Horizontal Cities of 2031 (1931)

The December 6, 1931 Daily Capital News and Post-Tribune (Jefferson City, MO) ran a short blurb about Francis Keally's predictions for the city of 2031. Keally (1889-1978) was an architect who worked on the Oregon state capitol building in Salem, which was completed in 1938.

Francis Keally thinks that our future cities will spread out over great areas like monstrous eagles. One hundred years from today we shall have no batteries of skyscrapers to point out to our trans-Atlantic visitors. On the contrary our future cities, because of the aerial eye, will be flat-topped, and two out of every three buildings will serve as some kind of landing area for a super-auto gyroplane or a transcontinental express. What towers there are will be built at a great distance from the airports and will serve as mooring masts for giant dirigibles. The architects of our future aerial cities may have to go back to places like Constantinople and Fez for their inspiration of these future flat-topped aerial cities where one finds a low horizontal character to the entire city, occasionally broken here and there by a praying tower or a minaret.

Francis Keally also had an idea in the August, 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics for glass banks.

Previously on Paleo-Future:
The Family Plane of 2030 A.D. (1930)
Pictures Stately Edifices (1923)

Paleo-Future Wallpaper: Round 2

Back by popular demand, we have a whole new batch of paleo-futuristic wallpapers. We even have a size for those of you who can't be bothered to capitalize the first letter in your phone's name.

I'll try to make wallpapers a regular thing from now on. I can't promise the consistency of say, Fish Fry Fridays, but I will try for a leap year type of schedule. (If leap years happened every few weeks.)


Personal Flying Machines (circa 1900)
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Flying Machines of Tomorrow (circa 1885)
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Gyroscopic Rocket Car (1945)
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See also:
Paleo-Future Wallpaper
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Gyroscopic Rocket Car (1945)

Gyroscopic Rocket Car (1945)

Carl H. Renner painted this "Escacar" for General Motors in 1945. The Escacar is described as a "Unicycle Gyroscopic Rocket Car."

Like the painting of a commuter helicopter we looked at a few months ago, this image can be found in the Petersen Automotive Museum book, Driving Through Futures Past.


I couldn't find much information about Carl H. Renner online. If you have any information on Mr. Renner please add it to the newly created Paleo-Future Wiki.

See also:
Commuter Helicopter (1947)
Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958)
GM Car of the Future (1962)
Word Origins: Imagineering (1940s)