3460 SINGAPORE (Central Region) - Chinatown

3460 Old shop houses in the heart of Chinatown and towering skyscrapers
in the central business district at the background.

Chinese Singaporeans constituted 76.2% of the country's citizens, making them the largest ethnic group in Singapore. Outside Greater China, Singapore is the only country in the world where people of Chinese descent constitute a majority of the population and are well represented in all levels of Singaporean society, politically and economically. Located within the Outram district in the Central Area, Chinatown is considerably less of an enclave than it once was. However, the precinct does retain significant historical and cultural significance.

3458 SINGAPORE (Central Region) - Boat Quay on Singapore River

3458 Boat Quay on Singapore River with OCBC Centre in background

The Singapore River is approximately 3.2 kilometers long, runs parallel to Alexandra Road, through Singapore's central business district, and feeds into the Marina Reservoir in the southern part of the city. At one time, Singapore River was the very lifeblood of the colony, the trade artery, the center of commercial activity, the heart of entrepot trade, and the vessel of importance. Some parts of this area include quays such as Boat Quay, situated upstream from the mouth of the river.

0019, 3441, 3449 SINGAPORE (Central Region) - Raffles Place

0019 Raffles Place in Singapore - Merlion, Fullerton Hotel,
and skyscrapers in the business centre (1)

Located in the Downtown Core within the Central Area, Raffles Place is the centre of the Financial District of Singapore and is located south of the mouth of the Singapore River. It was first planned and developed in the 1820s as Commercial Square to serve as the hub of the commercial zone of Singapore in Raffles Town Plan. It was renamed Raffles Place in 1858 and now features some of the tallest buildings and landmarks of the country.

3441 Raffles Place in Singapore by night

The Merlion statue (8.6m hight), made by Lim Nang Seng in 1972, was placed in Merlion Park. Designed by Fraser Brunner in 1964 for the logo of the Singapore Tourism Board, this symbol of Singapore is a mythical creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish. The body of the statue is made of cement, skin from porcelain plates and eyes from red teacups.

3449 Raffles Place in Singapore - Merlion, Fullerton Hotel,

and skyscrapers in the business centre (2)

The highest six buildings that are visible in the back in the postcard 0019 are, from left to right: Hitachi Tower (179m - completed in 1992), Republic Plaza (280m - completed in 1995), Singapore Land Tower (190m - completed in 1980), One Raffles Place (280m - completed in 1986), Maybank Tower (175m - completed in 2001), and United Overseas Bank Plaza / UOB Plaza (280m - completed in 1995).

1397-1400, 3432 UNITED STATES (Illinois) - Chicago Skyscrapers

3432 Chicago skyline dominated by John Hancock Center

In the 1770s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable established a fur trading post in the area which later became known as Fort Dearborn, along the bank of the Chicago River. In 1837, the settlement had a little more than 3,500 inhabitants and was incorporated as a city. Located near a portage between the Great Lakes and the  Mississippi River watershed, Chicago emerged as an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States, becoming the fastest growing city in the world for several decades. 

1397 Downtown Chicago with Northwestern Train Station,
Presidential Towers and Willis Tower

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the American economy was transformed by the industrial revolution, in which the city of Chicago was its leader, becoming America's second largest city and a leading industrial center. The Great Chicago Fire, which destroyed most buildings within the downtown area, led to the largest building boom in the history of the nation. In 1885, the first steel-framed high-rise building, the Home Insurance Building, rose in the city as Chicago ushered in the skyscraper era.

1397 Chicago skyline seen from the Chicago River

Moreover, the city gave its name to the Chicago School and was home to the Prairie School, two movements in architecture, being able to say that the architecture of Chicago has influenced and reflected the history of American architecture. Numerous architects have constructed landmark buildings of varying styles in city. Some of these are the so-called "Chicago seven":  James Ingo Freed, Tom Beeby, Larry Booth, Stuart Cohen, James Nagle, Stanley Tigerman, and Ben Weese. Today, the city's skyline is among the world's tallest and most dense.

1399 Willis Tower

Willis Tower (known also as Sears Tower) is a 108-story, 442m skyscraper completed in 1973. It surpassed the World Trade Center towers in New York to become the tallest building in the world, a title held for nearly 25 years. Its innovative design, structurally efficient and economic, inspired by an advertisement for a package of cigarettes, was realised by the architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, who used for the first time bundled tube structure. The tower's observation deck (the Skydeck), located on the 103rd floor, is 412m high and is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Chicago.

1400 Willis Tower and Wacker Drive

Presidential Towers is a series of four nearly identical towers with 49 storeys (141m), each a step back from the leader, and spanning two city blocks. Designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates and built between 1985 and 1986, it was one of the pioneering residential projects in the River West neighborhood, an area that was once seen as nothing more than a ramshackle collection of old brick warehouses. 333 West Wacker Drive is an office building with a height of 149m, designed by Kohn Pederson Fox Associates and completed in 1983. On the side facing the Chicago River, the building features a curved green glass façade, while on the other side the building adheres to the usual rectangular street grid.

