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Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

First B-25's in training for bombing mission over Japan, under General Jimmy Doolittle's command.

There is no more ringing title among World War II movies than Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and the mission it celebrates was unquestionably historic: a 400-mile bombing raid to carry the war to Japan itself mere months after that nation's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet the film is less memorable than many WWII pictures with less exalted factual basis. At the time, critic James Agee eloquently defined both its virtues and limitations as "a big-studio, big-scale film, free of artistic pretension ... transformed by its not very imaginative but very dogged sincerity into something forceful, simple, and thoroughly sympathetic in spite of all its big-studio, big-scale habits." That remains true today, but perhaps the movie--and its unimpeachably noble, admirably life-sized characters--wouldn't seem so stuck in the amber of a bygone era if Mervyn LeRoy and company had pumped a little "artistic pretension" into it.
Spencer Tracy--as James H. Doolittle, architect of the raid--rates the most towering screen credit, and he's superb. But his role's an extended cameo; the emotional core of the film is B-25 pilot Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) and his wife, Ellen (the glowing Phyllis Thaxter). Lawson's bestselling memoir (with Bob Considine) of his training for the secret mission, his group's launching from the aircraft carrier Hornet, and his crash landing and protracted ordeal in China--where he lost a leg--has been faithfully served. The film is long on homely detail and all-American decency (including a remarkably outspoken regret over the unavoidability of civilian casualties) but achieves its greatest impact in the raid itself. That sequence, in addition to boasting Oscar-winning special effects, is mostly shot in riveting silence. --Richard T. Jameson

Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

Erected in 1888, the former Fire Engine Company No. 54 was designed by the prominent firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Son, architects for the New York City Fire Department, between 1879 and 1895. Former Fire Engine Company No. 54 is a late but excellent example of LeBrun & Son’s numerous mid-block firehouses, reflecting the firm’s attention to materials, stylish details, plan and setting. Napoleon LeBrun, who had established his firm in New York City in 1864, achieved renown as a designer of office buildings, including those for Home Life Insurance Company and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

LeBrun & Sons helped to define the Fire Department’s expression of civic architecture in more than forty buildings, constructed between 1879 and 1894. Built when midtown was developing into a rowhouse and tenement district, this firehouse represents the city’s commitment to the civic architecture of essential municipal services. The tenure of the LeBrun firm with the Fire Department coincided with a campaign to provide a strong presence through an increase in public building projects. During this era, it was often the practice of architects to adapt the same design for different locations, as an economical and rapid means of creating public buildings that clearly identified there civic function. Fire Engine Company No.15, built in 1883-84 at 29 Henry Street, and Fire Engine Company No. 53 built in 188384 at 175 East 104th Street, have virtually identical facades to the Former Fire Engine Company No. 54.

Like most late nineteenth–century New York City firehouses, former Fire Engine Company No. 54 has a large central opening flanked by smaller doorways. The design incorporated elements of the Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles. The cast-iron trabeated base is enlivened by foliate capitals incorporating sunflowers and torches. Molded brick panels above the windows and terra-cotta medallions in the form of stylized sunflowers adorning the frieze below the cornice are among the Queen Anne motifs of the design. At the roofline, stylized console brackets executed in corbelled brick support small pedimented forms adorned with sunbursts.

After nearly ninety years of use as a fire engine house, the building was converted to a permanent 194-seat theater and offices for the award-winning Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre in the late 1970s. Founded in 1967 as a means of bringing free theatre to the streets of New York’s Latino neighborhoods, the PRTT helped launch the Spanish bilingual theater movement in the United States. For forty years, the group – which also has a training unit in East Harlem– has encouraged youth of economically disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue careers in the theatre.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The Fire Department of the City of New York

The origin of New York’s Fire Department dates to the city’s beginning as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Leather fire buckets, first imported from Holland and later manufactured by a cobbler in the colony, were required in every household. Regular chimney inspections and the “rattle watch” patrol helped protect the colony during the Dutch period. By 1731, under English rule, two “engines” were imported from London and housed in wooden sheds in lower Manhattan. The Common Council authorized a volunteer force in 1737, and the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York was officially established by act of the state legislature in 1798. As the city grew, this force was augmented by new volunteer companies. Between 1800 and 1850, seven major fires occurred, leading to the establishment of a building code and the formation of new volunteer fire companies on a regular basis. The number of firemen grew from 600 in 1800 to more than 4,000 by 1865.

Intense rivalries among the companies developed, stemming in large part from the Volunteer Fire Department’s significant influence in political affairs. The Tammany political machine was especially adept at incorporating the fire department into its ranks. Since the 1820s it was common knowledge that “a success in the fire company was the open sesame to success in politics.”

