This blog is a companion to the book "Becoming Bucky Fuller" by Loretta Lorrance, MIT Press, 2009. The information here extends and complements the book.

Table of contents:

1. Building Stockade

2. Corporate Restructuring

3. Project Development

4. Trial Offer

5. Supporting Documents

6. Prototype

7. End Product

We highly recommend the book!

This website built by fans of Loretta Lorrance, who also created the tensgerity wiki. We hope you enjoy it.

Suicide Bridge, Lincoln Park

"Now came the great crisis in his life. No job, no money, infant daughter, betrayed by people he had trusted. He walked over to the lake and thought about suicide."

- Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance p. 210, quoting 'Letter and Essay to Joe Bryant'

In the 1960's Bucky recalled he was "standing by the lake on a jump-or-think basis." If he was thinking of committing suicide, swimming in from lakeside would probably not do it: one would have to jump from Suicide Bridge.

 

High Bridge, aka Suicide Bridge

Suicide was common in Chicago. It rose throughout the 1920's reaching a peak in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. Lincoln Park was associated with suicide, due to its infamous Suicide Bridge. Adam Selzer tells the story in his Mysterious Chicago blog:

Postcard of Suicide Bridge, Lincoln Partk, Chicago

In 1898, Chicagoan police officers who patrolled Lincoln Park at night had plenty of stories about running into ghosts while making their rounds. However, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to blame the fact that the park had been a cemetery in recent memory (and still had plenty of bodies buried below the ground). In fact, it was generally agreed that the ghosts were the unfortunates who had ended their life at Suicide Bridge.

View from the bridge, c. 1899

In 1894 a high bridge – 42 feet above the water – was erected as a sight-seeing bridge over the lagoon that runs along Lake shore Drive. On a clear day, you could see the stockyards and Jackson park from the bridge. It attracted plenty of weirdos – one elderly woman was known to go there daily to get as drunk as humanly possible. Another man would often go to whistle at the moon in a strange, eerie tone that scared the crap out of the cops. But it became most famous as a place to commit suicide. By 1900, kids around Chicago were superstitious about it, telling friends to “stay away from suicide bridge.”

No one knows how many people ended their lives with a leap from the bridge before it was closed in 1919, but it was probably between 50 and 100 (the number who came intending the jump, but didn’t (or survived) was estimated as being in the hundreds). It was so popular a destination for suicide that even people NOT seeking to die by drowning came to the bridge – one man hanged himself from the edge, and another went there to shoot himself.

Newspapers came up with wild headlines about it, including:

 

Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1909

Woman Leaps Off High Bridge: Mrs. Eliza Raven Tries to Commit Suicide Because of Failing Eyesight. She Will Recover. Made desperate by the fear of blindness, Mrs. Eliza Haven. 30 years of age, jumped from the high bridge over the Lincoln Park lagoon yesterday afternoon.

Girl Seeks Death In Lagoon, Ends in Cell In Station. Miss Alice Witt, 21 years old, had her mind all made up for suicide yesterday afternoon, but all she succeeded in doing was to get a good wetting and be locked up at the Hudson street station on a charge of disorderly conduct.

Policeman Spoils a Suicide: Interferes When Fascinated Crowd in Lincoln Park is Waiting for Man to Kill Self. Patrolman Charles Wilson of the North Halsted street police station, however, immediately became active. He ran up to where Meyer was standing and seized him just as he seemed to have made up his mind to try drowning in preference to using the razor.

Jumps from Bridge To Lagoon: Says he Tried Suicide for Fun

Doom High Suicide Bridge: Lincoln Park Commissioners to Spoil Convenience for Those Contemplating Self-Destruction (note: this was in 1909, and nothing appears to have come of it. When it was closed a decade later, it was due to poor condition).

So when Bucky wanted to dramatize his emotional state, he pictured himself standing on suicide bridge in Lincoln Park by the shore of Lake Michigan, although the bridge was torn down and gone.

