General Bronze Corporation

General Bronze Corporation was founded as a reorganization of the John Polachek Bronze and Iron Company, founded in 1910 by John Polachek, a Hungarian immigrant. Tiffany Glass Studios, made famous by Louis C. Tiffany commonly referred to his product as favrile glass or "Tiffany glass," and used bronze in their artisan work for his Tiffany lamps. The new company became known as the General Bronze Corporation. In 1934, General Bronze Corporation was the largest company in the architectural bronze industry in the United States, employing a combined total of 1,200 workers from General Bronze, Renaissance Bronze and Iron Works, and Tiffany Studios with assets over $5 million. He became general manager after the company's founding, and served as president from 1931 to 1959, remaining active as chairman of the board until the end of 1960. Although General Bronze's division for manufacturing aluminum windows for the American construction industry climbed after World War II, they suffered enormous financial losses and other failed projects including the loss of existing contracts with metal fabrication partners. This occurred simultaneously with the waning use of architectural bronze and the failed attempts to secure a bid for both the Arecibo Radio Telescope and the Green Bank Telescope in Green Bank, WV. The company slowly rebounded by the early 1960s, but never regained its former status. General Bronze was eventually acquired by Allied Products Corporation of Chicago in 1967, a company which was once owned by Jay Pritzker, the uncle of present Illinois governor JB Pritzker. ==General Bronze Subsidiaries==

Bronze art '' in the International Building's plaza The General Bronze Corporation, with the acquisition of the Roman Bronze Works, became the primary company behind many of America's most famous buildings and sculptures. Early man has used bronze throughout history. In the ancient Mayan, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ruins, bronze tools, instruments, statues, and weapons has always been found in an almost perfect state of preservation. Roman Bronze Works The General Bronze Corporation became the leader of the most famous bronze sculptures of the 20th Century, most notably after its acquisition of the Roman Bronze Works. The Roman Bronze Works "had seen many of America's greatest sculptors." General Bronze's newly purchased foundry produced “virtually all of the sculpture for Rockefeller Center, numerous national monuments, and many sculptures for the W.P.A, in addition to its usual complement of private commissions." The Roman Bronze works excelled in the lost-wax casting method and permitted large works to be cast in one piece. Most of the sculptures at Rockefeller Center, like the statues of Prometheus and Atlas, were cast at the Corona, Queens building. ==Gallery==

File:"Youth" bronze sculpture by Paul Manship, on the left — top of the stairs leading down to the sunken plaza, designed by Manship to "announce" Prometheus.jpg|"Youth" bronze sculpture by Paul Manship, on the left top of the stairs leading down to the ice skating rink, designed by Manship to "announce" Prometheus. File:Manship Maiden with Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree 2014.JPG|Paul Manship "Maiden" flanks right side of staircase. File:RPC0058.jpg|A promenade fountain by Rene Paul Chambellan at Rockefeller Center. File:Chocolate Nereid jeh (1).jpg|Nereid by Chambellan File:Atlas - Flickr - Peter Kaminski.jpg|Atlas File:Prometheus Rockefeller Center.jpg|Prometheus, Rockefeller Center NYC Early on, the Roman Bronze Works’ use of the lost-wax casting technique, was eyed by Polachek as he once worked there. “By 1901, Tiffany was at the peak of his profession. But Tiffany's glass fell out of favor in the 1910s, and by the 1920s a foundry had been installed for a separate bronze company. In 1932 Tiffany Studios filed for bankruptcy. Ownership of the complex passed back to the Roman Bronze Works, which had served as a subcontractor to Tiffany in prior years.” In 1948, General Bronze relinquished ownership of the Roman Bronze Works foundry and was brought back under family control rather than remaining corporate. General Bronze Corporation sold off the subsidiary to a family member of a prior employee of the Roman Bronze Works to the Schiavo family, who had once been employed by Roman Bronze Works. Another example of the massive, ornate design projects attributed to General Bronze/Roman Bronze Works were the massive doors to the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC. ==Architectural Bronze and Metals==

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the federal government required metal for use in the war effort. General Bronze Corporation began assisting in the manufacture of weapons, such as machine gun emplacements. Upon its founding, General Bronze Corporation was one of the largest metal fabricators in New York City. Seagram Building viewed from across Park Avenue at 52nd Street The Seagram Building on New York City's Park Avenue remains the "iconic glass box sheathed in bronze, designed by Mies van der Rohe." To supply the demand for bronze required for the construction, the General Bronze Corporation fabricated 3,200,000 pounds (1,600 tons) at its plant in Garden City, New York. Another interesting fact was that New York City's zoning laws were reconfigured for the Seagram Building, so that setbacks were no longer required. "This proved to be a no-setback building but a building all set back," since the entire building was set back 100 feet from Park Avenue. "Bronze was selected because of its color, both before and after aging, its corrosion resistance, and its extrusion properties." This produced the desired design by Mies van der Rohe. It was not only the most expensive building of its time — $36 million — but it was the first building in the world with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. General Bronze Corporation manufactured and supplied the building with 5400 individual windows, spandrel frames, louvers, and architectural metalwork since at that time it was the world's largest fabricator of aluminum and other non-ferrous metals. The land had been donated by the Rockefeller family, the old slaughterhouse district along the East River bordered by First Avenue between East 41st and East 47th Streets. The East River site for the U.N, extending some 1500 feet from 42nd to 48th Streets, from First Avenue to the edge of the East River, had a "sufficient scale for applying the fundamental elements of modern urbanism, sunlight, and verdure. General Bronze assured that the "aluminum panels would be recessed flush with the inside faces of the huge (2-foot, 10-inch by 4-foot, 11-inch) aluminum-sheathed columns." The curtain wall consists of a 4-foot 7-inch-high, two-tone aluminum spandrel and sill panel and an 8-foot-high window of clear glass. All of the natural-finished aluminum has a matte texture, as does the narrow black-anodized aluminum sill panel. Each bay is subdivided by five extruded aluminum mullions which are spaced 4 feet, 10 inches on center concerning each other and to the structural columns." The building was constructed after a change in New York City's building and zoning laws so that the area was large enough for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to accommodate the building. The political method employed was a "demapping" (literally, removing a street from the city plan) of Lower Manhattan." The building sits on a two-and-a-half-acre plot after Cedar Street was removed, "to form a superblock, bordered by Pine, Liberty, William, and Nassau Streets. The Chase Manhattan Building, the trademark for David Rockefeller and the empire forged by his grandfather John D. Rockefeller, rise "60 steel-ribbed stories out of the dark canyons of the financial district, the great glass and aluminum slab of the Chase Manhattan Bank stands at 813 feet, the sixth tallest building in the city and the world," in 1961. There are 2,239,530 square feet of gross floor area, and "is the largest banking operation ever assembled under one roof, costing $813 million, the largest total investment in a building of its type, and detail for detail, in overall quality as well as outright size, one of the most remarkable planning, architectural, and engineering accomplishments," at the time it was built. ==L.S. Brach Manufacturing Corporation and Antennas==

The radio industry had been making technical advances, particularly in the area of antenna technology, and instituted antenna design/model production for the MIT Lincoln Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA, and the Bureau of Standards. Since General Bronze has enormous access to the aluminum industry, it pursued the acquisition of L.S. Brach Manufacturing Corporation in 1948 to gain a foothold in the field of radio technology and Brach's patents. Ira Kamen became the director of the Brach Manufacturing Corporation, while George Doundoulakis became the Director of Research. Kamen had hired Doundoulakis at the RCA Institutes in New York City. Doundoulakis had experience working on the DEW Line system earlier. The plans submitted from General Bronze include details of the bid. The Green Bank, WV, antennas were managed by the Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI), a consortium of scientists, initially from nine northeastern universities, dedicated to developing and building scientific tools for the community. George Doundoulakis recognised that Gordon's idea of supporting the proposed radio telescope's antenna feed from a tower, tripod, or four-legged structure around the center, (the most crucial area of the reflector), would severely limit the reception of radio waves. He presented this proposal to Cornell University for his idea for three-and-a-half hours, while other companies were given 45 minutes. They subsequently filed a lawsuit, originally for $1.2 million but was settled for $10,000 because "the defense in a court trial would cost far more than the $10,000 for which the case was settled," and accordingly, on April 11, 1975, Doundoulakis v. U.S. (Case 412–72) had been ruled in plaintiff's favor by the United States Court of Federal Claims, that "(a) a judgment has been entered in favor of the plaintiffs Helias Doundoulakis, William J. Casey, and Constantine Michalos against the United States and (b) in consideration of the sum of $10,000 to be paid by the United States Government to the plaintiff, the plaintiffs grants to the United States Government an irrevocable, fully-paid, non-exclusive license under the aforesaid U.S. Patent No. 3, 273, 156 to Cornell University." ==See also==