John F. Kennedy – Analog Artist Digital World

As an online assignment with my students, I had them take a google map view of their home and create a floor plan. In my case I re-created the floor plan of the home I was born in and left when I was 10 years old. Old family photos and corrections by my siblings helped me get some things right. The Thorspecken family at 239 Larch Avenue, Dumont, Bergen, New Jersey from 1955 to 1971. I was in the home for 10 years.

It is surprising how selective my memories are. I vividly recall how the TV home entertainment center looked. My father built it from scratch. I remember watching him solder electronic circuit boards. One of my earliest memories is of of lying on the floor and watching the funereal for President John F. Kennedy. I would have only been 2 years old but it is a vivid memory. However, when I saw a picture of a Hawaiian tropical pattern on a living room couch, it didn’t register as being real. My sister said it was covered with slip covers, but I remember those being clear plastic because they stuck to bare skin in a very uncomfortable way.

I found a baby picture of myself bare butted on the kitchen table, so it was easy to reconstruct that room. My sister had one picture of the back dining room. That room was also used as a nursery since it was close to the master bedroom. Family tradition is that I almost died in the nursery since I got a horrible case of Scarlet Fever when I was a baby. I have had feverish visions ever since.

The layout of the master bedroom is the biggest mystery. I only have one memory of that room. My mother had cancer and was often away in NYC for treatment. She was on the rebound and home for a week. I remember lying in bed with her as a 10 year old and watching Dark Shadows. Today, I am binge watching Dark Shadows and I am wondering if I will recognize the episodes I watched with my mother around April or early May of 1971. It was a dark show for a 10 year old to watch but I have always had a taste for the macabre.

The Round Building, also known as the American Federal Savings and Loan, across from City Hall, will stand for just one more year before is is demolished to make way for the Doctor Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The building is still standing today because it is being used by the Doctor Phillips Center of the Performing Arts, Public Relations and Financing staff. The top floor offices have a magnificent view over the construction site.

The building took form back in the idealistic times when John F. Kennedy was elected President. Man was striving to reach the moon and this building took on the futuristic form of a cylinder. Orlando was just coming of age, as Disney and Martin Marietta set up shop. The honeycomb shaped cement band around the base of the building acted as a sun screen for the banks windows. This cement honeycomb, reminiscent of “The Carousel of Progress“, is known as a Brise Soleil. The glass upper floors were added years later. Today, what is futuristic about the site is that curbside electric car charging stations are across the street.

Commissioner Patty Sheehan is spearheading a privately funded effort to save the Brise Soleil by re-purposing it as sculpture or a sun shield in a public park. A design competition was held that asked local architecture students to envision the re-purposing of the precast concrete curtain pieces. The winners of the competition were, Felix Chad and Jarod Lopatky for their submission “Reflections of Orlando.” Their digital rendering showed the Brise Soleil in two pieces standing on end and separated as two identical semi circular arcs in a public park. The students were awarded $360 dollars for the concept.

Patty Sheehan formed the not-for-profit corporation, Strengthen Orlando, Inc. – Round Building Reuse, to raise funds to get the Brise Soleil moved and displayed somewhere in Orlando. She has pledged to match any donations made to the project up to $70,000.