The Flickr Marinemidlandbank Image Generatr

A brilliant summer day!

I would like the skyscraper more if it didn't have that awful sign on top.

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In downtown Rochester, New York, on June 10th, 2021, Five Star Bank Plaza (built 1968-1970 as Marine Midland Plaza, designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, as viewed from the west side of Ajax Street, north of East Broad Street.

The sign is from 2017.

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Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names terms:
• Monroe (county) (1002681)
• Rochester (7014348)

Art & Architecture Thesaurus terms:
• asphalt concrete (300010739)
• Asteraceae (family) (300375557)
• banks (buildings) (300005214)
• banks (institutions) (300410327)
• cracks (300209168)
• lampposts (300101536)
• Modern Movement (300121793)
• office towers (300007046)
• parking lots (300007826)
• pavements (surface elements) (300002088)
• power lines (300008603)
• shadows (300056036)
• signs (declatory or advertising artifacts) (300123013)
• skyscrapers (300004809)
• summer (season) (300133099)
• urban landscapes (300132447)

Wikidata items:
• 10 June 2021 (Q69306078)
• 1960s in architecture (Q11185676)
• 1970 in architecture (Q2812531)
• 1970s in architecture (Q17173162)
• Cichorium intybus (Q2544599)
• Five Star Bank (Q5456132)
• Five Star Bank Plaza (Q7092696)
• June 10 (Q2615)
• June 2021 (Q61312778)
• Marine Midland Bank (Q6764170)
• Rochester metropolitan area (Q7353927)
• Western New York (Q7988104)

Transportation Research Thesaurus terms:
• Asphalt concrete pavements (Pmrcppbmd)

Library of Congress Subject Headings:
• Chicory (sh85023316)
• Office buildings—New York (State) (sh85094177)
• Pavements—Cracking (sh87003617)
• Skyscrapers—New York (State) (sh85123275)
• Weeds (sh85145920)

Union List of Artist Names IDs:
• Graham, Bruce (American architect, 1925-2010) (500074517)
• Khan, Fazlur R. (American architect, 1929-1982) (500085464)
• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (American architectural firm, established 1939) (500045910)

Probably one of the most photographed sculptures in the Wall Street area. Isamu Noguchi's Cube, or Red Cube, was created in 1967. The HSBC Plaza, formerly Marine Midland Bank Plaza, it sits in is one of the early examples of a hight variance for public space trade off.

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

new york city
july 1976

japanese taiko drummers
american bicentennial festival - "july 4th in old new york"

part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Image-use requests are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

This bag is from the former Marine Midland Bank of Buffalo, NY, which was absorbed into another bank in 1999.

Formerly the Marine Midland Bank of Buffalo, New York. Marine Midland was taken over by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation between 1980 and 1987. Eventually The Hongkong and Shangahi renamed it HSBC Bank America.

In 2011, HSBC sold all of its up-state New York branches to First Niagara Bank, but supposedly will keep a major back-office operations in Buffalo. HSBC America will maintain its New York City area branches.

The Financial District: An enclave of 'cathedrals of commerce', where nothing is architecturally sacred.

Entrance to 140 Broadway, lower Manhattan, NY, NY

The piles from the previous picture were of old business records. The box right in front of me had these checks right on top from a year before I was born. They were in surprisingly good condition for three decades old.

There's probably some evil you could do with some of the information on this check if it weren't all 30 years old, so I'm not going to bother to blur any of it.

The bright red painted steel of Isamu Noguchi's Red Cube stands out in strong contrast to the blacks, browns, and whites of the buildings and sidewalks around the sculpture. Located to one side of a small plaza in front of the HSBC (previously the Marine Midland Bank) building on Broadway, Red Cube is surrounded on three sides by skyscrapers, the height of which draw a viewer's eye upwards. The sculpture itself adds to this upward pull, as it balances on one corner, the opposite corner reaching towards the sky. Despite its title, the sculpture is not actually a cube, but instead seems as though it has been stretched along its vertical axis.

Aside from it's striking color, Red Cube also stands out from the surrounding architecture in that all of its lines are diagonals, whereas the buildings are made up of horizontal and vertical lines. Additionally, the sculpture is balanced somewhat precariously on one corner, while the buildings, by contrast, and solidly placed.

Through the center of the cube there is a cylindrical hole, revealing an inner surface of gray with evenly-spaced lines moving from one opening of the hole to the other. Looking through this hole, the viewer's gaze is directed towards the building behind, tying the sculpture and the architecture together.

Los Angeles born Isamu Noguchi (野口 勇, 1904-1988) was a sculptor, theatrical and industrial designer best known for his abstract works and set designs for MArtha Graham productions. News was one of his last figurative works, and the only time he employed stainless steel as an artistic medium. His work can be found throughout major metropolitan cities, in museums, and in the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Long Island City in New York. Noguchi's work around New York includes the Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza and News at the Associated Press Building His Thunder Rock was also temporarily on display in Rockefeller Plaza.

New York City, 2006

Isamu Noguchi's 28-foot tall piece of public art in the plaza of the Marine Midland Bank building.

Here, it gets a bit of spin right at you, courtesy of some PS.

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