universe as Father Sky and Mother Earth, and the layout of streets and structures mirrored that. The northern half of the city represented Sky, the southern half, Earth. They were defined by a long east-west street another, running northeast, formed a cross symbolizing north, south, east, and west, its center point just in front of the central mound and at the end of a grand plaza. Archeologists have uncovered four circular solar calendars built of large, evenly spaced red cedar posts at the outer limits of the two streets. Thesewood-henges, so called because they had the same purpose as Stonehenge in England, were essential to the Cahokians agriculture-based economy, both in a practical and a ceremonial sense. From about 1100 the central precinct, containing 17 earth mounds, was protected by a 2-mile-long 3.2-kilometer stockade, constructed from some 15,000 20,000 1-foot-thick 30-centimeter oak and hickory logs. The wall was about 12 feet 3.6 meters high, with projecting bastions every 70 feet 21 meters along its length. Outside it, thousands of single-family houses clustered, organized in small groups around ceremonial poles. Although it may have served as a social barrier between the Cahokian elite and the general population, it is clear from its form and the evidence of some hastily built parts that the palisades main purpose was defense. It was rebuilt three times before 1300. The inner city of Cahokia was dominated by an enormous platform mound, identified as the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas. Surviving today, Monks Mound was named after a Trappist monastery in the vicinity. Its base, measuring 1,037 by 790 feet 291 by 236 meters, extends over 14 acres 5.25 hectares, and the structure rises through four sloping-sided rectangular terraces to a height of 100 feet 30.6 meters. It contains 820,000 cubic yards 692,000 cubic meters of earth, all of which was hand-excavated from largeborrow pits and carried in woven baskets to the site. Monks Mound was built in several stages over about 200 years, with carefully designed strata of sand and clay, and drains to deal with water saturation. Long ago, it was crowned with a 50-foot-high 15-meter thatched-roof building of timber-pole construction, 105 by 48 feet 31 by 14 meters. Some scholars identify it as a temple. It was certainly the chiefs residence, in which the political and religious observances were conducted that ensured the nations continuing prosperity. In effect, the mound was a means of lifting Mother Earth to Father Sky, bringing male and female together. That these ancient builders could set out their city with its streets aligned to the cardinal compass points and construct such a durable monument over generations, without having a written language or the wheel, makes their accomplishment the more marvelous. Around 1200, for reasons that may only be guessed, Cahokia began to decline. Perhaps growth had placed too much burden upon the agricultural hinterland or overloaded the urban infrastructure perhaps deforestation had changed the local ecology. Or perhaps there was civil war over dwindling resources. Other scholars attribute the demise of the city to a mud slide on the great mound, which may have been construed as an omen. No one really knows. And no one knows where the Cahokians went. By 1400 their remarkable metropolis was abandoned. Arriving much later in the area, the first Europeans mistook the mounds, overgrown by then, for natural hillocks. Monks Mound was not discovered until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Modern farming, expanding towns, highways, and pollution continue to threaten those smaller communities around Cahokia that have not already been destroyed. The 2,200-acre 890-hectare Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. It was added to UNESCOs World Heritage List in 1982. Archeological investigation continues. Following major slumps on the east and west sides of Monks Mound in the mid-1980s, attempts were made to reduce internal waterlogging. In January 1998 construction workers, drilling horizontally into the west side, struck a deep layer of limestone or sandstone cobbles 40 feet 12 meters beneath the surface. Further tests were hampered by groundwater, but the find has excited scientists because stone does not naturally occur in the region. There is much more to be revealed at Cahokia.
