Friday / Weekend Open Lines


Friday, May 1st. Construction began on this date in 1884 in Chicago for a radical new building design — destined to be America’s first skyscraper. It was the Home Insurance Company headquarters, designed by engineer William Jenney. For many centuries, thick outer walls supported multi-story buildings, limiting the height that could be safely or usefully attained. Jenney’s building used a metal frame for support, like a skeleton. The exterior walls were attached to the frame, and so these so-called curtain walls weren’t load bearing. Soon, skyscrapers using Jenney’s method thrust up across the country and today dominate city skylines around the world. Lately, the construction industry in the U.S. has erected some $346 billion worth of private nonresidential buildings. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

Saturday, May 2nd. One of major league baseball’s most dramatic and poignant moments occurred on this date in 1939. The New York Yankees’ famously durable first baseman, Lou Gehrig, removed himself from the lineup, breaking his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played. Gehrig never played again, and was shortly diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That wasting — usually fatal — disease, in fact took his life in another two years. In return, he gave it its unofficial name. May is ALS Awareness Month, noting that 12,000 Americans are diagnosed with ALS, with some 5,600 new cases reported each year. Research into treatments and a cure for this scourge takes place in many of the nation’s 6,700 medical laboratories and 6,700 hospitals. Profile America is beginning its 19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sunday, May 3rd. America’s first medical college was established on this date in 1765. Students at the College of Philadelphia — now the University of Pennsylvania — were able to enroll in “anatomical lectures” and a class about “the theory and practice of physik.” The school’s faculty modeled the instruction after the style of European predecessors. They supplemented their instruction with observation and practice at nearby Pennsylvania Hospital, which was founded in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond. The addition of these courses to the college’s curriculum made Penn, in a technical sense, America’s first university as well. Across the U.S. today, there are nearly 182,000 physicians and surgeons working out of some 222,000 offices and more than 6,500 hospitals. Profile America is beginning its 19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.