(2) As of this posting, a copy of this same ad is listed on eBay, clipped from a 1956 Fortune and showing a slightly wider crop of the Minneapolis image.
ebay.us/m/7HSp5M
A full-page color ad with the upper 2/3rds showing an image of the Minneapolis skyline dominated by the Foshay Tower. Headlights stream along the street as in a twilight time exposure. Smaller commercial buildings in foreground. Blue sky. The Minneapolis-featured ad was one of a series of similar ads touting popularity of Otis elevators in other major cities, appearing in building and business trade magazines around 1956-1957. A version of this ad with a slightly wider crop of the Minneapolis image appeared in Fortune. Copy: Minneapolis where the significant word for elevators is OTIS The economic capital of the dynamic upper midwest was quick to grasp the realty advantages of AUTOTRONIC® elevators. These completely automatic OTIS elevators keep existing buildings competitive. They assure an outstanding rental status for new buildings. This amazingly successful development is another OTIS first. As always, progress is expected of the leader. Outstanding value has made OTIS the accepted word for elevator quality in the cities of the world. Automatic Autotronic® or Attendant-Operated Passenger Elevators • Escalators • Trav-O-Lators Freight Elevators • Dumbwaiters • Elevator Modernization and Maintenance • Electronic Systems The Baker-Raulang Company, an Otis subsidiary, is the maker of Baker Gas and Electric Industrial Trucks * Otis Elevator Company 260 11th Avenue, New York 1, N.Y. Offices in 501 cities around the world
Trade advertisement
Otis Elevator Co., New York
Architectural Forum
December 1957
Image: US Modernist Collection via @archive.org; archive.org/details/usmo...
A hand holding the comic book “Brains” by Alexandra Gallant-Lee
That was fast! And, I gotta say, extraordinarily well packaged. It’s delightful and the “souvenir for your brain” tip will be put to use! 😀👍
My photo shows a museum display with colourful Minoan pottery cups arranged on three clear shelves, one above the other. These cups, known as Kamares Ware, are from Phaistos, Crete. They were made in palace workshops, c. 1800-1700 BC. The cups range in shape and size from conic and cylindrical cups (top and middle shelves) to hemispherical and carinated shaped cups (bottom shelf). They are decorated with multi-coloured geometric motifs; with spirals and swirls painted in red and white pigment on black.
Sipping my coffee ☕️ and thinking about these marvellous Minoan cups!
They look so modern it’s incredible to think they were made during the Bronze Age some 3,800 years ago!
Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me
#Archaeology
A stylized owl sculpted into a heating grate at Walter Library.
One of many owls carved into the stone wall of the Walter Library Reading Room.
An owl sculpted into a metal gate on the first floor of Walter Library.
The vast majority of the owls can be found in light fixtures of the library. There are 946 of these stylized owl logos.
Screw it. It is Spring Break here at the U and I've finally done something I have always wanted to do: count all the owls at Walter Library. For the first time since the library was renovated in 2002, here is a complete count of all the owls carved, chiseled, and sculpted into the library: 1,167!
Snow on a spiral railing
Square grate with clear circle then snow
Outside the state Capitol this morning
That, is outstanding.
A rack of colorful jackets looking vaguely Sgt. Pepper-ish.
They’ve been going in and out of style.
Red and white wooden circus wagon wheel.
A bronze verdigrised anter-less moose, maybe half sized, laying on a wooden pallet.
A world War I era Minnesota State Fair poster with a painting of a driver of an early gasoline tractor with spectators looking on.
A parking lot sign that says "Fox" with a depiction of a fox with it's tongue hanging out.
Get in losers, there's another Minnesota State Fair surplus auction going on. www.auctionmasters.com/auctions/det...
Free band name
A simple illustration looking down a corridor at a wall of brightly colored wall panels running floor to ceiling, alternating in yellow, orange, a sort-of pistachio green, and dark wood grain. In the right third, a figure carrying a book enters a door into a room beyond the paneled wall. From the ad copy: “Colorful, carefree interior walls are practically a ‘must’ in the design of modern educational buildings. In assembly rooms and corridors! In classrooms and labs! In dormitories, dining rooms and recreation quarters there is a need to brighten up interior wall surfaces. And they must require little maintenance. Porcelain enamel wall panels provide many advantages for such applications. They are colorful, durable, withstand hard abuse, easily wipe clean with a damp cloth. They are quickly installed, require no special tools or skills. Finally, they are relatively low in cost, permitting you to stretch construction dollars. The lifetime porcelain enamel is fused to lightweight steel. Panels come to you ready for installation. Aluminum molding can be porcelain enameled to match if desired. You get a complete package. And you can choose from literally hundreds of colors.”
Detail, trade advertisement for porcelain enamel wall panels
Ferro Corp., Cleveland, Ohio
Architectural Forum
June 1963
Image: US Modernist Collection via @archive.org; archive.org/details/usmo...
A full page ad in color. It’s filled by a color, birds-eye view architectural rendering of the then-planned Northwestern National Life Insurance Building at 20 Washington Ave. S, Minneapolis, which opened in 1965. The building in this view is surrounded by a lot of greenery and a handful of buildings. A few figures walk around, a couple of trees bloom in pink along the sidewalk. Copy: THE LOOK OF CLASSICAL COLONNADES ...concrete brings timeless beauty to this modern office building Minneapolis embraces progress in new buildings such as the home of the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company, to be completed in the fall of 1964. Reinforced and precast concrete, the structure will be a dramatic contribution to civic beauty. • Rows of slender precast, prestressed concrete columns with flaring capitals soar 80 feet high, and extend beyond the building to create an impressive portico. For full development of the arched colonnade effect, the columns are brilliant white, achieved with quartz and white portland cement. Additional accent is provided by dark green walls of faceted panels flanked with gray glass, • Concrete offers endless opportunity for striking departures from prosaic design in structures of every purpose. PORTLAND CEMENT ASSOCIATION A national organization to improve and extend the uses of concrete THE BEST IDEAS ARE MORE EXCITING IN CONCRETE Architect: Minoru Yamasaki & Associates, Birmingham, Michigan • Structural Engineers: Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, Seattle, Washington • Owner: Northwestern National Life Insurance Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Trade advertisement
Portland Cement Association
Architectural Forum
June 1963
Image: US Modernist Collection via @archive.org; archive.org/details/usmo...
A side-by-side view of a 1933 image of that same entryway in daylight alongside a recent view of the entryway. A woman stands in the doorway of the old photo. The images look very similar.
Another image from that same 1933 article, alongside a slightly off-angle 2022 Street View image.
Credits as above.
A night time, black and white photo of a building entrance with two pairs of double doors. The elaborate, ceiling-mounted metal feature shown in the original post is seen above each entryway, lit from above. The article contains many more images of the building’s interior and exterior detailing, a lot of which picks up on similar design themes. Magazine caption: “The employees' entrance on Third Avenue, as shown in the photograph above by night” Photographer credited as Howson
An image of that entryway when it was new.
From “The Creation of a Telephone Building,” Architecture: The Professional Architecture Monthly, April 1933.
PDF of issue (article begins on p. 199) accessed via usmodernist.org; www.usmodernist.org/index-am.htm
Just as I’m starting to wonder, “So what’s that thing behind the sign…,” Vic solves it.
Center!
One minute of the Grain Belt Beer sign and a train crossing the Mississippi River in Minneapolis
Sandwich board sign on sidewalk. James and Mary Laurie Booksellers. We Buy and Sell Rare, Used and Out-of-Print. BOOKS MAPS PRINTS Appraisals Search Service.
James & Mary Laurie Booksellers is ensconced in their new location at 933 Marquette Ave. S. in downtown Minneapolis. If I have the sequence right, this is about location No. 6 (N. St. Paul>Stillwater>St. Paul>Nicollet Mall>North Loop>Marquette). Yes, the photo when Mick Jagger visited is displayed.
