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 . . . ARCHAEOLOGISTS see "OCCUPATIONS" for other related links - [On being married to Max Mallowan:] An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. --Agatha Christie (1890—1976) British crime fiction writer. Attributed in Bennett Cerf _The Life of the Party_ [1956]. [Probably apocryphal.] Nearly three thousand years old that palace was, it appeared ... I wondered what sort of palaces they had in those days ... But would you believe it, there was nothing to see but mud! Dirty mud walls about two feet high — and that's all there was to it ... I can tell you it was a disappointment! The whole excavation looked like nothing but mud to me — no marble or gold or anything handsome — my aunt's house in Cricklewood would have made a much more imposing ruin! And those old Assyrians or whatever they were, called themselves kings! --Agatha Christie (1890—1976) British crime fiction writer. _Murder in Mesopotamia_, ch. 7 [1936] Quoted in M.J. Cohan and John Major {ed.} _History in Quotations_ [2004]. Cohan and Major write: In this detective story Nurse Leatheran was a newcomer to archaeology and clearly did not find mud brick remains very interesting, unlike her creator. Agatha Christie first visited the site of Ur in 1928; on her second visit in 1930 she met a young archaeologist, Max Mallowan, who became her second husband. She became fascinated by his work and accompanied him on every one of his expeditions, learning many of the skills of archaeology in the process. - Archaeology ... deals with a period limited to a few thousand years and its subject is not the universe, not even the human race, but modern man. We dig, and say of these pots and pans, these beads and weapons, that they date back to 3000 or 4000 BC, and the onlooker is tempted to exclaim at their age, and to admire them simply because they are old. Their real interest lies in the fact that they are new. --Sir (Charles) Leonard Woolley (1880—1960) British archaelogist. _Digging up the Past_, p.13 [1930] - In a mausoleum colossal, The explorers discovered a fossil. They could tell by the bend, And the knob on the end, 'twas the peter of Paul the Apostle. --anon. ----- antiquarian [an-tuh-KWAIR-ee-uhn], noun: 1. One who collects, studies, or deals in objects or relics from the past. 2. Of or pertaining to antiquarians or objects or relics from the past. 3. Dealing in or concerned with old or rare books.  ;void(0)) ARCHITECTS/ARCHITECTURE . . see: "BRIDGES" see "OCCUPATIONS" for other related links Sir Christopher Wren Said, 'I am going to dine with some men. If anyone calls Say I am designing St. Paul's.' --Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875—1956) English novelist and humorist. _Biography for Beginners_ [1905] Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money. --Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city half as old as Time. --John W. Burgon (1813—1888) English Anglican divine. "Petra" [1845] Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy. --Fanny Burney (1752—1840) English novelist and diarist. _Cecilia_, bk IV, ch. 2 [1782] You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that. --Charles, Prince of Wales (b. 1948) British prince. Speech at Mansion House, London [1 December 1987]. - The completed Chrysler Building immediately became the stuff of 42nd Street legend. The pioneering photographer Margaret Bourke-White occupied an office on the sixty-first floor and made Chrysler's gargoyle ornaments world-famous when she crept out on one to take a picture of the city from that vantage point, even as she was having another taken of the event. A young James Agee, after having had a few, was said to have dangled by his hands from the fiftieth-floor office of Fortune magazine, another of the building's tenants, "for the fun of it." And Chrysler himself kept private quarters at the top, an office suite and an apartment that had a lavish dining room ringed with a frieze of autoworkers in polished black glass on a field of frosted blue. He had instructed his builders to make sure his was the highest toilet in Manhattan, so that he could look down upon the city from his porcelain throne and, as one observer wryly put it, "shit on Henry Ford and the rest of the world." In the end, Chrysler never actually moved his corporate headquarters from Detroit to 42nd Street. Choosing instead to keep his auto company in Michigan and, except for a private apartment, rented the Chrysler Building's office space out to others. Nevertheless, he saw the building as a self-righteous glorification of his own achievements. No longer simply a building, it was, as architect Philip Johnson once suggested, built to bring its owner close enough to touch the face of God. A year later the Empire State Building officially replaced it as the tallest building in the world. --Marc Eliot _Down 42nd Street_, ch. 1 "At The Crossroads" [2001] - Ev'rythin's up to date in Kansas City, They've gone about as fur as they c'n go! They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high, About as high as a buildin' orta grow. --Oscar Hammerstein II (1895—1960) American songwriter. "Kansas City" [1943 song], from the musical "Oklahoma". In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom, What holy awe invests the saintly tomb! --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894) American physician, poet, and essayist. _A Rhymed Lesson_ [1846] - . . . The [Eiffel] tower is so beloved that few today remember the storm of vitriol, mockery and lawsuits provoked by its selection as