Yesterday, my wife Susan and I, accompanied by Frank and Jo Laiacona, 
went to Union College (in Schenectady) to see an exhibit on William H. 
Seward who was a grad of Union, a remarkable person (but another story, 
another time)....

An additional bonus for our visit was the opportunity to see the Nott
Memorial Building.  The building is an unusual architectural achievement...
a rather sizeable dome sitting atop an octagonal masonary structure.  

It was closed for years, because the walls were bulging out as a result of 
the stresses.  They redid the building at the cost of millions -- they gutted 
it and then circled it with something like 6 steel bands (on the inside), to
which they attached the masonery.

The interior is all cast iron structure.  Cast iron structure was abandoned
because the material simply collapsed if there was a fire.  They refurbished
the cast iron in the Nott Building, so that it looks rather airy and 
attractive.

Those of you who live in the capital district will enjoy making a visit to 
this marvelous building to see the very fine exhibit.

I guess that the original  architect of the Nott Building hadn't read about
Filippo Brunilleschi having built the dome in Firenze. Brunelleschi circled
the base of the dome with a chain, and that took the stresses off the walls
that supported the dome...  

Coincidently, a review of a recent book about Brunelleschi follows:
========================================================

BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME
HOW A RENNAISSANCE GENIUS REINVENTED ARCHITECTURE
By Ross King

Top Adult NonFiction Book of the Year—Book Sense, 2001

Anyone alive in Florence on August 19, 1418, would have understood the 
significance of the competition announced that day concerning the city’s 
magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, already under construction 
for more than a century. “Whoever desires to make any model or design for the 
vaulting of the main Dome…shall do so before the end of the month of 
September.” The proposed dome was regarded far and wide as all but impossible 
to build: not only would it be enormous, but its original and sacrosanct 
design eschewed (shunned) the flying buttresses that supported cathedrals all 
over Europe. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air.

Of the many plans submitted, one stood out—a daring and unorthodox solution 
to vaulting what is still the largest dome (143 feet in diameter) in the 
world. It was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a goldsmith 
and clock maker named Filippo Brunelleschi, then 41, who would dedicate the 
next 28 years to solving the puzzles of the dome’s construction. In the 
process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architecture.

Brunelleschi’s Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, 
materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we 
continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was 
celebrated at the end as a genius. He engineered the perfect placement of 
brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes (some among the most 
renowned machines of the Renaissance) to carry an estimated 70 million pounds 
hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers’ platforms and 
routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of 
construction—all the while defying those who said the dome would surely 
collapse and personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him. 
This drama was played out amidst plagues, wars, political feuds, and the 
intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence—events Ross King weaves into 
the story to great effect, from Brunelleschi’s bitter, ongoing rivalry with 
the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti to the near capture of Florence by the Duke of 
Milan. King also offers a wealth of fascinating detail that opens windows 
onto fifteenth-century life: the celebrated traditions of the brickmaker’s 
art, the daily routine of the artisans laboring hundreds of feet above the 
ground as the dome grew ever higher, the problems of transportation, the 
power of the guilds.

Even today, in an age of soaring skyscrapers, the cathedral dome of Santa 
Maria del Fiore retains a rare power to astonish. In telling the story of the 
greatest engineering puzzle of the Renaissance and one of the world’s 
architectural marvels, Ross King brings its creation to life in a 
fifteenth-century chronicle with twenty-first-century resonance.

http://www.walkerbooks.com/nonfiction/books/catalog.php3?key=134&type=news

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Reviews of Brunelleschi's Dome

“An altogether enchanting tale.” —Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and 
Galileo’s Daughter

“King demonstrates a remarkable range…but he always brings us back to the 
one incandescent mind performing the one matchless feat that would forever 
transform architecture from a mechanical craft into a creative art.” 
—Booklist

“A compelling story of one of the greatest structural engineering 
achievements of 
the Renaissance.” —Henry Petroski, author of Engineers of Dreams

“That how [Brunelleschi] did it still manages to mystify us after half a 
millennium makes this study of life, art, religion, and politics doubly 
fascinating.” —BookPage

"As interesting as the architect's triumph proves, his distractions prove 
even more revealing about the era." —Newsday

"One of architecture's great tales." —Newsweek

"Brunelleschi's Dome describes how the dome was so ambitious that 
Brunelleschi had to invent many of the machines that built it." —The New 
Yorker

"This book is a journey through Renaissance Florence…The context in which 
Brunelleschi worked was as astonishing as the workings of his mind." 
—Portland Oregonian

"A fascinating book…King sets the reader squarely in the Middle Ages…[His] 
lively account shows how Brunelleschi's accomplishments were clearly those 
of a Renaissance man." —Tampa Tribune-Times

"King has taken a historical tale central in science and made it read like a 
thrilling novel set in the turmoil of the Italian Renaissance."  —Hackensack 
Record

A Book Sense 76 Top 10 Selection