Clerestory

Clerestory (pronounced kleer-stawr-ee or kleer-stohr-ee)

(1) In architecture, a portion of an interior rising above adjacent rooftops, fitted with windows admitting daylight.

(2) In church architecture, a row of windows in the upper part of the wall, dividing the nave from the aisle and set above the aisle roof (associated particularly with the nave, transept and choir of a church or cathedral.

(3) In transportation vehicles (usually busses, railroad cars and occasionally cars & vans), a raised construction, typically appended to the roof structure and fitted with (1) windows to admit light or enhance vision or (2) slits for ventilation (or a combination of the two).

1375–1425: From the late Middle English, the construct being clere (clear (in the sense of “light” or “lighted”)) + story (from storey (a level of a building).  The word is obviously analyzed as “a story (upper level) with light from windows”.  Storey was from Middle English stori & storie, from the Anglo-Latin historia (picture), from the Latin, from the Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) (learning through research, narration of what is learned), from ἱστορέω (historéō) (to learn through research, to inquire), from ἵστωρ (hístōr) (the one who knows, the expert, the judge).  In the Anglo-Latin, historia was a term from architecture (in this case “interior decorating” in the modern sense) describing a picture decorating a building or that part of a building so decorated.  The less common alternative spellings are clearstory & clerstory.  Clerestory is a noun and clerestoried is an adjective; the noun plural is clerestories.

From here was picked up the transferred sense of “floor; level”.  The later use in church architecture of “an upper story of a church, perforated by windows” is thought simply to be a reference to the light coming through the windows and there is nothing to support the speculation the origin was related to a narrative (story) told by a series of stained glass windows, illuminated by sunlight.  Historians have concluded the purpose of the design was entirely functional; a way of maximizing the light in the interior space.  The related architectural design is the triforium.  The noun triforium (triforia or triforiums in the plural) (from the Medieval Latin triforium, the construct being tria (three) + for (opening) + -ium) describes the gallery of arches above the side-aisle vaulting in a church’s nave.  The –ium suffix (used most often to form adjectives) was applied as (1) a nominal suffix (2) a substantivisation of its neuter forms and (3) as an adjectival suffix.  It was associated with the formation of abstract nouns, sometimes denoting offices and groups, a linguistic practice which has long fallen from fashion.  In the New Latin, it was the standard suffix appended when forming names for chemical elements.

Clerestories which once shone: Grand Central Terminal (the official abbreviation is GCT although the popular form is "Grand Central Station" (often clipped to "Grand Central")), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, 1929 (left) and the same (now dimmed) location in a scene from the Lindsay Lohan film Just my Luck (2006) (right).  Because of more recent development in the surrounding space, the sunlight no longer enters the void through the clerestoried windows is such an eye-catching way.  In modern skyscrapers, light-shafts or atriums can extend hundreds of feet.

Tourist boat on a canal cruise, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Boats with clerestory windows are commonly seen on waterways like the canals of Amsterdam and are valued by tour-guides because they make excursions possible in (almost) all-weathers.  Those designing passenger busses and train carriages were also early adopters of clerestory windows, initially because they were a source of “free” light but as packaged tourism developed into “sightseeing”, tour operators recognized the potential and commissioned versions optimized for outward visibility, essentially a form of “value-adding” which made even the dreary business of bus travel from one place to the next more of a “sightseeing” experience, something probably most valued by those afforded a greater vista to observe in mountainous regions.

Greyhound Scenicruiser in original livery.

A variation of the idea was used for long-distance busses in North America, the best known of which remains the Greyhound Scenicruiser (PD-4501), featuring a raised upper deck with a clerestory windscreen.  Although the view through that was enjoyed by many passengers, the design was less about giving folk a view and more a way to maximize revenue within the length restrictions imposed by many US states.  What the upper deck did was allow a increase in passenger numbers because the space their luggage would absorb in a conventional (single layer) design could be re-allocated to people, their suitcases (and in some cases also freight, another revenue stream) relegated to the chassis level which also improved weight distribution and thus stability.

A predecessor: 1930 Lancia Omicron.

Famous as it became, the Scenicruiser, 1001 of which were built by General Motors (GM) between 1954-1956, was to cause many problems for both manufacturer and operator, the first of which caused by the decision to use twin-diesel engines to provide the necessary power for the new, heavy platform.  The big gas (petrol) units available certainly would have provided that but their fuel consumption would not only have made their operation ruinously expensive (both the fuel burn and the time lost by needing frequently to re-fill) and the volume of gas which would have to be carried would have both added to weight and reduced freight capacity.  Bigger GM diesel units weren’t produced in the early 1950s so the twin engines were a rational choice and the advantages were real, tests confirming that even when fully loaded, the coupled power-train would be sufficient for hill climbing while on the plains, the Scenicruiser happily would cruise using just a single engine.  However, as many discovered (on land, sea and in the air), running two engines coupled together is fraught with difficulties and these never went away, the busses eventually adopting one of GM’s new generation of big-displacement diesels as part of the major re-building of the fleet in 1961, a programme which also (mostly) rectified some structural issues which had been recognized.  Despite all that, by 1975 when Greyhound retired the model, the company still had hundreds in daily service and many of those auctioned off were subsequently used by other operators and in private hands, some are still running, often as motor homes or (mostly) static commercial displays or museum exhibits.

