Picture yourself sitting in a nice hotel, gazing out on the New York skyline, ready to head out and take on the town for the first day of your Big Apple vacation. Across the rooftops you spy a familiar shape, and think to yourself, ‘No, that can’t be a Sopwith Camel on that roof.’ So you grab your trusty binoculars, that you brought another for, uh, sightseeing, and take another look. There sits the WWI era biplane, rusting away on what appears to be a truncated runway!
The plane is there, up on the 26-story rooftop of 77 Water Street. The building was built by the William Kaufman Organization in 1970, and they wanted to give it a little something special. And while first time viewers often wonder if the plane actually landed there, “the aircraft is actually just an artistic re-imagining of a 1916 British Sopwith Camel, designed by Rudolph de Harak and constructed by sculptor William Tarr. It was hoisted into place by crane in 1969 and hasn’t moved since.” (wsj.com)
Images and info from wsj.com, with the current photos taken by Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal, and the early photos of the installation from the William Kaufman Organization.
That's pretty cool, although it would be much cooler if it was a real biplane that someone had actually landed there.
Or dent it up with giant knuckle marks as if King Kong had backhanded it away.
Bizarre and pointless,but cool. As sculpture and given the location it must have cost a million.
Reminds me of some of Bruce McCall's drawings. Someone must have been a fan.
Atlanta does have a hotel, The Biltmore, with two large towers/masts on the roof. When it was built in 1924 these were intended to be a docking station for blimps. They were never used for that though.
Same with the Empire State Building in New York. The spire on top was intended to be a docking moor for dirigibles destined for New York. Only problem is they found out people were be a bit apprehensive about disembarking a dirigible 1250 feet above above the ground when the Graf Zeppelin docked in 1931.
So, Lakehurst, NJ it was..
One of the neat parts of the opening of "Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow" is the mooring of the Hindenburg III to the Empire State Building and disembark passengers.
This made me think… I wonder when the super rich are going to start using F35 style jets in place of their run of the mill helicopter to private jet setup. Just lift off and go!
Note to self: Make a private sector Passenger version of the F35. Maybe it is big enough already. Perhaps an Osprey would be more executive.
You've only got "3 to 4 more years" before the
BoeingBellAugustaWestland 609 beats you to it.I remember this from when i was a kid. My father's office was in 70 Pine street in the early 70's and his window overlooked 77 Water. I recall the biplane being brighter colored then. The building also had some interesting ground level features including a Coke machine with a brightly colored padded casing.
About the ESB, they did test the docking maneuvers but the updrafts from the streets below caused way too much buffeting for it to be considered safe.