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Just returned from a visit to NYC. Took a bus tour and the tour guide pointed out the Colgate Building and said it was designed to look like a tube of toothpaste. My hubby and I looked at each other and said, "I don't see it!" Is it true or was the guide pulling our leg? LOL!
The Colgate-Palmolive building is supposed to resemble a tube of toothpaste now? Well, I think the guide might have been misinformed or playing a joke, since it's a mid-century International Style building, complete with horizontal bands that were designed to suggest the structure of the building that alternate with the wrap-around windows.
I don't see how anyone could claim that the building represented anything like a tube of toothpaste, save for the setbacks as the building ascends above Park Avenue. It makes for good folklore, however. Ha! And, I hope the guide did not tell you other things about the city that might be more myth than fact, but as long as you had a good time, that's the important thing.
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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
I think those tour guides tend to stretch the truth a little to make their presentations more entertaining.
For example, a few weeks ago, I took my mother on one of those double-decker tours when she was visiting. The tour guide pointed out that the Citigroup Center's angled roof was designed for solar panels, but the building faces the wrong direction, implying that a big engineering blunder had been committed. This seemed hard to believe so I fact-checked it. The reality is that the angled roof was built mostly just to impart a distinctive style, but was also intended for the possibility of terraced apartments going up the slope like stairs. When the city refused to grant a zoning variance for apartments, the solar panel idea was studied but dropped, apparently for cost/benefit reasons. The roof does not face an optimal angle for the most efficient collection of sunlight, even though it generally faces south.
Our guide was 82 and I think he made up quite a bit of info while on the tour. He was very entertaining!
Sometimes those guides are the best, though the "facts" are best taken with a good measure of salt. There's usually a kernel of truth, though, upon which some of the myths are based. It seems like you enjoyed the tour, and I hope NYC!
__________________
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
Most people don't know that NYC guides have to be officially licensed in order to work legally, and the exam to obtain the license is very difficult - you really have to know your stuff!
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