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Bertrand Goldberg, the architect of Marina City and River City in
Chicago, was a principal in the industrial design firm Atwood and
Goldberg. The firm designed a railroad freight car made of plastic
(they called it Unicel) and began to promote their invention's
stronger-than-steel properties. The firm commissioned Richard
Florsheim to do a series of lithographs depicting the history of the
railroad car; and, they commissioned John Frederick Nims to write
nine sonnets to accompany the lithographs. Goldberg printed the
lithographs and poems, and produced 14 bound volumes covered in a
shiny plastic, with a brass hinge. This lyrical presentation of an
industrial product was intended to celebrate and interest railroad
car manufacturers in the new material.
You can make a gift online in support of the University of Illinois at Chicago Library:
http://www.uif.uillinois.edu/Gift/
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(The poem caption on the right of the picture):
Horizons mesh with turning clouds; the planet
Whirls in the burning ferris-wheels of space;
A watch has wheels like golden snow-flakes in it..
And one chilled-iron wheel cuts time and place.
The wheel: what caveman on a round rock tumbling
Rubbed at a rueful hip, brow stung with Whys,
Or stared at granite on loose gravel shifting
Till his head burst with wheel-thought like sunrise?
History moved massive on that wheel, until
Freight cars, dark crimson as rich venous blood
Streamed to their mental heart, made cities tall,
Multiplied all the wonder of Birnam Wood
Long horizontal trains like bridges rise,
Freeze into glass and honeycomb the skies.
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