Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar81911newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
September, 1911 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 317 by its rapid fall, could easily take wing. The length of drop would depend upon the design of the machine. A fall equivalent to five stories would probably be all that would be required. The feat of alighting upon a roof would not be inordi- nately difficult. If aviators can land upon platforms built over the forward decks of warships, it is assuredly not asking too much of them to land upon the roof of a building of equal area. If hotels are to have their aerial taxicabs, if bankers and brokers are to fly from their country residences to their offices, surely some different type of house-top must be de- signed for many structures whose roofs must serve as start- ing and alighting areas. The cornice, the parapet, the deli- cate spire, must give way to a roof as flat as that of an Egyptian temple. Here there is not much chance for the exercise of architectural imagination. A flat roof is a flat roof, and very little can be done to relieve its flatness. Whatever charm the tall buildings in New York may have as they are viewed from the decks of a steamship in the harbor of New York is due in large part to the piling of tower on tower, to the imaginative use of turrets and spires, to imitations on a gigantic scale of Italian Cam- paniles. Is all this to disappear? Will the architect be compelled to curb his fancy and to provide a succession of huge cubes, as flat upon their tops as they are upon their sides, in order that the man of the air may have a place from which to start and a place on which to alight? Unless methods of launching and alighting are adopted radically different from those of the present day, it seems as if architects would be compelled to modify their present roof designs. Levavasseur, the builder of the Antoinette monoplane, is said to be experimenting with apparatus which will overcome some of the inconveniences mentioned. He is said to have experimented with forms of catapults which literally shoot a flying machine directly from the ground into the air. Any one who has read Langley's account of his tedious experiments in launching flying ma- chines, experiments which included just such schemes, must realize how hopeless is the task of this projecting into the air a fabric so delicate as a flying machine. Remote as the possibility is, it is more likely that the helicopter principle may be combined with the aeroplane principle; in other words, some form of lifting screw em- ployed to push the aeroplane straight up from the ground. Levavasseur is also said to be experimenting with a form of alighting device which consists of a wire on which a carrier travels. The aeroplane is supposed to fly up to the carrier, to catch it, and to slide down the wire to its hangar, very much like the cash carriers of department stores. Here again there would be considerable difficulty in seizing the carrier, particularly in a high wind. We can imagine a ma- chine flying backwards and forwards in the desperate effort to seize the carrier. Let us assume that the machine of the future, in which the gilded youth of the future will buzz over our heads, will of necessity land upon a flat roof in the city. If the number of flat roofs is large, how will the airman identify his own landing place? From a height of one thousand feet a town presents the aspect of a huge checker-board. How can the airman pick out the particular square which belongs to him? The most obvious method of identification is that of numbering the roofs, a method which is in vogue to a certain extent in France and Germany, in order to direct cross- country aviators on their way. At nighttime distinguish- ing lights of some kind would be required, with the result that an air-port of the future may have roofs as brilliantly illuminated as its avenues. Even now we hear in Germany plans for erecting beacon lights to guide the airman on his iourney, searchlights which will project a beam upwards into the gloom. In one of his most imaginative stories, "The Night Mail," a story in which he has given us a vivid account of some future aerial leviathans journeying through the atmosphere, Kipling speaks of this possibility, and also points out the dangers to the flying-man of a planet that is overlighted. Who knows but laws may be passed which will forbid a man from placing an advertising electric sign on his roof, lest (he lead some airman astray? Who knows but the lighthouse board at Washington may have to establish a special branch for the erection and inspection of aerial lighthouses? Who knows but the architect of the future may be obliged to lavish the same care upon the roof that he now bestows upon the facade of a public building, in order that the eve of the more aesthetic aviator may not be offended by chim- ney pots and tin cornices that are now invisible from the street, but painfully apparent from above? Who knows but hotels may some day be constructed which will have en- trances on their roofs for the benefit of the tourist aviator.
Text Appearing After Image:
A voyage over the Alps through the air. View in the neighborhood of Innsbruck

Note About Images