0028, 0568, 3346 MALAYSIA (Kuala Lumpur) - Petronas Twin Towers

0028 Night image of the Petronas Towers

Posted on 06.11.2011, 22.03.2013, 10.01.2020

Petronas Twin Towers from Kuala Lumpur, erected between 1995 and 1998, were the tallest world’s building from 1998 to 2004 until surpassed by Taipei 101 and has remained until today the tallest twin buildings. The towers have 88 floors each, of which 78 served by elevators, a maximum height of 452 m (up to the roof top antenna), and the top floor height is 375 m. Taken together, the two buildings have office area of 1 million square meters, 93,000 square meters are for those 270 stores, cinemas and fast-foods, and in addition was arranged a concert hall with 840 seats and an art gallery.

0568 Petronas Towers, with Kuala Lumpur Tower and Vista Tower

As regards the costs, I found several amounts, from 0.5 billion to 1.6 billion USD. The initiators of the project were a consortium of private investors in association with the Malaysian government and Petronas, the national oil company. The main problem met by the Argentine architect Cesar Pelli and his team was unstable ground (not rightly in Malay Kuala Lumpur literally means "muddy confluence"), so towers are also the building with the deepest foundation from the world, which dealt Bachy Soletanche, a large geotechnical company from England. Somewhat strangely, the two towers were built by two different companies, both from South Korea, creating a competition between them.

3346 Petronas Towers at Titiwangsa Lake Garden

Petronas Towers were designed to symbolize strength and grace and principles are based on typical Islamic architecture, first the cross section based on a Rub el Hizb - a star with eight arms, but also steel and glass facade that imitate the Malay traditional motifs with curved arches reminding of temple towers. The towers can be visited up to floor 41, where is the Sky Bridge that links it, and the curious can cross the bridge, but can’t linger on it longer than 10 minutes. The famous French urban climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert wasn’t satisfied with an ordinary visit and escalated the towers in 2009, using only his bare hands and feet, after two other failed attempts due to police intervention in 1997 and 2007 .

2702-2704, 3232 UNITED STATES (New York) - Manhattan

2702 Manhattan (1)

Posted on 21.08.2016, 02.01.2018
Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the city's historical birthplace. It consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the East, Hudson, and Harlem Rivers, and also includes several small adjacent islands and Marble Hill, a small neighborhood on the U.S. mainland. It is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters.

2703 Manhattan (2)

Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world. Historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626, for 60 guilders (1050 USD today). Manhattan real estate has since become among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed 3 trillion USD in 2013.

2704 Manhattan (3)

Many districts and landmarks in Manhattan have become well known, as New York City received a record of nearly 60 million tourists in 2015, and Manhattan hosts three of the world's 10 most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal. The borough hosts many world-renowned bridges and skyscrapers such as the Empire State Building. The City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the City's Government. 

3232 Bird's-Eye View of Manhattan / 1891 

The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. From 1890 to 1973, the world's tallest building was in Manhattan, with nine different buildings holding the title. The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At 417 and 415m, the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972, until they were surpassed by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974. One World Trade Center is currently the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

2901 UNITED STATES (California) - Downtown San Francisco

San Francisco's Downtown area saves the city from being seen simply as a series of villages. With a high concentration of cultural attractions and a substantial shopping district, its cosmopolitan character exceeds its modest size, yet the compact urban center is easy navigate on foot. To the east, the Financial District has been San Francisco's business and banking hub since the 1849 Gold Rush. The area is marked by the cluster of high-rise towers in the triangular area east of Kearny Street, south of Washington Street, west of the Embarcadero that rings the waterfront, and north of Market Street.

2834 CANADA (Quebec) - Architecture of Montreal

Historically the commercial capital of Canada, Montreal was surpassed in population and economic strength by Toronto only in the 1970s, and this is reflected in buildings inherited, that today provides an invaluable insight into the city's history, especially in the downtown area and the Old Port area. Therefore Montreal is an old, but a very modern city, and the modern buildings are situated right next to some of the oldest and most fascinating structures.

2802 UNITED STATES (New York) - Line 7 of New York City Subway

2802 New York City Subway - A train made up of R62As cars in 7
service entering Queensboro Plaza, bound for Flushing-Main Street

New York City -Empire State Building

Within the nomenclature of the subway, the "line" describes the physical railroad track or series of tracks that a train "route" uses on its way from one terminal to another. In the subway system of New York City, "routes" (also called "services") are distinguished by a letter or a number and "lines" have names. In this system, there are 24 train services. Each route has a color and a local or express designation representing the Manhattan trunk line of the particular service.

0990-0995, 1009, 1422-1423, 1540, 2575, 2701 UNITED STATES (New York) - The bridges in New York City

0990 Brooklyn Bridge & Downtown Manhattan

Posted on 26.01.2014, 21.02.2014, 28.01.2015, 25.04.2015, 25.05.2016, 21.08.2016
New York City is home to over 2,000 bridges and tunnels, some of which were premieres or set records. For example the Holland Tunnel was the world's first vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927, and the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, George Washington, and Verrazano-Narrows bridges were the world's longest suspension bridges when were opened in 1883, 1903, 1931, and 1964 respectively. The first bridge in New York, King's Bridge, was constructed in 1693, over Spuyten Duyvil Creek between Manhattan and the Bronx.

