Streamline Summer

I had the great fortune to visit NYC on the Library's nickel.  10 hour workdays notwithstanding I was able to scare up some time to see sights. We stayed midtown on 48th so the Chrysler Building sort of haunted my stay, seemingly always within view day or night.   Call it Streamline, Moderne, Art Deco,  what have you,  it is simply the coolest skyscraper on the planet.  Maybe the Solar System.  Its not a public building and the Observation deck and Cloud Club are long shuttered, so the best I could do was duck into a Chase ATM lobby at 42nd & Lex so I could say I was IN the Chrysler Building.

Another Streamline icon of the Depression era was the Burlington Northern "Zephyr".  Like the Chrysler building it was a gleaming vision in chromium steel.  It still exists in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry.   I saw it languishing outside when I was a kid, but it was unable break through the "U-Boat Fever" gripping my eight-year old brain.  Its on my short-list of things to see soon.

Something didn't have to be the world's tallest building (for 11 months anyway) or the first, fastest diesel-electric train to exhibit the sensous curves, speedlines, bright colors, or sleek, dramatic optimism of Moderne.  Witness the humble motor-coach:

Dig the curves everywhere and the lovely cream and red paint.   It really underscores how dull and functional the modern bus has become.  Circling back around to Airstream, is a postcard from my collection showing a slick pre-war Clipper on the road and living large: