Working on it, but I need some time. I think the basic structure of the room was essentially symmetrical on the east and west ends. That is, center sections with angled sections on either side that then meet the north and south walls. Obviously that's clear for the west wall in the 1981 photo after the old control room has been removed. It's less clear for the east wall, but I believe you can see it in the photos I quoted. Going from the first photo down, counterclockwise: - large air vent on lower section of wall (south wall) - vertical HVAC duct (south wall, right on corner of southeast wall) - double doors (southeast wall) - faux arch (southeast wall) - curtain with parabolic reflectors in front of it (corner of southeast wall and east wall) - parabolic reflectors (east wall) - ladder (corner of east wall and northeast wall) - vertical HVAC duct with large cabinet in front of it (north wall, right on corner of northeast wall) I wish this photo was larger, but we're looking straight on the southeast wall here: That was clearly taken at the same time as the more common 1981 photo. I'd kill for more, higher quality photos from that day. Especially since you can see the rafters and ceiling more clearly than in most shots. Regardless, however, walls on a 45 degree angle in all 4 corners. Also, FYI, the floor boards were angled southwest to northeast.
Yes, to almost all you wrote. Good for you to name the direction of the floorboards, that has helped in trying to identify the studio. The symmetrical-ness of the two ends has been missing for me; you see in the drawing that the NE side has an angle with a door in it; I've never been able to figure out or get an answer about what was behind that door. I was emphatically told by people who were there who agree with each other that there was no passageway on the East wall to all going from the front to the back of the building outside of the studio. The lack of an airspace there is what caused the Eastern neighbors to complain about late night loud sessions in the studio. I also agree with you that Street Scene looks like Liederkranz, although none of the pics show the elaborate balconies there. It's the clock and its spacing above the control room window that does it for me. Too bad, though, that would have added an interesting element to our story. I hope you do get time to do a diagram; it was frustrating to me, and I was thinking maybe a scale drawing by someone who knows how to do such things would make things fit together better.
Looking at some of the photos again today, I have a better idea of proportions and how everything is spaced out. I just need to get some graph paper and some drafting tools or something. Interesting that there's a door in the northeast corner seen in the Gould film, but not in the photos above. Apparently added at some point in the '50s.
Still working on a new floor plan. Hope to have something rough up later tonight. Until then, here's an aerial photo from 1924: http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/?z=10&p=990014,210012&c=GIS1924&s=a:207,EAST+30+STREET,MANHATTAN Not super clear, but you can clearly see the outline of the building, the roof line, the peak in the center of the front, and how far back the studio space was from the front of the building.
Ok, here's what I've got for now: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lukpac/15448629193/ Lots of guesswork on my part. A few general guesses: - That the 3 sections between the 4 main rafters were each 20' long. - That the end and corner walls were each 20' long. With that, you get internal dimensions of 88'x48', which seems roughly right. Again, however, these are all very rough guesses. I pretty much only attempted to map out the main studio space itself. As far as I can tell, the 2 sets of 3 HVAC ducts were directly across from each other. There were a couple of bump-outs on the north wall next to some of the ducts; I think I got their positions right, but it's hard to tell for certain. I also made guesses on the width of the ducts (4' each). From what I can tell, the 2 large air vents (about 5' tall) on the south wall extended between the ducts (or the duct and the southwest wall, in the case of the westernmost vent). I'm not 100% certain, but it seems like the westernmost vent was reduced in size when the door was added for the new control room. Again often hard to see in photos. Everything seems roughly correct to me, but if you see any glaring errors or omissions, please let me know (preferably with photos). Oh, and excuse the quality. I haven't done any drafting for quite some time. Thoughts?
FYI, here you can see the air vents on the south wall (On The Town, 1961): Note how they extend all the way to the HVAC ducts. The one on the right must have been reduced in size when the door to the new control room was added. Here's another shot where you can see the easternmost vent extending to the duct at the corner of the southeast wall:
Whoa. I just stumbled across this: recording Roscoe Mitchell's "The Maze" - 1978 courtesy of Chuck Nessa https://analogmutant.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/interview-with-chuck-nessa-nessa-records/ We're looking at the southwest corner of the studio, and the old control room has been removed. HVAC duct on the far left side of the photo, with the door to the control room open behind an acoustic screen. Apparently this was July 27, 1978, so we know the old control room was removed no later than that. Oh, here's one I haven't seen before from Jim Reeves' site: http://www.reevesaudio.com/vintagesessions.html That's looking east. Note how you can clearly see the angled northeast and southeast walls in that shot, along with some of the rafters.
My educated guess: This is the first volume (Partitas 1-3) but I assume it could as easily be the other one (4-6).
Amazing! This seems to suggest he was doing 5 & 6 at that session: "The recording was made at Columbia’s 30th Street studio in New York City at two sessions in April 1957 and was already being reviewed by the redoubtable critic of The New York Times Harold Schonberg in December. ‘The results are beautiful…Mr Gould can play with considerable dash, and he does when necessary; but the overall impression is one of well balanced plasticity, of piano merging with orchestra and veering out again, of fine ensemble and musical finesse.’ Three months later Gould returned to the Columbia studios to continue with the recording of Bach’s last two Partitas, in G major and E minor. He had begun to record these works in February 1956 as the follow up project to his initial disc of the Goldberg Variations. However, Gould was unsatisfied with these recordings, and a period of four consecutive days in the summer of 1957 was set aside to produce the recordings heard here." http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurb...iletype=About this Recording&language=English
This is an amazing sequence of posts! This aerial shot is most surprising; the front part is way larger than I thought, and it looks like the building goes right to the back property line. You can see the shadows of the two steeples! The stairway to the upstairs and basement must be within the front part and not behind the old control room like I thought. And it's easy to see why the neighbors would complain about noisy sessions; the entire studio save one wall is totally exposed to neighbors and adjacent to their buildings/bedrooms. Wow, you've done some incredible work! This changes a lot!
One thing that's been bothering me: We know the floor boards ran from southwest to northeast. But look at these photos from Kiss Me Kate in January 1949, the first session we've seen photos from: Cole Porter (Photo: Eileen Darby/Graphic House) Cole Porter (Photo: Eileen Darby/Graphic House) I'm nearly certain Porter is sitting in front of the old control room, with that mystery door in the background next to the coat rack. But...the floor boards are parallel to the wall. Which would mean they were running south to north. Was new flooring laid when other work was done in early 1949? That seems crazy, but I'm nearly certain that's the old control room wall he's in front of, as there wasn't anywhere else in the studio that looked like that.
You're quite right, it is a mystery. These people, who were there at the time, couldn't figure it out, either. I believe they are actually watching the floorboards change their orientation. It's the only possible explanation for their focus. And if that's the only thing you can't figure out, you have a pretty good handle on the situation.
Thoughts: 1) This is wonderful. 2) I'm going to guess that the spacing between the rafters must have been wider, given that the property is 100' wide and it looks like the building goes full width or nearly so. 3) That Northeast door really is a mystery. Is this a straight-on shot of it, from My Fair Lady? It looks to be inset in one of those air handling things, and it looks like more of a window than a door. Odd 4) My guess about those "Door To?"'s on the West side would be equipment storage: mic cables, portable rollup dance floors, etc. Frank talked about mic lockers being on the North side of the studio, but I haven't seen pictures of anything that jumps out to me as that. 5) The door entering the old control room was at the back of the room, so that indicates some kind of stairway zig-zagging from the floor entry door. The GG video shows a door on the opposite end of the control room that is sometimes open and sometimes closed, with what looks like tape boxes and that kind of thing in it. You are doing wonderful things.
Possibly, although it doesn't seem out of the question to me that 12' could be accounted for by the thickness of the walls themselves as well as any space on either side of the property. We know there was a gap on the west end of the property; which side of the property line that fell (falls) on is a question. Nope, look at the floor. That isn't an HVAC duct, it's some sort of baffle or possibly cabinet on wheels. And there definitely seems to be a door closer in the upper left corner. Photos are a bit hard to come by of that area, but here's one from West Side Story, looking directly east: Larry Kert lying down in the foreground, Mickey Calin at the microphone. To Calin's left is Hank Brunjes and to the right, Grover Dale and David Winters. Recording "Cool" You can see the door on the northeast wall, and to the left of it is wainscoting on the lower portion of the wall and a curtain above. That extends at least 6' to the left of the door. You can also see this a bit in the Gould film when he's taking a drink of the cheap liquor before the third movement. I *think* this is the same doorway (although possibly not the same door), from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Yvonne Adair and a card game (Photo: Graphic House) That is to say, that seems to be the only place that photo could be. Does this mean the door was added in 1949, and the photos we were discussing earlier are from earlier in 1949, since it doesn't look like the door was present? Again, my best guess is it was basically an emergency exit, although odd that it didn't have a crash bar. That seems likely. "Storage". Presumably the stairs went up right from the door to the studio, and ended at a landing where you'd turn right to get into the control room. Also, regarding the west air vent, previously I mentioned that it must have been reduced in size when the door to the new control room was added. Well, it looks like it was just moved to the west a few feet. Here's a photo you posted: Note how it doesn't extend all the way into the corner. But we can see in later shots (such as the one from 1978) that it does. So, just moved to the west a few feet after the new control room was built.
Also revisiting this: Yes, 100% sure they are coming out of the double doors at the southwest corner of the studio. In the first shot you can see that door immediately to the left, that goes back into the storage area next to the old control room. And in the third shot the wall to the front of the old control room is just beyond the left edge of the frame, and the door to the stairs to the old control room is open.
Heh. I was really, really confused looking at this photo from The Sound of Music: The door to the control room steps is much farther away from the control room window than is usual, and the ladder is right about where the double doors would be. Did the door move at some point? What's going on? Finally I figured it out: the image is flipped. We're not looking at the southwest corner, we're looking at the northwest corner.
Dan! I just happened to be looking at your Flickr collection directly, and came across this from The Pajama Game, which I don't think you've posted here (yet?): There's the door on the northeast wall, and it's *open*. Hard to tell exactly what's there, but it doesn't appear to be a door to outside, rather some sort of closet/storage. Almost looks like a coat rack, but it really isn't clear enough to say for certain. That would explain why there's never an exit sign above it. Oh, and I'm nearly certain I was previously wrong about that door *not* being there originally. That was what I said when looking at this photo: I was thinking the door was more to the right, but it appears as if you can see the right side of the door frame (door appears to be open again) immediately to the right of George Szell. So presumably that storage area (?) was always there. I see you've also got this nice shot of the southeast corner of the studio: Goddard looks ready, but there's nobody around... At any rate, you can clearly see the faux arch and double doors on the southeast wall. Unrelated to any of our recent talk about the room layout is this photo of the control room: Worth noting because those are 2 Ampex 350 stereo machines from the brief period between the mono-only era and the 3-track era. Presumably there were also some Ampex mono machines out of sight as there were in the 3-track era. Here's the 3-track era as seen in the Gould film: Ampex 300 mono on the far left with "bathtub" electronics, 2 Ampex 300-3 machines with 350 electronics behind the woman, and presumably another Ampex 300 mono to the right of the (open) door in the background.
Minor floor plan update: Narrowed down the removal date for the old control room and corrected the door in the northeast corner.
Another wrench to add to the story. I went back and looked at the New York Philharmonic book some more, and it turns out that December 1948 session was produced by none other than Goddard Lieberson. So I guess that blows a hole in the theory that he didn't work in the studio until after the changes were made in early 1949. I still wonder if the "don't mess with it" edict (whatever that was) was from Lieberson, not Mitch Miller. If we could prove that the old control room wasn't removed until after he retired, I would say that would be very likely (as that was a major change, and it seems other "fixes" were made around that time too).
The gap was and is on the West side of the property line. It's still there, and is access to a house/apartment that is kind of hidden from view and seems to be only accessible via this gap, or maybe from within a building facing third. When I was there in 2012 I talked to a custodian/Super from the building on the corner of Third (where the Banc restaurant is now and a bar that musicians hung out in then) who came out of that house to the gate at 30th St and I asked him about it. It does look like there is a gap of some sort on the East side, but I'm not sure about 12' worth. Hard to tell, though; buildings there in NYC generally do go from property line to property line with no passage between. This is from 2012 The fence is all that is left of the studio days, although it's been modified a bit. Much of the verticals are the same as then. Not sure about the garbage can space. Here's a larger version of my avatar from On The Record Looks like they made the garbage can area bigger, although it could have been that they truncated the curving anti-reach through plate and just changed the right side to a flat-floor garbage can area with a gate. The The top of the vertical post next to the door lock is the same then and now, except the then-visible one is gone and we're seeing the one actually next to the gate. The forbidding curving points at the top of the stiles are new. Yes, I studied the fence for a while and took many pictures. Boy, I don't know about that being a cabinet in that My Fair Lady shot. As you say, it looks like there is a door closer in the upper left. To me it looks in that picture that I posted like a window inset in a wall, with some stuff on shelves left and right in front of the window. But why would there be a door closer on that? Maybe it's the same door with some stuff in front of it at the bottom? Definitely a baffle to the left of it. And that door in the West Side Story pic has an aluminum frame around it with a bar in the middle (not a crash bar, seemingly) to my eye. The door in the GG video looks like the same door? The door in the Pajama Game pic that you posted has a mortised handle/lock, definitely not an aluminum-framed one. (Cool that you posted those; made me laugh and more impressed with your observation powers.) Not sure GG was drinking cheap liquor; bottled water? Picture? And you mention Mickey Calin; that's Michael Callan who was in Cat Ballou and lots of other projects. Wondering when I was going to get to mention that. Definitely was "Mickey Calin" in his early years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Callan In thinking about it, I was assuming that the floor of the control room was higher than about 4', which is what I think it is now. So that would be about 6 steps? The door is at the back of the control room, and the control room looks like it's about 6'-8' from the door to the front of the booth? Would they start the steps next to the door? I have a doorway at the bottom of steps in my house, and it was too easy to whack your head on it; we moved the steps the maximum possible away from the door (about a foot), and it's much harder to hit your head. If it's an 8' distance that might be enough to have a little landing at the bottom and miss hitting your head. I did ask Frank about it and thought he said something about a zig zag and used that for my understanding, but maybe I misinterpreted. Definitely not much space in there for zigzagging stairs along with a storage space through another door.
Not sure. Regardless, everything was really rough anyway; 20' for each section seemed like a nice round number. Perhaps somebody else here is better at estimating measurements. Was there definitely no corridor on the west side either? Even if I'm off by ~12', though, I'm not sure where that should be made up. Maybe the walls and sections are closer to 22'? Not really sure. It's too bad those building documents you found only list occupancy (however questionable), not dimensions. Unless/until we get something more concrete, though, I think what I have mapped out is probably "close enough". I'd rather not completely redo it unless we find out something definitive. It's definitely not the HVAC duct. There's a gap between the floor and the bottom of it, and we can see in the other photos that there's a good 6' between the door and the HVAC duct. Whether it's a screen or a cabinet, I don't know. I haven't spent too much time pondering it. Hence my earlier comment "the same doorway (although possibly not the same door)". Definitely appears that the door was replaced at some point. Not sure what you mean by "window inset in a wall". What window inset in what wall? It appears the newer door may have had a window in the upper half, with a white sign or something near the top. Heh. I initially didn't know what you were talking about, but then I realized it was the photo caption. I just took that from the Masterworks site. Is it possible the "zig zag" he was talking about was regarding getting in the *new* control room? Did he ever mention anything about there being two control rooms? Or the removal of the old one in the '70s? FYI, at least thus far I've pretty much ignored anything that can't be seen from the floor of the studio itself. We can obviously see a bit in the control rooms, but there's a lot that's still a black box. Storage rooms, hallways, etc. While I'd love to know more, I hesitate to speculate too much.
