Panama Canal – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Empire State Building Remains One of World’s Great Wonders

Guy Carleton Wiggins’ oil on canvas board *The Empire State Building, Winter* sold for $44,812 at a May 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

“From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the Sphinx,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “rose the Empire State Building.”

The “ruins” was an oblique reference to the stock market crash in 1929. Completed on May 1, 1931, on the site where the Waldorf Astoria had stood, no building ever reached so high, so fast; 102 stories tall and with a 200-foot mast to hitch your dirigible. It was built in just over a year, during what would become the nation’s worst depression.

Just a short two years earlier on May 1, 1929, architect William Van Alen had broken ground on the Chrysler Building. He had been commissioned by Chrysler to design and construct the tallest building in the world. When the Chrysler Building opened in April 1930, it was indeed the tallest at a magnificent 925 feet – a world record that would only stand for a fleeting 28 days! Then the Manhattan Bank Tower completed its construction and opened at a height of 927 feet, which allowed it to lay claim to the World’s Tallest title by a measly 2 feet.

Hang on. The race wasn’t over. In the history of high wire, where one-upmanship is the oxygen that fuels architectural competition, the Chrysler Building’s William Van Alen had kept a surprise hidden up his sleeve that would allow him to reclaim this prestigious crown.

Van Alen had designed a stainless spire of five sections, which was lowered through the top of the building. At a fixed time, before a highly appreciative audience, Van Alen delivered his coup de grâce to the Manhattan Bank. A huge derrick, its gears slowly turning, raised the spire from the innards of the Chrysler Building. “It gradually emerged,” Van Alen wrote, “from the top of the dome like a butterfly from its cocoon.” At 1,046 feet, the Chrysler Building was suddenly, once again, the World’s Tallest Building.

Alas, it only remained so for less than a year, when the Empire State Building – topping out at 1,250 feet – grabbed the title for itself. It would retain the crown until 1971 when the World Trade Center towers opened. Fittingly, the group behind the Empire State Building included the Happy Warrior himself, Al Smith, former governor of New York (four times) and the Democratic candidate for president in the 1928 election (won by Herbert Hoover). Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon when the world’s (newest) tallest skyscraper opened May 1, 1931, and President Hoover turned on the building’s lights using a remote push button in Washington, D.C.

Subsequently, the building has become a worldwide icon and in 1994 it was named one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World” by the American Society of Civil Engineers … joining the Golden Gate Bridge and the Panama Canal, all American architectural marvels. Plus, who can forget Fay Wray as Ann Darrow in the 1933 classic King Kong, when the beast from Skull Island plucks her from the building?

The Empire State Building took only 410 days to build since the architectural firm used design plans for the (similar but smaller) Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, N.C., a project they had worked on earlier. The staff at the Empire State Building sends a Father’s Day card to the Reynolds Building each year to honor the contribution it made to their existence.

Although long since surrendering its crown for height, the Empire State Building is a “must see” for all tourists to New York and, amazingly, revenue from ticket sales for admission to the observation decks exceeds office space rental income.

Its place in history seems quite secure.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Americans Looked Beyond ‘Modern Art’ to a Grander Project … the Panama Canal

Henry Lyman Sayen’s *Cubist Composition*, 1917, realized $100,000 at a November 2014 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1913, the International Exhibition of Modern Art was the first large exhibition of its kind in America. It was held at the 69th Regiment Armory in NYC, before moving on to Chicago and Boston. More than 70,000 people walked the length of the Armory to witness the visions of Picasso, Matisse and Duchamp. Judging by press reports, not a single person appears to have left without voicing an opinion, most likely a negative one.

Who, they asked, could call such rubbish art?

Americans, generally accustomed to realistic art, were astonished by the experimental styles of Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism – the avant-garde experimental styles of Europe. Many in the New York crowd would have nothing to do with it and in Boston and Chicago, art students burned Matisse and others in effigy.