References

[1] Author and historian Adam Selzer operates Mysterious Chicago Tours. He is the author of several books, such as Ghosts of Chicago (Llewelyn 2013), Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the US Film Industry (University of Columbia Press 2015), The Smart Aleck’s Guide to American History (Random House 2015), Ghosts of Lincoln (Llewelyn 2015), and countless articles, blog posts, and stories. See http://mysteriouschicago.com/

 [2] Vital Statistics by Louis Dublin, American Journal of Public Health p. 969

Bucky Missed Geodesic Dome in 1920's

"Fuller pursued his goal along many paths.... A major achievement was the development of the geodesic dome, a hemispherical self-supporting structure..." 

- Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance, MIT Press 2009, p. ix

Bucky Fuller is universally acknowledged as the inventor of the Geodesic Dome, yet the photo from Popular Mechanics, September 1929, was taken in 1922. At the time of its publication the dome had already been destroyed.

"Building the Dome of the Carl Zeiss Planetarium on Top of Factory: This Was the First Attempt to use This Type of Skeleton Planetarium Construction." Popular Mechanics, September 1929, p.381.

This issue of Popular Mechanics is an example of the periodicals Bucky Fuller read. We know, since he clipped and saved many articles relevant to homes and their construction. Chicago was to be the first city in the U.S.A. to have its own planetarium, so local Chicago periodicals such as the Chicago Tribune and Popular Mechanics featured regular, extensive coverage about this new inventions and its wonders.

Built in 1922, the dome's metal latticework was covered with a thin concrete shell. Walther Bauersfeld (1879 - 1959), a German engineer employed by the Zeiss Corporation, created it to test the original planetarium projection machine.  

The concrete was then covered in tar paper. Courtesy Zeiss Inc.

Its metal-skeleton, 82 feet in diameter, required fewer materials and so was light enough to stand on the Zeiss factory roof, while still being strong enough and wide enough to house a sizable audience. Plus, its surface was very smoothly rounded to project and admire the celestial bodies projected by the Zeiss method, producing an otherworldly effect. 

In 1927, Fuller was seeking inspirations for his new house architecture. He may have read this October 1927 report about the planned Chicago planetarium. He probably saw the December 1927 Sunday section which featured other German Planetarium Buildings.

The above photo ran with three others in the December 4th Sunday photo section. While Bucky often clipped photos from these full page spreads, he did not select this page to add to his Chronofile scrapbook. 

This photo, unpublished at the time, shows details of the triangulated structure, strong enough to hold fourteen men. [2] Bauersfeld's geometry differs from Fuller's modified icosahedron. Yet Fuller at the time was not thinking of such a geometry. Inspired by trees, radio antennas and close-packed spheres, he was committed at the start of his journey to a "house on a stick", a central trunk supporting decks by tension wires. He clipped many examples of structures that helped

Loretta Lorance transcribed the entire list of references that Bucky drew upon for his housing innovation. In the late 1920's he was inspired by trees, stainless steel and radio antennas. It was not until a decade later that he broadened his search for a lightweight shelter, and in the end re-discovered the fine lattice that Zeiss had long ago built and torn down from their factory rooftop.

Links and References

[1] http://www.geodesicdome.info/index.php/walther-bauersfeld

See also http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/domes/domehist.html

[2] Photo from Shelter by Kahn and Easton

The Virginia Hotel

"The Virginia [Hotel] was an apartment hotel offering the convenience of private quarters combined with modified butler services..."

 - Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance, MIT Press, 2009,  p.48.

Bucky Fuller and his very pregnant wife Anne were living in separate cities from May to July 1927. He and Anne planned to re-unite in Chicago. Bucky had to select where they would live and proposed the Virginia Hotel. Anne like the idea and on July 21st wrote, "I think your idea about living at the Virginia is the best; during the hot weather and all we wouldn’t want to struggle over getting settled and cooking etc." The hotel suited Anne's class expectations. She was the daughter of a well known architect and part of a family that was in the social register. Anne assumed the finances would work out since Bucky's company had half a million dollars (at today's value) and looked to be doing very well. Anne was unaware that there were storm clouds on the horizon: Bucky had worsening problems with Stockade Midwest which was becoming more and more reluctant to reimburse his expenses. Ignoring these potential problems, Bucky accompanied Anne from Long Island and arrived at the hotel on Monday August 8th.

