Turkey eagle
June 24, 2016
During a recent tour of the Massachusetts State House (part of the American Friends of Lafayette annual meeting) I was intrigued by a relief on one of the walls in the old Senate Chamber. It is a “Teagle,” a bird with an eagle’s body and feet but a turkey’s neck and head. According to our guide, it was still uncertain which bird would be selected for the national symbol when the State House was built so a design combining the two was made. This story reminded me of how easy it is to take for granted the many little (and not so little) decisions that have been made over the years, decisions that shape our world.
Lecture series at Lehigh
March 22, 2016
I am so pleased that John Zils will be the Fazlur Rahman Khan Distinguished Lecture Series speaker next month. He worked closely with my father at SOM and was a tremendous support for me when I was working on Engineering Architecture: The Vision of Fazlur R. Khan.
Yorktown Day
October 19, 2015
Today is the 234th anniversary of the victory at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, which effectively concluded the American War for Independence.
Victory Monument at Yorktown
During the summer of 1781 General Lafayette and a relatively small force in Virginia skirmished with the British troops in the south under the command of General Cornwallis. Toward the end of summer the British decided on a different strategy and Cornwallis pulled his forces back to the coast near Yorktown, unaware that a formidable fleet of French war ships, sent by Louis XVI, was on its way to Chesapeake Bay. Recognizing the opportunity to overwhelm the British in the south, General George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau hurried to Virginia, bringing American and French troops from the north. The combined land forces, together with the French fleet, encircled the British in a siege at Yorktown. Cornwallis soon realized he had no choice but to surrender his forces.
“Erected in pursuance of a resolution of Congress adopted October 29 1781 and an act of Congress approved June 7 1880 to commemorate the victory by which the independence of the United States of America was achieved”
The Continental Congress acknowledged the significance of this victory and immediately in October 1781 authorized the construction of a commemorative monument, which it described as a “marble column, adorned with emblems of the alliance.”
Monument to the Alliance and Victory
Yorktown Monument Commissioners, 1881
R.M. Hunt, Architect Chairman
Henry Van Brunt, Architect
J.Q.A. Ward, Sculptor
Oskar J.W. Hansen, Sculptor of Liberty, 1957
Work on the monument, however, did not begin until nearly a century later.
The cornerstone was laid as part of the centennial Yorktown Day celebration in 1881.
While the Monument to the Alliance and Victory was still under construction, the architect responsible for the design, Richard Morris Hunt, was selected to design the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
Pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
Richard Morris Hunt
Hermione-Lafayette 2015
June 15, 2015
After a 31-day crossing of the Atlantic, the Hermione arrived in Yorktown, Virginia, on Friday, June 5. There were many festivities in Yorktown, reminiscent of the joyous greeting the original Hermione received in 1780. The Hermione will make 12 stops before returning to France: Yorktown, Mount Vernon, Alexandria, Annapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Greenport, Newport, Boston, Castine, and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
The Hermione in Yorktown
This beautifully hand-crafted ship was built in France as a replica of the 18th century ship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette back to America in 1780, during the American War for Independence. Lafayette had returned home to France to convince Louis XVI to send more aid, soldiers, and war ships to assist the Americans.
L’Hermione 2015
The crew, which includes many volunteers, trained for months in preparation for sailing across the Atlantic.
Graceland Cemetery
May 28, 2015
A couple of people have asked me recently whether it is all right for admirers of my father to visit his grave. Yes, certainly – I am glad friends and admirers visit. The cemetery also welcomes visitors. I only ask that, if you want to take flowers, please take cut flowers. The cemetery does not allow visitors to dig or plant in the ground.
A Walk Through Graceland Cemetery, guide to Graceland Cemetery by Barbara Lanctot, published by the Chicago Architecture Foundation (2011)
The Chicago Architecture Foundation publishes a nice guide to Graceland Cemetery. The book includes a map of the garden-style cemetery and descriptions of selected gravesites. A number of architects and engineers are buried at Graceland, including William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Bruce Graham’s memorial stone is next to my father’s gravesite.
This is the description for my father.
Fazlur Khan, in A Walk Through Graceland Cemetery, A Chicago Architecture Foundation Tour (on pages 50 & 51)
The entrance to Graceland Cemetery is located at 4001 N. Clark Street. There is an office just inside the entrance where you can ask for directions (call about hours, the phone number is (773) 525-1105). Also, if you’re interested in the Chicago Architecture Foundation guide, the office has the book for sale.
