Invisible Themepark

Month: July 2009

Hindenburg “A” Deck Walkthrough Video

Video Script

The Hindenburg‘s “A” deck was the place where most everything happened–eating, dining, sleeping, lounging, sightseeing.

Dining Area

As we walk up the stairs from the “B” Deck, we go towards the Dining Area. There were only a few tables in the Dining area, and meals were served in shifts, much on a train. But you’ll notice the generous spacing between the tables.

And that’s something you find a lot on the Hindenburg: lots of open space.

Promenade

On the other side of a low wall was the promenade–for sitting or leaning against the rail to watch the Atlantic Ocean pass far below.

Lounge Area

On the other side of the “A” Deck–separated by the passenger cabins–was a similar space, but it had a different purpose. This was the Lounge area with another large open space and aluminum chairs and tables. The piano was largely aluminum and pigskin and weighed around 400 pounds.

Reading/Writing Room

For a little private time, there was a Reading/Writing room in back. Passengers could browse the small collection of books or write letters or postcards at the small writing desks.

Passenger Cabins

Finally, at night there were 25 passenger cabins with bunks that could accommodate up to 50 people. Walls were thin–made of fabric and foam–and had no windows. But they were just as good, and maybe even better, than railway sleepers. They had hot and cold water taps, a small fold-down writing desk, call buttons, and a closet.

The Hindenburg‘s “A” Deck: Not the height of luxury by today’s standards, or even by the standards of contemporary ocean liners, but remarkable for that time, especially when compared to previous airships.

July 16, 2009
Office Ventilation Cutaway, ca 1940s

One of the great things about the old Fortune magazine was how it often treated extremely mundane subjects with great wonder and awe. Not only would they profile the high-level anticts of John D. Rockefeller, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Ford, but they would take things down to the opposite end of the spectrum and highlight things like the inner workings of an oil well in one of Rockefeller’s fields or the daily routine of one of Hearst’s low-level stringers.

This office building cutaway actually calls itself an “X-ray” of an air conditioning system, and I am not completely certain of its original source in Fortune. I’d guess that it came with some kind of profile of a giant, national air conditioning company, perhaps Carrier.

Not at all the loving detail of the American Standard advertisement I blogged about previously, but interesting nonetheless.

July 16, 2009
Rubber Tanks and U.S. Army’s 23rd Special Troops
A great book called Secret Soldiers: How a Troupe of American Artists, Designers, and Sonic Wizards Won World War II’s Battle of Deception Against the Germans is about…well, just that. It covers the U.S. Army’s 23rd Special Troops and how they waged surreptitious “battles” against the Germans using deceptive techniques.

These techniques were sometimes as simple and time-tested as camouflage. Other techniques involved creating the impression of battles with carefully orchestrated sound effects.

But one thing always stands out: those inflatable rubber tanks. As the book puts it:

In pitch dark, often in rain or snow, they would inflate each dummy as close to the desired position as they could, use muscle power to finish the setup, stake it down against wind, and them camouflage it. There was an art to making a fake tank appear to be a real, hidden tank–especially in the dark, when it was impossible to stand back and eyeball the setup to determine if it looked real and also remained just visible enough to be spotted by an alert enemy.

It was a delicate business, because they could not camouflage the tank too well. Yet if the tank were too visible, it would arouse the suspicions of the Germans. So they would try to simulate some of the errors that real tankers might commit in the field:
- Leaving some of the barrel sticking out.
- Leaving a gas can exposed.
- Draping the net loosely to show the shape of the tank underneath.
Of course, the ironic and very surreal thing was that these rubber inflatable tanks were so at odds with everything else going on:

What are we really seeing, and why is it there? What could be more absurd than an inflated rubber object on a battlefield? The camoufleurs called them “balloons” or even “rubber ducks.” recogining the joke. The inflated tanks were toys, more suitable for a child’s playground than a killing zone.
July 13, 2009
Hindenburg “A” Deck Cutaway

One of the best, and cheapest, books that I have ever had about the Hindenburg is called Hindenburg: an Illustrated History, by Rick Archbold, with paintings by Ken Marschall. The art is too beautiful to even talk about in this space. But because one interest of Invisible Themepark is cutaways, let’s look at one cutaway drawing of the “A” Deck of the Hindenburg.

The Hindenburg’s Cabins

On the “A” Deck were 25 passenger cabins that had two beds apiece, in bunk-like fashion. The walls between the cabins were fairly thin, just foam and a layer of fabric. The cabins could be quite noisy if you had a loud tenant in the adjoining room. Unlike the outer cabins in a cruise ship, none of these cabins in the Hindenburg had windows. The cabins were not a space where you spent a lot of time. Most time was spent in the more spacious public rooms.

Public Spaces: Promenade, Dining, Lounge, and Reading Room

On either side of the “A” Deck were promenades where passengers could sit or stand while looking out at the angled windows to the ground or clouds moving below. On one side was the large six-table dining room, hardly the cramped, all-purpose public area found earlier in the Graf Zeppelin.

On the other side was another big lounge complete with an aluminum piano. Two men could easily move the piano because it was made of pigskin-covered aluminum and weighed less than 400 pounds. For a greater sense of quiet and peace, the reading and writing room provided a small library, two writing desks, a mailbox, and stationary.

The main thing that distinguished the Hindenburg’s public places from that of other airship: space.

July 12, 2009
The Moto Ritz Towers, 1937

Bruce McCall is the patron saint of secret infrastructure. His book, Zany Afternoons, is one of my most highly valued books. For some odd reason, most of my favorite books were on sale in the bargain bin at bookstores. This one was a mere ten bucks at Barnes & Noble.

While there are too many great Bruce McCall drawings/comics to list, one of my favorite series of drawings is called “New York, Once Upon a Time”. He talks about a parallel universe of New York architecture that never was and never could have been.

There is the Ironing Board Building, instead of the very-real Flatiron Building. There is the Fifth Avenue Line Subway, 1901, which I believe has some vague connection to reality. And then of course there was the time that a portion of Central Park was turned into Jimmy Walker Metropolitan Airfield, back in 1931. Or how about Canal Street, 1934, which had a real canal in front, complete with ferry-trolleys plying the waterways. Of course, Canal Street did have to be drained in 1939 as a precaution against Nazi subs.

The Moto Ritz Towers in 1937 is one of my favorite. As McCall puts it:

Theater people had most of the top floors. They partied continuously. Coming up late at night was hell, you knew some of them were up there somewhere, on the way down. Woe betide the tenant whose driver was yellow. We had nothing but bad luck with ours. One of them–an ex-aviator, if you can imagine–would get halfway up, stop and vomit. Even when it wasn’t foggy. You often just left your car down on the street and took a taxi; those people would do anything for money. The ghoulish publicity after that first bad ice storm virtually forced the city to tear the roadway out. As a compromise there was talk at the time about guard rails. We didn’t want guard rails. The absence of guard rails, wasn’t that the whole and entire point?

July 11, 2009