During the peak years of Tammany’s power, increasingly intense competition among companies began to hinder firefighting, creating public exasperation with the volunteer force. Brawls among firemen at the scene of fires and acts of sabotage among the companies became commonplace. In the 1860s, an alliance between the Republican controlled state legislature, which wanted to impair Tammany Hall’s political control, and fire insurance companies, who wanted more efficient firefighting, played on this public sentiment to replace the volunteers with a paid force. On March 30, 1865, the New York State Legislature established the Metropolitan Fire District, a paid professional force under the jurisdiction of the state and abolished New York’s Volunteer Fire Department. B

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

An exceptionally handsome, simplified neo-Romanesque building erected in 1929 by the Bank of Manhattan Trust Company. It is now a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Clad in light orange marble, the facade is elegantly restrained in its design. Two monumental pier's with chamfered edges flank the slightly recessed entrance section. The severe surface of these piers is accented by small carved plaques near I.he-top. The two-story, square-headed entrance bay is enframed by an impressive rope molding, simple architrave molding, and crowned by a rinceau band. Above the rinceau are three crisply cut square-headed windows joined within an architrave molding. Deeply recessed within the entrance bay is a glazed metal screen at the base of which are the stone-enframed doors. The Milton Street facade is pierced by monumental square-headed bays with bronzed multi-paned windows. Above these windows, which indicate the main banking room, are handsome panels carved with Romanesque-inspired designs. The top floor, which is used for office space, is articulated by paired square-headed windows. Above the windows is a corbelled parapet with dentils. Full-heignt, smooth-faced piers rise to the roof line flanking the window bays.

About the historic district:

The Greenpoint Histrict District occupies a unique position among Brooklyn's historic districts. Unlike the middle-class neighborhoods of Brooklyn's "brownstone belt,—Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Park Slope— whose residents commuted to professional and white collar jobs in downtown Brooklyn or Manhattan, Greenpoint was intimately linked to Brooklyn's industrial development. Its residents worked in nearby factories, and its architecture reflects the varied nature of the neighborhood's occupants. The buildings include substantial rowhouses built for the owners and managers of nearby businesses and factories, more modest rowhouses and numerous flathouses (walk-up apartment houses) for the factory laborers, as well as a variety of commercial buildings on the streets where the residents shopped.

Residential development of the area followed the advent of industry, the first of which was shipbuilding, located on the waterfront. The residential area grew inland from the waterfront. Perhaps because of the industrial character of the area, real estate developers were much less active in Greenpoint than in many other Brooklyn sections where it was common to find long rows of houses erected by developers for resale to middle-class occupants. Although there are examples of this in the district, particularly on the land originally owned by James R. Sparrow and his son (one of the rows they erected consists of twenty-one buildings), more often it was a single individual who bought one lot and had the house he intended to live in built on it. This is particularly so during the earliest period of growth in the area, prior to the Civil War.

The buildings within the district also reflect the importance of the builder tradition in nineteenth-century American architecture. The role between the builder and the architect was not clearly defined until about the time of the Civil War. When the American Institute of Architects was founded in 1857, its members were the most prominent men in the field in the country. This professionalism did not filter down to less well-known practitioners until later in the century.

The usual practice in Greenpoint and elsewhere in Brooklyn was for the owner of a piece of property to hire a builder, i.e., a mason or carpenter, to erect the house on the site. If the owner made particular design requirements, the builder might hire a draftsman to produce plans from which to work. But, because the vast majority of rowhouses have similar plans and construction, a practiced builder needed little outside aid. Also widely used were builders' guidebooks which gave practical advice on construction techniques to those in the building trade and often included plans for houses and designs for architectural details. Moreover, architectural elements such as foliate brackets, window and entrance enframements, and wooden doors, sashes, and shutters could be mass produced at local lumberyards and foundaries. Hence, many buildings within the district have nearly identical window and door lintels, cornices and iron railings.

The ambiguous distinction between builder and architect is illustrated by two men who lived in the area: Thomas C. Smith and Frederick Weber. Smith, an important figure in the history of the district, had been trained as a builder and worked in that trade for nearly thirty years before retiring to Greenpoint where he had come into possession of a bankrupt porcelain factory. He purchased a large tract of land on Milton Street and over a period of years built on it. Since he retired from tne trade because of ill health, it is improbable that Smith acted as mason or carpenter on these houses but it is eviden

There is no more ringing title among World War II movies than Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and the mission it celebrates was unquestionably historic: a 400-mile bombing raid to carry the war to Japan itself mere months after that nation's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet the film is less memorable than many WWII pictures with less exalted factual basis. At the time, critic James Agee eloquently defined both its virtues and limitations as "a big-studio, big-scale film, free of artistic pretension ... transformed by its not very imaginative but very dogged sincerity into something forceful, simple, and thoroughly sympathetic in spite of all its big-studio, big-scale habits." That remains true today, but perhaps the movie--and its unimpeachably noble, admirably life-sized characters--wouldn't seem so stuck in the amber of a bygone era if Mervyn LeRoy and company had pumped a little "artistic pretension" into it.
Spencer Tracy--as James H. Doolittle, architect of the raid--rates the most towering screen credit, and he's superb. But his role's an extended cameo; the emotional core of the film is B-25 pilot Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) and his wife, Ellen (the glowing Phyllis Thaxter). Lawson's bestselling memoir (with Bob Considine) of his training for the secret mission, his group's launching from the aircraft carrier Hornet, and his crash landing and protracted ordeal in China--where he lost a leg--has been faithfully served. The film is long on homely detail and all-American decency (including a remarkably outspoken regret over the unavoidability of civilian casualties) but achieves its greatest impact in the raid itself. That sequence, in addition to boasting Oscar-winning special effects, is mostly shot in riveting silence. --Richard T. Jameson