A daytime view in color taken at street level from around 10th Street looking toward the river. The sky appears bright but overcast. A storefront clock visible along the left, if accurate, suggests it’s about 10:48 am. The movies listed on marquees (THE SEARCHERS, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS), narrow the date to probably sometime between June 1-6, 1956. The view looks down the center of the avenue as signs and buildings recede toward the Grain Belt Beer sign in the distant background. Cars of many colors line the avenue, parked and in traffic. Some motorists have their windows down. Some pedestrians walk along the sidewalks. Just about all the men are wearing hats, even those driving. A couple of city buses with red exteriors approach from the distance. Businesses or signs in view include the Anthony Hotel, The Gopher Cafe, The Gopher Theatre, the Orpheum Theatre, The State Theatre, Hirshfield’s.
Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis
June 1956
Image: Hennepin Co. Library, digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/coll...
I’ve been glad for a long time that London Wainwright wasn’t listening.
A grid of nine linoleum patterns arranged in a grid of squares. The patterns contain a wide range of alternating shapes and colors, bright or muted, most symmetrical. Most suggest marble or tile.
Selected patterns from “Linoleum & Felt-Base: Spring Season - 1932”
Sloane-Blabon Corp., New York
Image: Avery Library Architectural Trade Catalogs Collection (Columbia Univ.) via @archive.org; archive.org/details/lino...
pro-nonsense
Looking up at a dusky blue sky with silhouettes of leafless trees and several lamp posts trailing off into the distance, a setting yellow sun as a small, bright ball on the horizon, and a layer of small clouds in a tight patchwork pattern
Good evening, Saint Paul.
Night view from Blackfriars Bridge looking downstream over the River Thames showing Blackfriars railway station platforms that stand over the river - brightly illuminated, a train on the northbpund platform under the glass roof and sides that are lit in blue. In the right background the Shard can be seen.
Blackfriars station & the River Thames #london #photography
Can confirm.
“Well, this club is formed.”
Black and white daytime photo of Joseph Binder striding toward the camera alongside the front of a train underneath a depot overhang. Sign on front of train reads “Burlington Route.” He wears a hat, overcoat and suit and tie, and glasses with round frames, perhaps carrying something under his left arm. Right hand in coat pocket. A few figures visible in far background.
The MAK’s online collection houses more of Binder’s work including more travel sketches from around the U.S., to which he emigrated in the mid-1930s. Also this picture of him alongside the Burlington Zephyr in Minneapolis, 1935.
(4/4)
Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_...
A vertically oriented pastel sketch on white paper in red, blue, grey, black and yellow. It’s a view across a field of rooftops of what look like commercial/industrial buildings that recede into the background. The view looks like it would have been looking out of an upper floor window. In the immediate foreground there is a flat rooftop with some skylights; it looks almost as though you could step out onto it. A few smokestacks and chimneys are in view, one emitting a thin trail of dark smoke. Sketch pad perforations visible along the left edge.
Travel sketch, Minneapolis
1933-1935
Joseph Binder (1898-1972), Austrian graphic designer
(3/4)
Image: Online collection, The MAK - Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; sammlung.mak.at/en/collect/m...
A horizontally oriented pastel sketch on white paper in red, blue, grey, black and yellow. It’s a streetscape showing a collection of commercial buildings, one of about 10 stores in the background and some lower-profile ones in the foreground. Some cars are visible and what looks like a yellow streetcar. One small, leafless tree is in the immediate foreground. Sketch pad perforations visible along the left edge.
Travel sketch, Marquette Avenue, Minneapolis
1934
Joseph Binder (1898-1972), Austrian graphic designer
(2/4)
Image: Online collection, The MAK - Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; sammlung.mak.at/en/collect/a...
A horizontally oriented pastel sketch on white paper in red, blue, grey and black, showing a portion of the Stone Arch Bridge in the foreground and the milling district in the background. Sketch pad perforations visible along the left edge.
Travel sketch, Minneapolis
1935
Joseph Binder (1898-1972), Austrian graphic designer
(1/4)
Image: Online collection, The MAK - Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; sammlung.mak.at/de/collect/m...