28. Canal system
England
The creation of Englands inland water-transport network during the 1700s was among the most important contributors to the Industrial Revolution. In the second half of the century, manufacturing, already transformed by entrepreneurial labor management, was shifting from cottage industry to factories, where machines mass-produced goods. A cheap, efficient transport infrastructure was vital to gather raw materials and distribute products. Because Englands disjointed road network was inadequate, and because new industrial areas in the north were not always served by navigable rivers, the initiative and money of industrialists and merchants combined with engineering skill and a great deal of hard work to develop a national system capable of moving bulk goods. Englands so-called Canal Age opened the country to the Industrial Revolution as the itinerant canal buildersthey were known asnavigatorschanged the face of Britain. Between 1700 and 1835 some 4,000 miles 6,400 kilometers of waterways were added to the 1,000 miles 1,600 kilometers of navigable rivers. Englands first modern canal was the Sankey Brook Navigation, engineered by Henry Berry and Thomas Steers. Authorized by Parliament in 1755, two years later it was carrying coal to the industries of Liverpool on the River Mersey. In 1759 the third Duke of Bridgewater, Francis Egerton, impressed by a recent visit to Frances Canal du Midi 1667 1694, proposed building a 10-mile 16-kilometer waterway to link his Worsley coal mines with the River Irwell and thus with industrial Manchester. The millwright James Brindley 1716 1762 was employed to work on the project with the dukes land agent, John Gilbert. In the event, the Bridgewater Canal, which became operational by 1765, bypassed the Irwell, taking the coal directly to Manchester and Liverpool. It was more important than the Sankey Canal because it began a national network of waterways that would eventually join the manufacturing center of Birmingham to Britains major rivers: the Mersey, the Severn, the Trent, and the Thames. Over the next seventy years those rivers were connected by 2,000 miles 3,200 kilometers of canals, and industrial regions like the Staffordshire Potteries and the Midlands Black Country prospered because of their access to national and world markets. Many of the most successful canals were built between 1760 and 1770, the first authorized to be built similar in size to the river navigations. But the construction cost of canal locks constrained developers to reduce their size, and as trade increased the narrow waterways could no longer meet demand. In the early 1780s an economic depression practically halted canal building, but recovery a decade later led to what has been calledcanal mania, and there was a great deal of speculative promotion and ill-advised investment. Although final construction costs often exceeded estimates, most proposals were oversubscribed, often with ruinous results. Some schemes were profitable others were abandoned during construction. Few showed much profit. The construction of the canal system was an awesome enterprise. Some names appear often and they are generally interrelated. In many ways, James Brindley set the standards for those who followed. The success of the Bridgewater Canal gave him impetus for other canal projects: the Grand Trunk, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Coventry, the Oxford, the old Birmingham, and the Chesterfieldaltogether, a 360-mile 580-kilometer networkwere designed and constructed by this self-educated engineer. Another self-styledcivil engineer, John Smeaton 1724 1792, built the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland and the Grand Canal in Ireland with William Jessup, whom he trained. Jessup 1745 1814 worked on several river navigations and canals, mostly in the Midlands and eastern England he was engineer on the Grand Junction, Ellesmere later the Llangollen, and Rochdale Canals. Under Jessup, the famous Thomas Telford 1757 1834 was an engineer on the Ellesmere Canal. He became chief engineer on the Liverpool and Birmingham Shropshire Union Canal where, unlike his predecessors who chose to follow land contours, he built embankments and made cuttings to follow a more direct route. He also made improvements to the Birmingham Canal systems. John Rennie 1761 1821 was a university-trained engineer who became surveyor and engineer on the Kennet and Avon Canal and on the Rochdale and Lancaster Canals. Around 1830, investors began to turn to the new railroads. For a while canals and railroads were complementary, the canals carrying bulk cargoes while the railroads conveyed passengers and light goods. But by the mid-nineteenth century a national network of standard-gauge railroads had developed, and canal tolls were forced down. Most could no longer compete economically. Some railroad companies bought up canals and closed or abandoned them. But that was not the only reason for decline the other was that, although they were interlinked and covered large areas of Britain, the canals were never conceived as an integrated system. The canals for the most part were built piecemeal for local traffic using traditional regional vessels that often varied in size. Because there was no standard canal lock, a fragmented, inefficient transport system resulted. They gradually went out of use as commercial thoroughfares. World War II witnessed a temporary revival. Following years of neglect and war damage, the canals were soon regarded as derelict. They were nationalized under the aegis of British Waterways in 1947 and over the next couple of decades their leisure and recreation value began to be recognized. The Inland Waterways Association was formed torescue them, and volunteer restoration projects continue. Millions of pounds are being spent on maintenance projects, and there are now more craft using British canals than at the height of their commercial success.
