city: baton rouge
louisiana state capital
from huey long posted in history by crabapple
On September 8, 1935, Huey Long was a sitting U.S. Senator and oppositional presidential candidate to F.D.R. A populist politician, Long had been an enormously influential figure in Louisiana politics: suing Standard Oil for unfair business practices and starting numerous social programs, as well as being militantly defensive of his political aspirations.
On that day in September, Long was at the Louisiana State Capital building when Carl Weiss, a disgruntled relative of a judge that Long was trying to oust, shot the senator in the abdomen. "The Kingfish" (as Long was known) died two days later.
Long's life has been the inspiration for many works, including the novel All the King's Men (1946) and the subsequent movie (1949 and 2006), as well as the Sinclair Lewis play It Can't Happen Here (1936).
view full location details...union tank car dome
from buckminster fuller posted in art and design by nevereatshreddedwheat
This site in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the location of another early geodesic dome designed and constructed by Buckminster Fuller. The dome was used to cover a unique turntable-like system that the Union Tank Car Company had developed to service multiple railway cars. When it was completed in 1958, it was the world's largest clear-span (meaning no columns) structure until a larger geodesic dome was built to house Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose in Long Beach, California in 1982.
When railway cars increased in length from 50 feet to 60 feet in the 1960s, the cars would no longer fit, and the dome became obsolete. The rail yard, including the dome, was sold to Kansas City Southern Railway in 1990 and the dome remained vacant. In 2007, one year before the dome would be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, Kansas City Southern had the building demolished.
Watch a documentary about the Union Tank Car Dome.