0991 Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan

Now the oldest crossing still standing is High Bridge, which connects Manhattan to the Bronx over the Harlem River. On the other hand, the George Washington, High Bridge, Hell Gate, Queensboro, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Macombs Dam, Carroll Street, University Heights and Washington bridges have all received landmark status. New York features bridges of all lengths and types, carrying everything from cars, trucks and subway trains to pedestrians and bicycles.

1009 Brooklyn Bridge - View from the pedestrian walkway

 

The George Washington Bridge, spanning the Hudson River between New York City and Fort Lee (New Jersey), is the world's busiest bridge in terms of vehicular traffic, but also, togheter with Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge, is considered among the most beautiful in the world. Others are more well known for their functional importance such as the Williamsburg Bridge, which has two heavy rail transit tracks, eight traffic lanes and a pedestrian sidewalk.

0992 Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan

The Brooklyn Bridge stretches 1.825m over the East River, connecting  Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension, is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, and also the first steel-wire suspension bridge constructed. Designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, it was completed in 1883, and has become in a short time an icon of New York City. The architectural style is Neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the towers, built of limestone, granite blocks (quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine), and Rosendale cement.

1422 Brooklyn Bridge silhouetted
by a glittering downtown New York skyline at dusk

Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Its paint scheme is "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver", although it has been argued that the original paint was "Rawlins Red". Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The bridge originally carried horse-drawn and rail traffic, with a separate elevated walkway along the centerline for pedestrians and bicycles. Since 1950, the main roadway has carried six lanes of automobile traffic.

2701 Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan in 2013

 

A bronze plaque is attached to one of the bridge's anchorages, which was constructed on a piece of property occupied by a mansion, the Osgood House, at 1 Cherry Street in Manhattan. It served as the first Presidential Mansion, housing George Washington, his family, and household staff from April 23, 1789 to February 23, 1790, during the two-year period when New York City was the national capital. The centennial celebrations on May 24, 1983, saw a cavalcade of cars crossing the bridge, led by President Ronald Reagan. In 2006, a Cold War-era bunker was found by city workers in the Manhattan tower. The bunker, hidden within the masonry anchorage, still contained the emergency supplies that were being stored for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.

1540 Manhattan Bridge in black and white

The Manhattan Bridge is the last of the three suspension bridges built across the lower East River (following the Brooklyn and the Williamsburg bridges), connecting Lower Manhattan (at Canal Street) with with Downtown Brooklyn (at the Flatbush Avenue Extension). The main span is 448 m long, with the suspension cables being 983 m long (its total length is 2,089 m). Nearly 80,000 vehicles and more than 320,000 people use it (via public transportation) each day. 

0993 Manhattan Bridge at twilight

First bridge to be built based on deflection theory, a radical engineering theory at the time, and also the first suspension bridge to utilize a Warren truss in its design, it is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges and this design served as the model for many of the long-span suspension bridges built in the first half of the 20th century. It has four vehicle lanes on the upper level, split between two roadways. Four subway tracks are located on the lower deck of the bridge. The original pedestrian walkway on the south side of the bridge was reopened after forty years in June 2001.

1423 Manhattan Bridge, looking up
 Berenice Abbott / gelatine silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Designed by Leon Moisseiff (1872-1943), who later designed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (that collapsed in 1940), it was opened on December 31, 1909, and is noted for its innovative design. A year later, Carrère and Hastings drew up preliminary plans for an elaborate grand entry to the bridge on the Manhattan side (in Chinatown), as part of the "City Beautiful" movement. The arch and colonnade were completed in 1915, and the decoration includes pylons sculpted by Carl A. Heber and a frieze called "Buffalo Hunt" by Charles Rumsey. On the Brooklyn side, the bridge ends in the popular neighborhood DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). After many years of neglect and several attempts by traffic engineers to remove the structure, the arch and colonnade were repaired and restored in 2000.

0994 Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

 

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge that connects the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn, marking the gateway to New York Harbor. It is named for both the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (the first European to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River), and for the body of water it spans: the Narrows. It has a central span of 1,298m, and was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its completion in 1964. Its massive towers can be seen throughout a good part of the New York metropolitan area, and all cruise ships and most container ships arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey must pass underneath it.

0995 Queensboro Bridge & Midtown Manhattan
(aerial view from the south)

The Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge) is a double cantilever bridge over the East River, which connects the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens with the Upper East Side of Manhattan, passing over Roosevelt Island. The plans were finished in 1903 and construction soon began, but lasted until 1909 to be completed, due to delays from the collapse of an incomplete span during a windstorm and from labor unrest (including an attempt to dynamite one span).

2575 Queensboro Bridge & Midtown Manhattan
(aerial view from the north)

 

The bridge doesn't have suspended spans, so the cantilever arm from each side reaches to the midpoint of the span. Until it was surpassed by the Quebec Bridge in 1917, the span between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island was the longest cantilever span in North America. In December 2010, the bridge was renamed Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge in honor of the former mayor Ed Koch, a decision unpopular among Queens residents and business leaders.