1951 Pegaso Z-403 (left) and 1949 Brill Continental (right).

GM’s Scenicruiser was influential and clerestory windscreens soon proliferated on North American roads although the idea wasn’t new.  The Spanish manufacturer Pegaso (a creation of Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) industrial policy) between 1951-1957 produced the Z-403 (1951-1957) which used the same design and before even that a bus with an almost identical profile had been sold in the US by the JG Brill Company, albeit with a conspicuous lack of success.  As early as 1930 the Italian concern Lancia offered the Omicron bus with a 2½ half deck arrangement with a clerestoried upper windscreen.  The Omicron’s third deck was configured usually as a first-class compartment but at least three which operated in Italy were advertised as “smoking rooms”, the implication presumably that the rest of the passenger compartment was smoke-free.  History doesn't record if the bus operators were any more successful in enforcing smoking bans than the usual Italian experience.

1968 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.

One quirky offering which picked up the Scenicruiser’s clerestoried windscreen was the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser (1964-1977), a station wagon which, until the release of the third series in 1973 featured one at the leading edge of a raised roof section, the glass ending midway over the backseat, the shape meaning it functioned also as a “skylight”.  Above the rear side windows were matching clerestories which might sound a strange thing to add above a luggage compartment but during those years, a “third seat” was a popular option to install in the space, transforming the things into eight or nine seat vehicles; families were bigger then.  The Vista Cruiser sold well and Buick later adopted the idea for some of its range until the concept was abandoned in 1972 because of concerns about upcoming safety regulations.  Such rules were however never imposed and both manufacturers revived the idea in the 1990s for their (frankly ugly) station wagons and when the Buick was discontinued in 1996, it was the last full-sized station wagon to be made in the US, the once popular market segment cannibalized to the point of un-viability by the mini-van (people-mover) and the sports utility vehicle (SUV).

The arrangement of a series of windows in a high-mounted row, borrowed from architecture, became familiar on train carriages and buses, especially those which plied scenic routes.  Usually these were added to the coachwork of buses built on existing full-sized commercial chassis which could seat 40-60 passengers but in the 1950s, there emerged the niche of the smaller group tour, either curated to suit a narrower market or created ad-hoc by hotels or operators; smaller vehicles were required and these offered the additional advantage of being able sometimes to go where big buses could not.  In places like the Alps, where those on the trip liked to look up as well as out, rows of clerestoried windows were desirable.

1959 Volkswagen Microbus Deluxe (23 Window Samba). 

The best known of these vehicles was the Volkswagen “Samba”, a variation of the Microbus, one of the range of more than a dozen a models built on the platform of the Type 2, introduced in 1950 after a chance sighting by a European distributer of a VW Beetle (Type 1) chassis which had been converted by the factory into a general-purpose utility vehicle.  The company accepted the suggestion a market for such a thing existed and in its original, air-cooled, rear-engined configuration, it remained in production well into the twenty-first century.  Between 1951-1966, the Microbus was available in a “Deluxe” version which featured both a folding fabric sunroof and rows of rows of clerestoried windows which followed the curve of the sides of the roof.  Available in 21 & 23 window versions, these are now highly collectable and such is the attraction there’s something of a cottage industry in converting Microbuses to the clerestoried specification but it’s difficult exactly to emulate the originals, the best of which can command several times the price of a fake (a perfectly restored genuine Samba in 2017 selling at auction in the US for US$302,000).  Such was the susceptibility to rust, the survival rate wasn’t high and many led a hard life when new, popular with the tour guides who would conduct bus-loads of visitors on (slow) tours of the Alps, the sunroof & clerestory windows ideal for gazing at the peaks.  To add to the mood, a dashboard-mounted valve radio was available as an option, something still for many a novelty in the early 1950s.  The Microbus Deluxe is rarely referred to as such, being almost universally called the “Samba” and the origin of that in uncertain.  One theory is it’s a borrowing from the Brazilian dance and musical genre that is associated with things lively, colorful, and celebratory, the link being that as well as the sunroof and windows, the Deluxe had more luxurious interior appointments, came usually in bright two-tone paint (other Type 2s were usually more drably finished) and featured lashings of external chrome.  It’s an attractive story but some prefer something more Germanic: Samba as the acronym for the business-like phrase Sonnendach-Ausführung mit besonderem Armaturenbrett (sunroof version with special dashboard).  However it happened, Samba was in colloquial use by at least 1952 and became semi official in 1954 when the distributers in the Netherlands added the word to their brochures.  Production ended in July 1967 after almost 100,000 had been built.

1966 Volkswagen Samba (21 Window, Left) and 1962 Volkswagen Samba (23 Window, Right).  The 23 Window van is a conversion of a Microbus and experts (of which there seem to be many, such is the following these things have gained) say it's close to impossible exactly to replicate a factory original.  In theory, the approach would be to take the parts with serial numbers (tags, engine, gearbox etc) from a real Samba which has rusted into oblivion (something not uncommon) and interpolate these into the sound body of a Microbus with as close a build date as possible.  Even then, such are the detail differences that an exact replication would be a challenge.  Because the Sambas received the same running changes and updates as the rest of the Microbus range, there was much variation in the details of the specification over the years but the primary distinction is between the “21” & “23” window vans, the difference accounted for by the latter’s pair of side-corner windows to the left & right of the rear top gate opening.  In 1964, when the rear doors were widened, the curved windows in the roof were eliminated because there would no longer be sufficient metal in the coachwork to guarantee structural integrity.