Among the first things they saw when came to the front hallway of the Virginia Hotel was Nydia, Blind Girl of Pompeii. Carved by Randolph Rogers in 1853. The Blind Girl is an original artwork that they would see for months during their residency.

The statue portrays a flower girl who made her way to safety during Pompeii's volcanic eruption that destroyed the town. Edward Bulwer-Lytton created this story in his book The Last Days of Pompeii (1835). The author considered her to be, "a very emblem of the Soul itself--lone but comforted, amid the dangers and snares of life." The Fullers were to see her semi-nude struggling figure daily as they struggled in their own way with the "dangers and snares of life."

The statue was one of the many attractions making the Virginia Hotel one of the finest hotels in Chicago. The type of living that the hotel offered solved many inadequacies of 1920's housing, offering collective solutions and hotel services to address the lack of refrigeration, poor toilet facilities, and difficulties in keeping things clean. Leading citizens of Chicago lived in hotels such as there as permanent residents, such as former Chicago Postmaster William B. Carlile and his wife who were permanent residents of the Virginia Hotel the day the Fullers arrived until the hotel's demolition in 1932.

Virginia Hotel 

 

 Virginia Guests Private Parlor.

The Fullers enjoyed this splendor as Bucky's financial situation worsened. September and October passed without incident, but by November Bucky was searching for alternatives.

 The Blind Girl statue as seen from the Main Entrance.

The statue is typical of 19th century motifs. It was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. In this genre, literary sculpture is created with moralistic overtones.The moral value of hard work was reflected in other statues, pictured below.

Flower Girl Sculpture in the Main Corridor (1895 photo).

"Pulling Corn-Stalks" sculpture in the main corridor.

McCormick, the hotel's builder, sold the "McCormick" Reaper, a mechanical reaping device that captured the U.S. agricultural market. The hotel was built with capital gained from sales of the reaper.

Virginia Hotel Dining room, where the Fullers dined.

We know the Fullers dined here from receipts Fuller saved in his Chronofile, Box 16 No. 29. For example, the receipt below is found there. The amounts are 1927 dollars; one 1927 dollar is about 13 dollars in 2015. So a week at the Virginia cost about $500 at today's value... Not bad for all this luxury. The receipt reads:

Aug 15 -- 22, 1927
Mr. & Mrs. R. B. Fuller
Room 922

Room $24.50
Valet $0.75, Laundry $1.82
Telephone $2.00
Restaurant $21.50

Another view of the Virginia Dining Room, 1895.

The News Stand behind the statue.

The main office resembles the front desk at a modern Manhattan apartment building that offers concierge-type services.

Stained Glass window,"The Awakening of Spring."

 Hallway

Guest Parlor

At the time these photographs were taken in 1895, women had a separate entrance and reception room. By the 1920's such separate facilities were merged into mixed gender use, and "flappers" would make a point of smoking and performing other activities preserved previously for men.  

Ladies Entrance, 1895.

Ladies Reception Room, 1895 photo.

The Virginia was a Chicago landmark and the Chicago Tribune article mourned her passing when it was demolished on March 11, 1932. They wrote, "[T]he Virginia was from the first a center for fashionable life of this metropolis. Up to the present it has remained as well serviced and immaculately kept as in the days of its glory, and boasts some of the art treasures of Chicago. Every visitor entering at the main door, for instance, comes face to face with the sculptured image of Nydia, the blind girl of Pompeii, fleeing the wrath of Vesuvius."

But back in 1928, it stood in all its glory, and Anne felt banished by her husband's precarious financial circumstances. She had to leave this landmark and move to a less beautiful hotel. Any Hotel would have been a step down from the Virginia Hotel, that grand old dame. Anne may have identified with Nydia, feeling the 'dangers and snares of life' as she and their infant girl left the luxurious Virginia for more modest Lake View Hotel on December 5th, 1927.