White Bridge
Garards Fort, PA Photo courtesy Moon Mullins OX-76
Here's an interesting locale. Check out the White Bridge at Garards
Fort somewhere in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Covered bridges are in a
league of their own. Let's see, bridges with "covers", what
a concept! The two "models" in the photo are the photographer
and sidekick "Harpo."s
Take a close look at the entrance opening. Most classic timber bridges feel a bit cozy with clearance limits around ten feet, but this one boasts a soaring height of over seventeen feet. It was built with an uncommonly tall Queenpost truss design, making it one of the absolute tallest covered bridges you'll ever run across on a back-road drive. Local memory puts its construction around the turn of the twentieth century, and it still carries traffic across the creek today thanks to some modern steel reinforcement tucked underneath the floorboards.
Every September, travelers and locals pack the surrounding banks for the annual Covered Bridge Festival, but on a quiet afternoon drive, it feels like a hidden snapshot from another era.
UPDATE: The White Covered Bridge remains open to local vehicle traffic and pedestrian visitors. 08-26
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Nicholson, PA Photo courtesy Richard Weiss
The Tunkhannock Viaduct of Pennsylvania is also known as the Nicholson Viaduct. The Viaduct was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in 1915 and currently serves the Canadian Pacific Railway. This bridge took over 3 years to build and is the biggest and most impressive concrete bridge in America. The bridge has to literally be seen to be believed. 02-07
Here's one that's hard to miss when you're rolling down Route 92 through northeastern Pennsylvania.
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Nicholson, PA Photo courtesy Richard Weiss
Towering 240 feet over the valley floor and dwarfing the small town of Nicholson below, the **Tunkhannock Creek Viaduct** (often just called the Nicholson Bridge) looks like a colossal set of Roman aqueducts dropped right into the green Appalachian hills. Spanning nearly half a mile across at 2,375 feet, it earned the title of the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world when the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad finished building it back in November 1915.
The sheer scale of the engineering marvel is staggering when you stand at the valley overlook. Chief design engineer Abraham Burton Cohen laid out the design with ten massive, soaring 180-foot arches across the creek bed, along with two additional end arches buried completely out of sight in the earthen embankments. To anchor a behemoth that heavy, crews had to dig massive excavation pits deep through glacial drift, sinking the structural piers down as much as 138 feet into solid bedrock. All that effort was part of the railroad's legendary Clarks Summit-Hallstead Cutoff project, designed to bypass steep mountain grades and sharp bends to shave over an hour off the freight run between Scranton and Binghamton.
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Nicholson, PA Photo courtesy Richard Weiss
Over the years, the sheer size of the bridge naturally sparked plenty of colorful local folklore. Old tales long claimed that several workers accidentally fell into the deep pier pours and remained entombed within the concrete, though modern engineering surveys and scans have thoroughly debunked the ghost stories.
More than a century later, heavy freight trains still regularly rumble across the twin tracks high above the treetops, and every September the town below celebrates "Nicholson Bridge Day" in honor of their towering neighbor.
UPDATE: The viaduct remains an active double-track mainline rail bridge operated by Norfolk Southern Railway. 08-26
Paramount Building
New York City, NY Photo courtesy Gorb70
Look up toward the sky along Broadway and you'll catch one of the most distinctive silhouettes in Times Square. 07-07
The Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway steps back like a 33-story Aztec pyramid, crowned at the very top by a massive four-faced clock and an illuminated glass globe. When Paramount Pictures opened their lavish world headquarters here between 1926 and 1927, theater architects Rapp and Rapp pulled out all the stops. Check out the clock face if you get a close look—instead of traditional numbers, the hours are marked by five-pointed stars straight from the classic Paramount movie logo.
The tower wasn't just corporate offices. Tucked into the back was the legendary 3,664-seat Paramount Theatre, an opulent movie palace with a lobby modeled right after the Paris Opera House. It hosted everything from movie premieres to the famous 1942 Frank Sinatra concert that sent thousands of screaming "bobby-soxers" into complete hysteria out on the street.
The theater auditorium was dismantled back in the 1960s to make room for retail and office space, but the building's stepped Art Deco exterior and towering crown still dominate the block. 07-07
UPDATE: The building operates as an office and retail tower, with the original theater entrance area home to the multi-level Hard Rock Cafe. 08-26
Bush Tower
New York City, NY Photo courtesy Gorb70
The Bush Tower building was built between 1916 to 1918 and its site is only 15m wide and 27.5m deep. The building was regarded as such for the next decade of feverish urban construction. The style of the building follows the "traditional" early skyscraper style with its Gothic appearance. The windows are concentrated to the north and south facades, as well as to a recessed mid-facade light-well on the east facade. Many thanks to Gorb70 for info. 07-07
The building transitioned to regular office spaces after the Great Depression, but that detailed Neo-Gothic roofline still holds its own against the newer glass towers around it.
UPDATE: The landmark building continues to serve as commercial office and retail space along 42nd Street. 08-26
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY Photo courtesy Gorb70
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum building is one of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's famous works and the present location was built in 1959. 07-07
The **Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum** looks like an inverted white concrete ziggurat curling up toward the sky, or maybe a giant alien spacecraft that decided to touch down right on the Upper East Side. Completed in October 1959, this revolutionary spiral was the final masterpiece from legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who spent sixteen years planning and battling over the unorthodox design to create a building that broke every traditional rule of museum architecture.
Instead of shuffling through standard boxy gallery rooms, visitors take the elevator straight to the top and slowly wind their way down a continuous, 1,416-foot spiral ramp wrapped along the outer walls, all beneath a soaring 92-foot glass dome skylight. Wright famously passed away in April 1959 at age 91, just six months before the doors finally opened to the public, never getting to see the crowds stroll down his sweeping, cast-in-place concrete curves.
Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY Photo by RoadsidePeek.com
Check out the smaller wing tucked alongside the main spiraling rotunda, known as the "Monitor" building. It originally housed administrative offices and private apartments before being turned into extra gallery space. While most mid-century Manhattan high-rises were going up as sharp steel-and-glass boxes, Wright's organic curves gave the city a bold landmark that still looks futuristic today. 07-07
UPDATE: The museum continues to welcome visitors as an active modern art landmark along Museum Mile. 08-26
White Bridge
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Paramount Building
Bush Tower
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Guggenheim Museum
