Fire over America

It’s a dangerous occupation so firefighters are heroes everywhere (other than those who start their own fires) and nowhere more so than in the US.  Serving as the guardians of their community and emblems of selfless devotion to duty, they pose on these postcards inside their vehicles or standing to attention outside their fire stations. The men of the Salvage Corps in Newark exhibit an air of grim resolve as they prepare for their next assignment.  Edward Croker was appointed Chief Fire Officer for the city of New York in 1899 at the age of only 35. He led by example and attended every major fire in the city, often first on the scene thanks to his automobile outrunning the teams of horses that carried his comrades. After leaving the Fire Department he became an advocate and promoter of fire prevention.

Equipped with water pumps and access beneath the hull to an unlimited water supply, construction of special purpose Fire Boats began in the early 1900s. Equally effective at extinguishing waterfront fires as those onboard ship. In Seattle the Duwamish went into service in 1909 - after retirement in 1985 the vessel was preserved as a National Monument. Opportunistic postcard businesses appear to have used the same images, with extensive but clumsy retouching on the pairs of cards from New York. Postcards of burning buildings in San Francisco and Chicago (where extreme cold is freezing the water jets on contact) follow. The final item is a memorial in Hoboken where the local community honours the fire crew who perished in the line of duty.

Bridge Postcards of 2025

A selection of vintage postcard views of bridges acquired in 2025, beginning in Dresden with a record low water level on the River Elbe. A crowd of locals enjoy the novelty of exploring the river bed on foot. In August 2025 all river transport was suspended when the Elbe fell to its lowest level ever recorded. Next is from Ironbridge in Shropshire where the pioneering cast iron bridge manufactured by Abraham Darby has crossed the River Severn since 1779. Equally famous is the ancient Roman aqueduct built in the first century near Nîmes that follows. The River Trent at Gunthorpe, Nottinghamshire was first crossed by this cast iron toll bridge in 1875 - it was replaced in 1927 by a three arch concrete structure.  Constantine is Algeria’s third city, built on a high plateau above the River Rhumel and is known as the City of Bridges. The El-Kantara stone bridge of 1863 is one of the oldest to span the spectacular gorge and the colonial French influence is very apparent in this unusual elevated view. When completed in 1889 the Sukkur railway bridge over the River Indus was the longest cantilever bridge in the world. Later renamed the Lansdowne Bridge (in honour of the Viceroy), it’s still in use as a rail link between the city of Lahore and the port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea. 

Next is a single track railroad bridge in the Pacific Northwest of the US, completed in 1912 and still crossed today by freight trains - in 1957 a vertical-lift section was added. Another railway subject follows - this card shows what was in 1905 a common method of testing the loading capacity of new bridges by running multiple locomotives over the top and monitoring the impact. In Melbourne the River Yarra is spanned by the Queen’s Bridge, completed in 1889 and protected by listing on the Victoria Heritage Register. Hydraulically powered lifting bridges are very much an American thing - two more examples here from Portland, Oregon and Chicago. The final card is an elevated view of the second Tay Bridge opened in 1887 to replace the one that collapsed in a storm in December 1879 - everyone on board the train crossing the bridge at the time lost their lives. There’s something peculiarly Victorian about the action of the North British Railway in recovering the submerged locomotive and returning it to service. 

 

Reliance Building, Chicago

The Reliance Building in the Chicago Loop was constructed between 1891 and 1895 on the site of an existing five storey bank building at the intersection of State and Washington. It was a laborious process that involved demolition of the ground floor which had been acquired with vacant possession while retaining the upper floors until the leases expired.  Supporting the upper section required extensive jack-screwing while a link with the street level had to be maintained for access. The new building would rise to its full fifteen storeys as the upper floors were vacated and demolished.

Allocating credit for the innovative design features of the Reliance is problematic.  Chicago firm of Burnham and Root was the lead architect but a key role in terms of engineering was taken by the developer, William Hale, who under another hat was the founder of the Hale Elevator Company; his fortune grew with the height of the buildings.  Hale took charge of the technical challenges of demolition and rebuilding the lower floors while securing the upper floors. John Root died in 1891 during the first phase of construction and is generally credited with designing the innovative steel frame plus the ground floor but it was his replacement, Charles Atwood who took charge of the design and construction of the upper floors including the glazed white terra-cotta cladding. Atwood also takes the credit for the huge bay windows that comprised a pair of fixed windows flanked by opening sashes to either side for ventilation. Burnham raised the finance, marketed the building to tenants and was the public face of the project.

When the Reliance opened in 1895 the first tenant was the Carson Pirie Scott & Co. department store - they occupied the first two floors while the upper floors were subdivided and let as office space, consulting rooms and dental surgeries.  Critics and commentators hailed it as a landmark in the evolution of the Chicago Style but it’s reputation was rapidly overshadowed by the next generation of much larger and taller buildings. By the end of World War 2 its fortunes were in steep decline - professionals moved out, a mix of wholesalers, light industry, and a menswear store moved in.  By 1980 most of the later tenants were moving out without being replaced and the fabric of the building was decaying at speed - the terra-cotta façade was discoloured and cracked and the cornice had to be removed to protect the public from falling masonry.  By this time its importance was forgotten by all but the most dedicated enthusiasts for Chicago architecture. A campaign was launched to rescue the building from neglect and with growing public support and funding a detailed restoration began.  This would conclude in 1999 when the building reopened as an hotel (The Burnham) with its dazzling terra-cotta brought back to life.  Staircases, elevators and circulation areas were returned to original condition so far as regulations permitted.  In recent years the hotel changed hands and the new owners rebranded it in line with others in the chain which is how it came to be landed with the fatuous name of Staypineapple - a moniker that seems like an insult to the dignity and reputation of the building.  The rationale for this decision can be read here.  Warning, contains language that some might find offensive.