Yes, agreed that you should leave it as is until we get/you find new information. I do think you should put your name and a date on it so future generations know where the Official Floor Plan came from. That picture in post #358 from My Fair Lady (1956) looks to me like a doorway with no door going to a short hallway with (at the back of it) an aluminum frame window at the top with a reflection in it, and a black area below that with some miscellaneous crap intruding into the black area from the left and right: a short baffle behind a tall baffle on the left, and some stuff within the possible hallway intruding in from the right. The right side of the doorway frame is visible, then some more baffles or something to the right of that. The door closer at the top left seems to dispel that view, though, so I suppose it's a door with a window in it but not an aluminum door like in the GG (1959) and WSS (1957) pics. Pajama Game (1954) door was completely different but could be the same door as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949). Since we've seen that the studio was under construction during the My Fair Lady session, maybe they are changing it at that moment from the Pajama Game door to the door that would be visible in West Side Story and we're seeing some point in the transition? No, it was about the old control room, and I may have misunderstood that it wasn't a direct route. That's fine for you to focus on what's not visible from the floor, but we do have an idea of the inside of the control rooms and their dimensions, we know there's a guard station near the West entrance and a stairway up and down over there somewhere, there's a Horowitz room on the other end of the building, there's a sacristy/Studio D between the West double doors and the new control room, a hallway behind the new control room of some sort, etc. I'm completely excited to think that there is so much more to the front part of the building than I thought, and that maybe someday we'll find out what it was. I think we know there was a basement under the front part of the building with a Control Men's Lounge, an echo chamber, and a furnace. Coal deliveries during the coal era would have been from the street, with considerable storage space? I wonder if there was a basement under the studio part? That would make a huge basement; what was it used for over the years? Somewhere there must have been significant bathrooms; where? I've been told by someone who saw them once that the upstairs offices were at one point used as office/cubicle furniture mock-ups, to show different layouts, with no more verbal detail. That upstairs area is now quite a bit larger than I'd thought. What else was up there? That source didn't know about any other usage, and Frank claimed he never went up there in 30 years. The aerial view you found cleared up a lot of confusion for me; I never could understand how the peaked roof in front related to the interior views of the studio that we had, and seeing the East-West roofline of the studio in the aerial view totally clears that up. They weren't related at all! My view of the studio and its history has changed several times in the last few months and that's been pretty fun; today has been a new day in understanding thanks to you. Nice work!!
No idea on specifics, but presumably there must have been something more than just a slab under the studio space, considering the HVAC ducts on the north wall. That is, 1) it's unlikely there was any sort of air handling system beyond the north wall, 2) what appear to be air intake vents are only on the south wall, corroborating #1, and 3) with that in mind, the ducts would have had to connect with an air handler either under the studio space or in the basement of the south portion of the building. Again, no idea on details, but there was certainly considerable space in the front of the building. What, maybe 40ish feet deep by roughly 100 feet wide, across 3 stories? Lots of room. And again, hard to say not knowing more details, but I'm a bit surprised they never tried to turn parts of the second and third floors into studio space.
I don't have anything to really add to this amazing thread, you guys are blowing my mind. Keep up the great work. I did want to chime in on the photo styles though. The difference in photographic technique were part necessity because of slow film stocks, but there were also pragmatic reasons. The strong contrast and separation between people and the backgrounds because of that direct light was very beneficial in reproduction. Most of these shots were intended to be used for promotion in some way, so they'd end up in newspapers or magazines or trade journals, etc. Printing back then was pretty lousy at best, so the more open 'natural' photos had a hard time popping on the muddy newsprint. It really was simply part of the 'style' of that era. Things were changing stylistically by the 50s.. In the 30s-40s CBS and other labels would be using studio photographers who worked well under controlled situations. I'd bet many of those images were more setups than not, probably before or after sessions. Many of them have that same "let's all look at the music score together and smile" vibe that's charming at best, trite at worst. There were faster film stocks available in the 40s. Kodak's Double-X IIRC was rated at around 100 asa and often pushed to 200 or 400. They looked fine in medium and large format but were too rough for 35mm (I wonder if they were even available in 35mm). Double-X I believe was a favorite with press photographers in their iconic Speed Graphics, and some of those 40s-era stills look very similar to that style. Big flash, black background. It was safer to stage and light these kind of shots for publicity usage. By the 50s the LIFE style of documentary photography was becoming very popular, and fine German cameras by Leica and Contax were easily available. A serious armature like Plaut was probably thrilled to be able to shoot real candid, natural images of his work. Kodak's legendary Tri-X was also introduced in 1954 and I wouldn't be surprised that many of his shots after that were made with that film. A guy like Don Hunstein could switch between carefully-lit studio work and candid documentary work with ease. A real master. I love the pictures and information you guys are digging up! dan c