Kenyon Cox, a prominent author, illustrator and teacher, saw in the show nothing less than the “total destruction of the art of painting.” The star image of the exhibition was Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” or as Teddy Roosevelt called it, “Naked Man Running Down Stairs.” TR added it reminded him of a Navajo rug he stood on each morning while shaving. Still, other people saw something else entirely … “An Explosion in a Shingle Factory” or “An Earthquake on the Subway.”

As New Yorkers were scoffing at modern painting, a more contemporary and pleasing project was nearing completion 2,300 miles south of Manhattan. The dream of uniting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans dated back to the Spanish explorations in the 16th century.

It seemed like such a simple task to dig a canal bisecting the thin strip of land connecting North and South America. Americans wanted a connecting waterway all their own, a way to move freight and passengers coast to coast with ease.

A French company had tried and failed miserably in the 1880s, as malaria and yellow fever crippled their plans. 20,000 laborers had died and it destroyed the reputation of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal. His insistence on a sea-level canal (à la the Suez) neglected equatorial rains, half-submerged trees and, most significantly, the extraordinary amounts of terrain involved.

For perspective, the site required the excavation of three times the dirt removed to create the Suez, an unprecedented reconfiguration of the earth itself. Equipment for such a task did not exist yet.

But no president loved a challenge more than Teddy Roosevelt, who launched into it with vigor in 1904. America would dig the Big Ditch just as they would later land a man on the moon. The secret sauce included controlling malaria, creating an elaborate system of locks to minimize the digging, and a vision for world leadership. TR sensed it was America’s destiny to use the two oceans to safely convey the civilized world into the new century.

When the Panama Canal opened on Aug. 15, 1914, six months ahead of schedule, Teddy Roosevelt was long gone from the presidency. Attention turned to Europe and an event that would soon cast a giant shadow over the earth: a world war!

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Trade Has Created Economic Opportunities for More than 100 Years

To celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, the U.S. Mint produced this 1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific Octagonal. This example, graded MS67 NGC, realized $282,000 at an April 2014 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The ceremonial opening on Nov. 17, 1869, of the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean and Red seas, was an emphatic declaration of European – specifically French – technological and financial means. It was also a significant illustration of a rapidly emerging and increasingly global economy and, simultaneously, a further boost to Europe’s imperial ambitions.

The Suez Canal reduced the sailing time between London and Bombay by 41 percent and the route to Hong Kong by 26 percent. The impact on trade was obvious, as it greatly simplified the defense of India and its critical markets, Britain’s key imperial goal. Trade in the Indian Ocean was now protected by 21 Royal Naval bases, making it a virtual monopoly.

An even more challenging project was the construction, begun in 1881, of the Panama Canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It was a French initiative, but plagued by controversy and a consistently hostile climate that cost the lives of 22,000 laborers. The United States eventually completed the project in August 1914 after the French finally conceded defeat.

It was the largest and most expensive engineering project in the world.

It, too, dramatically reduced sailing times, shortening the Liverpool to San Francisco route by 42 percent and the San Francisco to New York time by 60 percent. The project assumption by the United States marked a crucial shift in attitudes in both trading and advancing U.S. interests in foreign affairs. This started in 1898 when the United States itself became a colonial power by taking over the Philippines from Spain.

It then accelerated under President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09), when he actively advocated American military involvement, especially in Latin America, to ensure stability as a means of advancing American interests. A major consequence was the strengthening of the U.S. Navy and its “Great White Fleet,” which completed a circumnavigation of the globe between 1907 and 1909. This was followed by President William Howard Taft’s Dollar Diplomacy, by which American commercial interests – primarily in Latin America and East Asia – were secured by the backing of the U.S. government to encourage huge investments.

A hundred years later, we are still actively pursuing a variant of this strategy by advocating two-way investment with Brazil, China and India despite being on a short hiatus until the current political season ends. This is the only rational way to create the jobs we need and keep our trading partners’ markets open.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].