The creation of Englands inland water-transport network during the 1700s was among the most important contributors to the Industrial Revolution. In the second half of the century, manufacturing, already transformed by entrepreneurial labor management, was shifting from cottage industry to factories, where machines mass-produced goods. A cheap, efficient transport infrastructure was vital to gather raw materials and distribute products. Because Englands disjointed road network was inadequate, and because new industrial areas in the north were not always served by navigable rivers, the initiative and money of industrialists and merchants combined with engineering skill and a great deal of hard work to develop a national system capable of moving bulk goods. Englands so-called Canal Age opened the country to the Industrial Revolution as the itinerant canal buildersthey were known asnavigatorschanged the face of Britain. Between 1700 and 1835 some 4,000 miles 6,400 kilometers of waterways were added to the 1,000 miles 1,600 kilometers of navigable rivers. Englands first modern canal was the Sankey Brook Navigation, engineered by Henry Berry and Thomas Steers. Authorized by Parliament in 1755, two years later it was carrying coal to the industries of Liverpool on the River Mersey. In 1759 the third Duke of Bridgewater, Francis Egerton, impressed by a recent visit to Frances Canal du Midi 1667 1694, proposed building a 10-mile 16-kilometer waterway to link his Worsley coal mines with the River Irwell and thus with industrial Manchester. The millwright James Brindley 1716 1762 was employed to work on the project with the dukes land agent, John Gilbert. In the event, the Bridgewater Canal, which became operational by 1765, bypassed the Irwell, taking the coal directly to Manchester and Liverpool. It was more important than the Sankey Canal because it began a national network of waterways that would eventually join the manufacturing center of Birmingham to Britains major rivers: the Mersey, the Severn, the Trent, and the Thames. Over the next seventy years those rivers were connected by 2,000 miles 3,200 kilometers of canals, and industrial regions like the Staffordshire Potteries and the Midlands Black Country prospered because of their access to national and world markets. Many of the most successful canals were built between 1760 and 1770, the first authorized to be built similar in size to the river navigations. But the construction cost of canal locks constrained developers to reduce their size, and as trade increased the narrow waterways could no longer meet demand. In the early 1780s an economic depression practically halted canal building, but recovery a decade later led to what has been calledcanal mania, and there was a great deal of speculative promotion and ill-advised investment. Although final construction costs often exceeded estimates, most proposals were oversubscribed, often with ruinous results. Some schemes were profitable others were abandoned during construction. Few showed much profit. The construction of the canal system was an awesome enterprise. Some names appear often and they are generally interrelated. In many ways, James Brindley set the standards for those who followed. The success of the Bridgewater Canal gave him impetus for other canal projects: the Grand Trunk, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Coventry, the Oxford, the old Birmingham, and the Chesterfieldaltogether, a 360-mile 580-kilometer networkwere designed and constructed by this self-educated engineer. Another self-styledcivil engineer, John Smeaton 1724 1792, built the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland and the Grand Canal in Ireland with William Jessup, whom he trained. Jessup 1745 1814 worked on several river navigations and canals, mostly in the Midlands and eastern England he was engineer on the Grand Junction, Ellesmere later the Llangollen, and Rochdale Canals. Under Jessup, the famous Thomas Telford 1757 1834 was an engineer on the Ellesmere Canal. He became chief engineer on the Liverpool and Birmingham Shropshire Union Canal where, unlike his predecessors who chose to follow land contours, he built embankments and made cuttings to follow a more direct route. He also made improvements to the Birmingham Canal systems. John Rennie 1761 1821 was a university-trained engineer who became surveyor and engineer on the Kennet and Avon Canal and on the Rochdale and Lancaster Canals. Around 1830, investors began to turn to the new railroads. For a while canals and railroads were complementary, the canals carrying bulk cargoes while the railroads conveyed passengers and light goods. But by the mid-nineteenth century a national network of standard-gauge railroads had developed, and canal tolls were forced down. Most could no longer compete economically. Some railroad companies bought up canals and closed or abandoned them. But that was not the only reason for decline the other was that, although they were interlinked and covered large areas of Britain, the canals were never conceived as an integrated system. The canals for the most part were built piecemeal for local traffic using traditional regional vessels that often varied in size. Because there was no standard canal lock, a fragmented, inefficient transport system resulted. They gradually went out of use as commercial thoroughfares. World War II witnessed a temporary revival. Following years of neglect and war damage, the canals were soon regarded as derelict. They were nationalized under the aegis of British Waterways in 1947 and over the next couple of decades their leisure and recreation value began to be recognized. The Inland Waterways Association was formed torescue them, and volunteer restoration projects continue. Millions of pounds are being spent on maintenance projects, and there are now more craft using British canals than at the height of their commercial success.
