Prevailing modernist style in American architecture from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Seen in a wide variety of urban buildings, it was primarily used in commercial structures. Art Deco combines influences from European decoration, especially the Beaux-Arts school in France; ideas from the Chicago school of architecture; the theater; and futuristic fantasies. Art Deco style often suggests the influence of machines in its symmetries, its use of metals and other materials, and its precise repetitions of patterns.
Bedrock:
Solid rock below the soil on which pilings are placed. Holes are cut in bedrock for footings, which support the building.
Column:
Vertical part of a building's structure, which transmits weight of the building to the foundations.
Curtain walls:
Exterior masonry walls suspended by rods. As the 'skin' of skeleton frame buildings, they do not support weight.
Dipole:
An electronic aerial made from a horizontal metal rod with a connecting wire in the center.
Dirigible:
A steerable lighter-than-air craft; zeppelin. From the Latin dirigere, meaning `to guide or direct.' The Empire State Building has a mooring mast for dirigibles; an aircraft actually docked there only once.
Footings:
Bases for the columns that distribute the weight of a building.
Foundation:
The base of a building, set on piers, which transmits the building's weight into the surrounding subsoil or rock and prevents it from sinking or leaning.
Load-bearing walls:
Walls, usually of masonry, that support the weight of a structure. Use of this construction technique limits building height.
Mullions:
A vertical strip dividing the panes of a window. On the Empire State Building, the vertical strips between the windows.
Omnidirectional:
The ability of an electronic aerial to receive or transmit in all directions.
Piers (also pilings or piles):
Long, finger-like parts of the foundations, spreading a building's weight deep into the ground.
Setbacks:
Features in architecture design that prevent buildings from occupying their full building site above a certain height. Setbacks produce 'wedding cake' profile of buildings erected in layers of decreasing size, permitting light and air to reach the neighborhood below. In the Empire State Building, the first setback occurs at the fifth story; a second occurs at the 30th floor, after which the tower then rises in an unbroken block for the next 46 floors.
Spandrel:
The space between two arches and a horizontal molding or cornice above them. In the Empire State Building, the metal strips framing the windows.