the startling centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. (One of the losing entries was a gigantic working guillotine!) Even as Eiffel was breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France's greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the "odious column of bolted metal." What person of good taste, this flock of intellectuals asked, could endure the thought of this "dizzily ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a black and gigantic factory chimney, crushing [all] beneath its barbarous mass"? The revered painters Ernest Meissonier and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, writers Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas fils, composer Charles Gounod and architect Charles Garnier all signed this epistolary call to arms, stating that "the Eiffel Tower, which even commercial America would not have, is without a doubt the dishonor of Paris." [ . . . ] Not until 1929 (six years after Eiffel's death) did another structure surpass the Eiffel Tower in height. It was the Chrysler Building at 1,046 feet. Two years later, the Empire State Building wrested away that title by reaching 1,250 feet. Moreover, while Gustave Eiffel's original contract called for him to disassemble his tower after 20 years, he ensured the survival of his magnum opus by making it an indispensable part of the French military's radio network. Megaskyscrapers have long since overshadowed the Eiffel Tower's status as the world's tallest structure. And yet, the Eiffel Tower still speaks uniquely to the human fascination with science and technology and to the human desire for pleasure and joie de vivre. In 1889, Jules Simon, the republican politician and philosopher, declared, "We are all citizens of the Eiffel Tower," a sentiment as true today as it was then. --Jill Jonnes "'Odious Column' of Metal The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon" _The Wall Street Journal_ [9 May 2009] - [To his army before the Battle of the Pyramids, July 2, 1797:] Soldiers, forty centuries are looking down upon you from these pyramids. --Napoleon I (1769—1821) Emperor of France [1804—1815]. Quoted in Kate Louise Roberts _Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations_, p. 525 [1922]. A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture. Nearly everything that encloses space on a scale sufficient for a human being to move in is a building; the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic appeal. --Nicholas Pevsner (1902—1983) German-born English architectural historian. _An Outline of European Architecture_ [1943] A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit. --Ezra Pound (1885—1972) American expatriate poet and critic. In "The Dial" (mag.) [1923]. The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines — so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings. --Frank Lloyd Wright (1867—1959) American architect. In the "New York Times Magazine" [4 October 1953]. ----- antechamber (noun) A smaller room serving as an entryway into a larger room. Synonyms: foyer, lobby, vestibule, hall, anteroom, entrance hall balustrade [BAL-uh-strayd; bal-uh-STRAYD], noun: A railing at the side of a staircase or balcony to prevent people from falling. cantilever (noun) 1. A projecting structure that is attached or supported at only one end 2. A bracket that supports a balcony or a cornice edifice (noun) Building: a building, especially a large or impressive one pantheon [PAN-thee-on], noun: 1. A temple dedicated to all the gods; especially (capitalized), the building so called at Rome. 2. The collective gods of a people; as, a goddess of the Greek pantheon. 3. A public building commemorating and dedicated to the famous dead of a nation. 4. A group of highly esteemed persons. plinth (noun) 1. A square block beneath a column, pedestal, or statue. 2. The part of the wall of a building immediately above the ground, usually a course of stones or bricks. 3. The square block at the base on each side of a doorframe. portico (noun) 1. Porch: a covered entrance to a large building 2. A covered walkway, often leading to the main entrance of a building, that consists of a roof supported by pillars rococo [roh-kuh-KOH], adjective: 1. Ornate or florid in speech, writing, or general style. 2. Pertaining to a style of painting developed simultaneously with the rococo in architecture and decoration, characterized chiefly by smallness of scale, delicacy of color, freedom of brushwork, and the selection of playful subjects as thematic material. noun: 1. A style of architecture and decoration, originating in France about 1720, evolved from Baroque types and distinguished by its elegant refinement in using different materials for a delicate overall effect and by its ornament of shellwork, foliage, etc. end page | ABILITY - ABUSE | ACADEMY AWARDS - ACCUSATION | ACHIEVEMENT - ACQUAINTANCE | ACTION/S | ACTORS / ACTING | ACTUARIES - ADVERSARIES | ADVERSITY - ADVERTISING | ADVICE | AFFAIRS - AFGHANISTAN | AGE | AGNOSTICS - AIRPLANES | ALCOHOL | ALIBI - AMBITION | AMERICA PAGE 1 (A-M) | AMERICA PAGE 2 (N-Z) | AMERICANS | AMERICAN INDIANS | AMERICAN REVOLUTION | AMUSEMENT - ANCESTORS | ANGER | ANIMAL RIGHTS - ANIMALS | ANIMOSITIES - APATHY | APOLOGY & APPEARANCE | APPEASEMENT | APPLAUSE - APRIL | ARCHAEOLOGISTS - ARCHITECTURE | ARGUMENT | ARISTOCRACY - ART | ASHAMED - ASTROLOGY | ATHEISM | ATOM BOMB - ATTRACTION | AUSTRALIA | AUTHORITY - AUTOMOBILES | AUTUMN - AWARENESS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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