29. Cappadocia underground cities
Turkey
Cappadocia, a region of central Anatolia in Turkey, lies within the triangle of Nevsehir, Aksaray, and Kayseri. It is bounded by the now dormant Mount Erciyes in the east and Mount Hasandag in the south. Prehistoric eruptions of these volcanoes blanketed a wide area with a 1,500-foot 450-meter layer of ash and detritus. The hardening tufa was carved by nature into thousands of distinctive pyramidal rock formations known asfairy chimneys, within which generations of settlers have created astounding subterranean cities. Guesses at the total number vary from 30 to 200. Carved from the living rock to a depth of at least twenty stories, and each able to house tens of thousands of people, the underground cities result from 3,000 years of continual adaptation and extension. Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, described below, are only two of such architectural feats in the region. Who were these intrepid constructors, who built downward instead of upward, and whose houses were framed with shafts and corridors rather than columns and beams? Over millennia Cappadocia has been occupied in turn by invading Lycians, Phrygians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, and Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. The indigenous Hittites were probably first to build underground. In the fourteenth century b.c., retreating from Phrygian invaders, they made excavations, normally of no more than two levels. The next major wave of building was not until the fourth century a.d. Always strategically vital, fertile Cappadocia became a Roman province in a.d. 17, and its towns flourished under stable Roman rule. Within about 200 years it became a center of eastern Christianity and when the persecution reached its final peak around a.d. 305, the Christians withdrew to the mountain fastnesses, building secure subterranean places in which to live and worship. The peril passed with the Edict of Toleration a.d. 313 but reemerged for different reasons under the excesses of iconoclasm 726 843, as well as the incursions of Arabs. The Christian response to renewed threats was to build rock-cut churches and monasteries, often adapting and extending much older underground houses. The G
Cappadocia, a region of central Anatolia in Turkey, lies within the triangle of Nevsehir, Aksaray, and Kayseri. It is bounded by the now dormant Mount Erciyes in the east and Mount Hasandag in the south. Prehistoric eruptions of these volcanoes blanketed a wide area with a 1,500-foot 450-meter layer of ash and detritus. The hardening tufa was carved by nature into thousands of distinctive pyramidal rock formations known asfairy chimneys, within which generations of settlers have created astounding subterranean cities. Guesses at the total number vary from 30 to 200. Carved from the living rock to a depth of at least twenty stories, and each able to house tens of thousands of people, the underground cities result from 3,000 years of continual adaptation and extension. Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, described below, are only two of such architectural feats in the region. Who were these intrepid constructors, who built downward instead of upward, and whose houses were framed with shafts and corridors rather than columns and beams? Over millennia Cappadocia has been occupied in turn by invading Lycians, Phrygians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, and Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. The indigenous Hittites were probably first to build underground. In the fourteenth century b.c., retreating from Phrygian invaders, they made excavations, normally of no more than two levels. The next major wave of building was not until the fourth century a.d. Always strategically vital, fertile Cappadocia became a Roman province in a.d. 17, and its towns flourished under stable Roman rule. Within about 200 years it became a center of eastern Christianity and when the persecution reached its final peak around a.d. 305, the Christians withdrew to the mountain fastnesses, building secure subterranean places in which to live and worship. The peril passed with the Edict of Toleration a.d. 313 but reemerged for different reasons under the excesses of iconoclasm 726 843, as well as the incursions of Arabs. The Christian response to renewed threats was to build rock-cut churches and monasteries, often adapting and extending much older underground houses. The G
30. Central Artery Tunnel
Boston, Massachusetts