128th anniversary of the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty
October 28, 2014
In October 1886 the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor, bringing to completion a 21-year journey from conception of the idea to inauguration of the monument. The idea for an American liberty statue, to be collaboratively built by the French and the American people, was first suggested in France in 1865, at the end of the American Civil War. The French sponsors waited several years for the right moment to announce their idea for this ambitious project and to commence fundraising in France. In the years that followed, the design was finished; funds were raised, first in France and then in the US; the statue was constructed in Paris, then disassembled (with each piece labeled so the structure could be easily re-constructed in the US) and packed into crates; the 210 crates were shipped from France to New York Harbor, where a pedestal had been prepared on Bedloe’s Island (now Liberty Island); and the 151’-1” tall statue was erected. On October 28, 1886, after long anticipation, the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was joyfully unveiled on Bedloe’s Island. Near the end of a day filled with ceremony and festivity, President Stephen Grover Cleveland accepted and inaugurated the statue on behalf of the people of the United States. A deity “greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song,” he remarked of this unprecedented symbol of a vision of life founded on liberty, opportunity, and justice, “she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man’s enfranchisement.”
Happy anniversary Lady Liberty!
Carol Harrison’s piece in the NY TImes features Édouard Laboulaye, the primary sponsor of the Statue of Liberty (he shepherded the statue from idea to construction). I appreciate her citing Enlightening the World as a source for her article.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/dr-lefebvres-american-dream/?ref=opinion
From Harrison’s article:
“The survival of the Union at a great cost, including especially the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, spurred Laboulaye to imagine a monument commemorating French and American commitment to freedom. Famously, the Statue of Liberty was born at Laboulaye’s dining room table in an 1865 gathering. Among the guests was Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, a sculptor whose ambition to build a modern colossus became part of Laboulaye’s project to erect a monument to liberty. A monument built by French and American efforts would act as a reminder of the “sympathy” between the nations; it would celebrate the survival of American liberty and perhaps remind French subjects of the Emperor Napoleon III of the peril to their own.”
I could not help feeling a tinge of disappointment on hearing that the Sears (now Willis) Tower has lost its title as tallest building in North America to One World Trade Center in New York. But I was pleased that the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat executive director, in announcing the height of One World Trade Center, recalled the building designers’ early vision of a spire and beacon honoring the Statue of Liberty. The spire of One World Trade Center “which holds the beacon light,” he said, “shining out at the symbolic height of 1,776 feet, is especially poignant – echoing the similarly symbolic beacon atop the Statue of Liberty across the water.” In fact, in early drawings of 1WTC the designers showed the spire rising at one side of the tower (rather than centered on the roof).
Sears Tower no longer the Tallest Building in North America
March 11, 2014
One World Trade Center (1WTC) in New York, originally known as the Freedom Tower, has become “The Top of America,” as this week’s issue of Time magazine puts it. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the organization that determines how a building’s height is measured, 1WTC’s height to architectural top is 1,776 feet. This includes the 408-foot-tall spire that rises above the main structure of the building. In announcing the CTBUH decision to include the spire in its measurement, the organization’s executive director noted the symbolic importance of the spire reaching to 1,776 feet and the Height Committee’s confidence that the spire will remain a permanent architectural feature of the building.
So, the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) in Chicago has lost its title as the tallest building in North America (it was the World’s Tallest Building from its completion in 1974 to 1996, when it lost that title to the Petronas Towers). The main roof level at the top of the building structure is actually higher at the Willis Tower in Chicago than at 1WTC: 1,451 feet at the Willis Tower vs. 1,368 feet to the steel parapet at 1WTC. But since the late 1990s the CTBUH has evaluated buildings according to several measurements, with height to architectural top determining the official building height. Initially there were four measurement categories; these have been reduced to three, eliminating the height to roof measurement.
The current three categories of measurement are:
- Height to architectural top. Permanent spires are included in this measurement. 1WTC’s height to architectural top is 1,776 feet; the Willis Tower’s height to architectural top is 1,451 feet.
- Height to highest occupied floor. 1WTC’s highest occupied floor is at 1,268 feet; the Willis Tower’s highest occupied floor is at 1,354 feet.
- Height to tip. This measurement includes antennas. 1WTC’s height to tip is 1,792 feet; the Willis Tower’s height to tip measures 1,729 feet.
A number of people have asked about my father’s efforts to help his homeland during the liberation war of 1971. This is indeed an important part of his life so I have added a page – titled 1971: Bangladesh Liberation War – to my website http://drfazlurrkhan.com. The text is based on the section “Crisis in Bangladesh” in Engineering Architecture: The Vision of Fazlur R. Khan.
My thanks to everyone who asked about my father’s efforts.
Yasmin Sabina Khan 