Draw that Bridge- The Golden Gate

In case you didn't tune in last week, that's when I posted the card of San Francisco's Golden Gate before the famous bridge was built.  I invited you to draw your own bridge, either a likeness of the one that was built or something different. It's no surprise that people are very busy this time of year, so I didn't expect a lot of results. In fact there were only two, but they're both fabulous! Thanks for your submissions (round of applause.)

Here's a view of the bridge and the one from last week without the bridge:

And here are the brilliant ideas that you submitted:

Eric was inspired by a newspaper headline: "Red Tape Holds Up Bridge." The headline referred to another bridge, but it fits nicely with this one. His Golden Gate Bridge looks very realistic and is constructed of red electrical tape.

 

Ferdinand was inspired by music; his span across the Golden Gate consists of part of the bridge from Prokofiev's Sonata #8.

 

Ferdinand also sent along a musical clip, played by Dror Biran. I'm including it because I think it's a piece of music that represents the bridge very well.

As long as we're looking for a musical representation of the bridge, I also like the idea of the Barcarolle from Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffman to represent the bridge on a moonlit night with the fog rolling in. The duet makes me imagine of the two land masses on either side of the bay singing to each other.

This piece is performed by soprano Irina Iordachescu and mezzosoprano Cristina Iordachescu - two sisters, together with pianist Gonul Apdula.

Princess Anne

Today was supposed to be the day that I posted the follow-up to a previous post entitled Draw that Bridge.  I promised to post a card of the bridge that was actually built and invited you to submit your own vision of what that bridge would or could be. I have received one submission so far, so I am allowing one extra day just in case you want to submit something. Truth be told, I'm running a little behind anyway, so I was happy to put it off for a day.

Princess Anne thinks this is hilarious. This is a real photograph postcard of the very joyful princess. She was born in 1950, so the postcard is probably from about 1954. Princess Anne is currently tenth in line for the British throne. She is the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Here's a link to the previous post so you can submit your bridge idea. Do it for Princess Anne.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel

At the turn of the century, there was an increased demand for rooms for foreign visitors to Japan. In order to meet that demand, a directive was issued to build the Imperial Hotel. Frank Lloyd Wright was hired for the project in 1916. He designed just about every aspect of the hotel, including doorknobs and carpets.

According to the architect who steals my covers every night, these are some of the significant aspects of the hotel:

1. The job was an important one for Wright because he had no work at the time. He was still recovering from the murder of his mistress Mamah Borthwick-Cheney, who had been hacked to death with a hatchet along with her two children at Wright's house at Taliesin. The murder was committed by one of Wright's servants, who had just served them lunch moments before. After that, the servant also burned down Wright's precious Taliesin house. Frank Lloyd Wright was at his office in Chicago at the time. The scandal of the affair with Borthwick-Cheney and her subsequent murder diminished Wright's appeal to prospective clients.
2.  The Imperial Hotel managed to withstand the great Kanto earthquake in 1923, which destroyed just about every other building in the vicinity.
   
3. The hotel was demolished in 1967 because the property values were so high that a two-story building simply didn't make financial sense. The center part of the building was preserved and reconstructed at the Meiji Mura Museum, an outdoor architectural museum in Inuyama.