Toward the end of the twentieth century, Boston had traffic problems as severe as any city in the world. When the elevated six-lane Central Artery Highway, which ran through the downtown area, was opened in 1959, it quite easily coped with 75,000 vehicles a day by the early 1990s the traffic load had increased to 190,000effectively more cars per lane than any other urban interstate road in the United States. Movement was slowed to a snails pace for over ten hours each day, and the accident rate was four times the national average for similar thoroughfares. Moreover, the urban area was divided by the elevated road so that access between the north and south sectors was greatly restricted. Naturally, the same congestion characterized the two tunnels under Boston Harbor that joined downtown Boston with East Boston and Logan Airport the airport, only 1 mile 1.6 kilometers from the central business district, was an hour away by road! The $10.8 billion Central Artery/Tunnel Project CA/T, conceived in 1981 and under construction as of 2001 by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, deserves a place among the engineering marvels of the modern world. Referred to by Bostonians as theBig Dig, it is the largest, most complex highway project ever initiated in a U.S. cityindeed, the largest public works project of any kind in the United States. Scheduled for completion in 2004, the project faces all the challenges associated with building in the heart of a busy city: that is, to meet the continuing demands of traffic capacity, to make sure that life and business are not unduly disrupted over a construction period lasting thirteen years, and to satisfy environmental and esthetic standards. The spine of the multifaceted project is an eight-lane underground expressway directly under the existing road in places its roof is at ground level, and at its deepest point it is 120 feet 36 meters below ground, resting on bedrock. Tunneling was made especially difficult by the fact that there are four distinct soil types beneath Boston. Much of the downtown area is built on landfill placed at various times between the late eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Under the fill is a layer of mixed silt, sand, and peat, and below that the marine clay known as Boston blue on the bedrock. The demolition of the old elevated road releases about 27 acres 10 hectares of open space for a linear park in the center of the downtown and for the construction of new city streets connecting North and South Stations and existing cross streets, cut off since 1959, will be reconnected. Other advantages spring from the project, including a predicted 12 percent reduction in carbon monoxide levels and the creation by using the spoil from excavations of 105 acres 42 hectares of open space at Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor and 40 acres 16 hectares of new parks on the riverbanks below two new bridges. The Central Artery rises to the surface at Causeway Street on the northern edge of Boston and crosses the Charles River on a 1,407-foot 42-meter, ten-lane, asymmetrical, cable-stayed bridge designed by the Swiss engineer Christian Menn. The bridge, constructed at a cost of $87 million, is the widest of its kind in the world. The Charles River Bridge links with National Route 1 and local access roads. The project also included a parallel, 830-foot 250-meter four-lane bridge, also for local traffic, which was opened in October 1999. The Massachusetts Turnpike has been extended to Bostons international airport via a new tunnel connected to the four-lane Ted Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor the new tunnel was opened to commercial traffic in December 1996. Four highway interchanges will eventually connect the new roads with the regional system. The part of the program that caused most local concern was the crossing of the Charles River. A proposal in August 1989, after construction had started on the Central Artery North Area Project, included three bridges, with a large area of the north shore being occupied by connecting ramps. Marshaled by the press the Boston Globe dubbed the scheme agrotesque monstrosity, local residents, environmentalists, and even public servants opposed this designto the point of litigationon the grounds that it wouldoverwhelm their neighborhood with visual blight, shadows, noise and air pollution. A Bridge Design Review Committee BDRC, appointed in January 1991, next produced an alternative plan that was not finalized until September 1992. Although this proposal won an Urban Design Award from the American Institute of Architects, the state rejected it, doubtless under political pressure. Instead, it prepared its own new plan, with two bridges and an underground ramp on the south shore it was approved by state and federal environmental agencies in June 1994. Objections continued until 1997, when the U.S. District Court found that all necessary conservation measures had been taken. Construction began on the bridges in 1999. The project has been under construction since late 1991. The extension of Interstate 90 through South Boston to the Ted Williams Tunnel and the airport was scheduled to open in 2001. The northbound lanes of the underground highway through downtown Boston will follow in 2002, and the southbound lanes in the following year, allowing the demolition of the elevated highway and the creation of the landscaping to be carried out by 2004. The federal government will meet about 70 percent of the cost, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the remainder. The Central Artery/Tunnel Project is owned and managed by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Design and construction management was provided by the Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff consortium.
