Reblog: August 26, 2019 MONUMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE AND CREATORS OF THE TRANSCENDENCE - DOOMSDAY STRUCTURES (PART 2)
"When we think of Doomsday or that the end of the world is nigh, the idea and rhetoric is usually conjoined to the person in the street warning of pending doom about to strike or the prepper, whose fears have been magnified by a disposition of psychology – that an attack of some sort is imminent. In preparation for a future at the expense of the now, becomes an unhealthful obsession. But, what if government or a corporate entity with vastly more resources and capital, that has been at times throughout the 20th and 21st century, have been preparing for a doomsday event. There is such a building, that was designed and constructed with an idealism to withstand a destructive event, which in its period in time, could have been a certainty. The building is 33 Thomas Street Manhattan, a 550 foot tall windowless monolithic skyscraper. A stunning example of brutalist architecture in its pure form, that portrays a stark reminder of 20th century cold war fears, that was once publicized as a current event, now within our digital and globally connected world - in its veiled illusion, has made it less so. Yet, the threat of a newer cold war remains, not of a past spectra, but a constant reality.
Designed by the late John Carl Warnecke and completed in 1974, at a time when the cold war still festered a possibility of World War Three, America had just withdrawn the last of its troops from Vietnam in 1973, as the 1950s modernist dream was all but over. Inflation and the Middle Eastern oil crisis ensured that discord and political upheaval continued throughout the era, all the while the tensions between Russia and America ensured that the intercontinental and ballistic thermonuclear missile attacks were still a persistent reminder of mutual assured destruction. So, when we see a structure that was built for a Doomsday, from a globally divided era, there is a reasoning in its purpose, a representation of an inanimate duty. This structure was not created to house its citizens or protect the inhabitants of the building, rather 33 Thomas Street, a telephone exchange was created in its sole manifestation to protect the machinery, the communications of a city, that from within this concrete structure, in its temple like radiance. Vehement in design, its idealism is only to house the machines, more importantly the titled: No. 4 Electronic Switching Systems or 4ESS for short. Electronic switches, introduced in 1976, they were the first digital long toll-switching system, owned by the communication company AT&T..."
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