General Bronze Corporation

In 1912 he purchased a 1.75 acre site in Long Island City, Queens at 34–19 Tenth Street and grew it into one of the most important bronze fabricators in the field.

In 1927, Polachek merged his new company with another metals fabricator, the Renaissance Bronze and Iron Works located in Long Island City, Queens.

[32][34] As General Bronze began to face increasing domestic competition from international electronics firms like RCA, Sony, Philips, Matsushita and Mitsubishi, they continued primarily manufacturing aluminum windows, that which they were known for on prior construction projects, such as the Tripler Army Base Hospital in Hawaii.

General Bronze was eventually acquired by Allied Products Corporation of Chicago in 1967, a company which was once owned by Jay Pritzker, the uncle of present Illinois governor J.B.

In the ancient Mayan, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ruins, bronze tools, instruments, statues, and weapons has always been found in an almost perfect state of preservation.

"Many visitors to Rockefeller Center have always admired the bronze statuary which helped make it one of the wonders of the modern world, such as the art deco Atlas by Lee Lawrie, and the Prometheus by Paul Manship.

These include the whimsical fountain figures by Rene Chambellan adorning the fountain flanking Manship's Prometheus statue; Lawrie's Atlas sculpture in the plaza of Rockefeller Center's International Building at its 5th Avenue entrance; and the aluminum "Spirit of the Dance" of William Zorach at Rockefeller Center's Radio City Music Hall, New York.

[23] In 1928, the prized foundry was purchased by John Polachek of General Bronze, not only for its workers and workmanship but for the sizable physical plant in Corona, Queens.

The material used for the fountain, known as statuary bronze, is a quaternary alloy made of copper, zinc, tin, and lead, and traditionally golden brown in color.

The Seagram Building on New York City's Park Avenue remains the "iconic glass box sheathed in bronze, designed by Mies van der Rohe.

[6] The building "exuded transparency, as an expression of Mies van der Rohe's near-mystic faith in structure as the foundation of architecture.

"[43] The Seagram Building is a 38-story, 516-foot bronze-and-topaz-tinted glass slab, in the purest expression of Mies van der Rohe style, where 27-foot bays or recessed areas offer the eye a perfect Cartesian grid.

"[26] Structural columns form bays that are divided by "extruded bronze-covered I-beam mullions, which run the entire length of the façade.

[29] Mies van der Rohe achieved the crips edges that were custom-made with specific detailing by General Bronze[6][43] and "even the screws that hold in the fixed glass-plate windows are made of brass.

"[28] General Bronze Corporation manufactured and supplied the building with 5400 individual windows, spandrel frames, louvers, and architectural metalwork since at that time it was the world's largest fabricator of aluminum and other non-ferrous metals.

[9] Protected, yet given spaciousness by the wide expanse of the East River, the site has breadth enough to be made a living unit of strength, dignity, and harmony, befitting a building which embodied the world.

General Bronze manufactured the windows from Harrison's innovative design, "a curtain wall catilevered two feet, nine inches, in front of the steel structure so that it formed a flush skin of blue-green Thermopane heat-absorbing glass, painted black on the inner face.

"[28] The International Style design, much like the Seagram Building, "represented postwar (World War II) prosperity; for Europe it was a chance to rebuild; and for developing countries it stood for a brighter future.

"[30] Skidmore, Owings & Merrill built the present structure, where the "shining, anodized-aluminum skin stood out among the dark towers of Wall Street like a newly minted coin.

[30] It was Rockefeller's money that "revitalized New York's financial district and paved the way for other Lower Manhattan projects like the World Trade Center and the South Street Seaport.

[30][29] The Chase Manhattan Building, the trademark for David Rockefeller and the empire forged by his grandfather John D. Rockefeller, rise "60 steel-ribbed stories out of the dark canyons of the financial district, the great glass and aluminum slab of the Chase Manhattan Bank stands at 813 feet, the sixth tallest building in the city and the world,"[30] in 1961.

[45] Kamen believed that with his expertise and Doundoulakis' energy, they both would forge ahead and seek to gain contracts in the expanding field of radio telescopes.

[49][13] General Bronze Corporation's (GBC) Brach subsidiary had been interested in radio telescope research in addition to automobile and boat antennas.

Ira Kamen, as director of the Brach subdivision was in direct communication with Richard Emberson, who was the assistant to the president of AUI at the founding of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

General Bronze's technical drawings, photographs, and correspondence in 1957–58, at the outset of the design and construction of the Green Bank Telescopes are referenced.

[32] General Bronze presented their proposal in the final round in December 1959, in Ithaca, New York at Cornell for their antenna suspension design RFPs.

Both George and Helias Doundoulakis told professors Gordon and Gold at the RFP meetings on 14 December 1959 "General Bronze Corporation proposes a radical departure from the other companies: two suspension bridges perpendicular to one another which will double for an antenna.

"[12] Doundoulakis informed Professors Gordon and Gold that the tower/tripod/four-legged designs, compared to his towers/suspension bridge idea, were major engineering challenges with high construction costs.

[12][51] Helias Doundoulakis designed the cable suspension system – with assignees William J. Casey and Constantine Michalos – that was finally adopted.

[55] Controversy arose after Helias Doundoulakis, Constantine Michalos, and William J. Casey (CIA director under President Ronald Reagan) discovered the suspension design was used by Cornell University without their permission as exclusive patent holders.