Toward the end of the twentieth century, Boston had traffic problems as severe as any city in the world. When the elevated six-lane Central Artery Highway, which ran through the downtown area, was opened in 1959, it quite easily coped with 75,000 vehicles a day by the early 1990s the traffic load had increased to 190,000effectively more cars per lane than any other urban interstate road in the United States. Movement was slowed to a snails pace for over ten hours each day, and the accident rate was four times the national average for similar thoroughfares. Moreover, the urban area was divided by the elevated road so that access between the north and south sectors was greatly restricted. Naturally, the same congestion characterized the two tunnels under Boston Harbor that joined downtown Boston with East Boston and Logan Airport the airport, only 1 mile 1.6 kilometers from the central business district, was an hour away by road! The $10.8 billion Central Artery/Tunnel Project CA/T, conceived in 1981 and under construction as of 2001 by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, deserves a place among the engineering marvels of the modern world. Referred to by Bostonians as theBig Dig, it is the largest, most complex highway project ever initiated in a U.S. cityindeed, the largest public works project of any kind in the United States. Scheduled for completion in 2004, the project faces all the challenges associated with building in the heart of a busy city: that is, to meet the continuing demands of traffic capacity, to make sure that life and business are not unduly disrupted over a construction period lasting thirteen years, and to satisfy environmental and esthetic standards. The spine of the multifaceted project is an eight-lane underground expressway directly under the existing road in places its roof is at ground level, and at its deepest point it is 120 feet 36 meters below ground, resting on bedrock. Tunneling was made especially difficult by the fact that there are four distinct soil types beneath Boston. Much of the downtown area is built on landfill placed at various times between the late eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Under the fill is a layer of mixed silt, sand, and peat, and below that the marine clay known as Boston blue on the bedrock. The demolition of the old elevated road releases about 27 acres 10 hectares of open space for a linear park in the center of the downtown and for the construction of new city streets connecting North and South Stations and existing cross streets, cut off since 1959, will be reconnected. Other advantages spring from the project, including a predicted 12 percent reduction in carbon monoxide levels and the creation by using the spoil from excavations of 105 acres 42 hectares of open space at Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor and 40 acres 16 hectares of new parks on the riverbanks below two new bridges. The Central Artery rises to the surface at Causeway Street on the northern edge of Boston and crosses the Charles River on a 1,407-foot 42-meter, ten-lane, asymmetrical, cable-stayed bridge designed by the Swiss engineer Christian Menn. The bridge, constructed at a cost of $87 million, is the widest of its kind in the world. The Charles River Bridge links with National Route 1 and local access roads. The project also included a parallel, 830-foot 250-meter four-lane bridge, also for local traffic, which was opened in October 1999. The Massachusetts Turnpike has been extended to Bostons international airport via a new tunnel connected to the four-lane Ted Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor the new tunnel was opened to commercial traffic in December 1996. Four highway interchanges will eventually connect the new roads with the regional system. The part of the program that caused most local concern was the crossing of the Charles River. A proposal in August 1989, after construction had started on the Central Artery North Area Project, included three bridges, with a large area of the north shore being occupied by connecting ramps. Marshaled by the press the Boston Globe dubbed the scheme agrotesque monstrosity, local residents, environmentalists, and even public servants opposed this designto the point of litigationon the grounds that it wouldoverwhelm their neighborhood with visual blight, shadows, noise and air pollution. A Bridge Design Review Committee BDRC, appointed in January 1991, next produced an alternative plan that was not finalized until September 1992. Although this proposal won an Urban Design Award from the American Institute of Architects, the state rejected it, doubtless under political pressure. Instead, it prepared its own new plan, with two bridges and an underground ramp on the south shore it was approved by state and federal environmental agencies in June 1994. Objections continued until 1997, when the U.S. District Court found that all necessary conservation measures had been taken. Construction began on the bridges in 1999. The project has been under construction since late 1991. The extension of Interstate 90 through South Boston to the Ted Williams Tunnel and the airport was scheduled to open in 2001. The northbound lanes of the underground highway through downtown Boston will follow in 2002, and the southbound lanes in the following year, allowing the demolition of the elevated highway and the creation of the landscaping to be carried out by 2004. The federal government will meet about 70 percent of the cost, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the remainder. The Central Artery/Tunnel Project is owned and managed by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Design and construction management was provided by the Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff consortium.