Enhanced views from inside the Reliance offer the same sense of optical plunge that Boccioni recorded in The Street Enters the House (1912) - an expanse of glazing that invites an onrush of visual information at an intimidating velocity.  More practically, the occupants enjoyed the optimum quantity of natural light in all weathers.  Books consulted are 1)  Jay Pridmore,  The Reliance Building (2003) and 2)  Dan Cruickshank,  Skyscraper (2018).  Cruickshank’s exhaustive and immensely rewarding account of the Reliance is at the absolute centre of his history of the evolution of the skyscraper - highly recommended.

 

Robie House, Chicago

Fred Robie was a young man given to motoring around Chicago in a car of his own design - he had an engineering background and he was making good money from his own business supplying auto-parts as well as from a share in his father’s business interests which ranged from bicycles to sewing machine parts. Recently married with two young children, Robie was only 28 when he bought a corner plot in the Hyde Park area of Chicago in the university neighbourhood on which to build a new home for his family.  Robie was ambitious and in tune with the spirit of the age, obsessed with technology - innovative design was the key to future prosperity.  Frank Lloyd Wright was his choice of architect.  In his early forties at the time, Wright was well established in Chicago and beyond and could be depended on to deliver a statement design that would signal to the world that his client was a person of distinction and financially secure.  Robie, in many ways was the ideal client for Wright - he shared his dislike of superfluous refinements such as curtains and drapes and he was looking for a home with minimal interior furnishings and partitioning. They were both enraptured by the world of the automobile.

Wright came up with a radical design that would come to be widely regarded as the supreme articulation of his Prairie Style - an idiom marked by low rise horizontal forms, flat or hipped roofs and deep overhanging eaves. The Robie House would occupy the entire plot leaving no space for a garden though space was found for a three-car garage, complete with inspection pit and car wash. Three levels of accommodation were provided - services and an entrance lobby on level one, living and recreational areas on level two and bedrooms on a much smaller level three. Like so many of Wright’s dwellings, including his own, it would not be enjoyed for long by its original owner. In May 1910 the Robie family moved into the house while the final installation of furniture and fittings went on around them until final completion in January 1911. At the same time, Robie’s comfortable, orderly life was falling apart and in December 1911 the Robies were moving out after a disastrous year during which Robie had been bankrupted by the inheritance of his late father’s gambling debts (over one million dollars), the disintegration of his marriage and the loss of his family.

Externally the key feature is the long cantilever that projects forward from level two, protecting the interior from the power of the summer sun while sheltering the terraces and balconies that provide outdoor space to mitigate the absence of a garden. In the process creating an overwhelming sense of horizontality. Inside level two the rooms flow into one another, all generously supplied with decorative glazing that admits light but minimises visual distraction from the street outside. Every item of oak furniture was built to Wright’s design by German woodworkers in Milwaukee, then placed according to his instructions - every floor covering, lighting fixture and radiator grill likewise.  Horizontal strings of diamond motifs and vertical threads of chevrons evoking the forms of ears of wheat as grown on the prairie grace the stained glass windows. Wright’s fascination with geometry and the visual power of forms in parallel is everywhere to be seen. The vertical rods of the chair backs that descend to the floor and the stained wooden strips that band the ceilings before taking a right angle turn down the walls, then wrapping and enclosing the light fittings are notable examples. All is organised to inter-relate and share common elements to develop a grammar of visual unity. The geometry of Modernism and the search for formal purity was not for Wright but his visual enhancements could not be easily dismissed as mere decoration. There’s an air of restraint in Wright’s use of ornamentation that he took from the Arts and Crafts tradition.

Today’s Robie House is a meticulously curated national landmark and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Exquisite as it is, it remains difficult to get much sense of what it might have been like as a family home. The Robies were succeeded by a Chicago advertising executive D L Taylor, another victim of Wright’s curse - he died in less than a year and the house again changed hands. New owners, the Wilber family lived there for 14 years - the only occupants to enjoy an extended residency. In 1926 the house was acquired by the Chicago Theological Seminary, owners of several neighbouring properties. The Seminary converted the house into student dorms and a refectory while developing plans to demolish and replace with a much larger building of their own. The threat of demolition was only lifted in 1958 when ownership passed to the University of Chicago for whom it would function as office space right up to 1997. Restoration to its former condition was a 17 year task begun in 2002 and finally completed in 2019 which is when these photos were taken.  On the other side of the road stands the Booth School of Business, housed in a 2004 building designed by Rafael Viñoly. The block closest to the street intelligently pays respect to Wright's preference for extended horizontal rectangles without mimicry or post-modern parody.  A later building by Viñoly in the City of London (20 Fenchurch Street) became popularly known as the Walkie-Talkie and notorious for melting parked cars with sunlight reflected from its concave glazing.