‘American Built with Stuart Varney’ premieres with look at Orange’s Crystal Cathedral

Fox Business News big Stuart Varney has lived successful the United States for astir 50 years, but the English-born writer inactive remembers the consciousness of awe helium felt arsenic helium archetypal explored the federation wherever he’d yet go a citizen.

“When I archetypal came, I was struck by the size of this place, the size of America,” Varney says. “It’s a continent. We Europeans are much crammed successful and adjacent together, but America is vast.

“It ever occurred to me, ever I asked the question, ‘How did a continent-sized state unfastened up?’ How is it imaginable that Americans built this spot up, made it accessible, and brought engineering projects to the crippled which opened up America successful a spectacular way?’”

“American Built with Stuart Varney,” which premieres Monday, Sept. 20 arsenic portion of “FBN Prime,” a caller programming artifact connected Fox Business Network, volition springiness Varney the accidental to stock immoderate of those stories astir architectural, engineering, method and technological achievements built by Americans arsenic the federation grew.

The play premiere tells the communicative of the Crystal Cathedral, the precocious Rev. Robert Schuller’s audacious all-glass religion successful Orange. Other episodes that absorption connected places successful California and the West see the gathering of the Los Angeles aqueducts, the emergence of the Vegas Strip, and the forbidding national situation connected Alcatraz Island successful the San Francisco Bay.

“‘American Built’ is simply a earthy for me, due to the fact that that is precise overmuch a level of involvement that I have,” says Varney, whose long-running quality show, “Varney & Co.,” airs weekday mornings. “I’m not an engineer, but I marvel astatine America’s greatness and however it got here.”

Varney, 73, says adjacent arsenic a lad successful England helium had an innate consciousness that Americans were big, bold builders.

“Let maine archer you a comic small story,” helium says. “I indispensable person been astir 7 oregon 8 years old. I was walking location from schoolhouse and I went past this gathering tract by the broadside of the road. I saw a fewer muscular men, you know, digging the ditches and hoisting the scaffolding, that benignant of thing.

“And I came backmost location and said to my dad, ‘Hey, there’s large guys down the thoroughfare there. They indispensable beryllium Americans,’” Varney continues. “Where the devil did I get that from? How did I get astatine that point, reasoning that Americans are big, almighty and muscular?

“I don’t know. To this time I person nary thought wherever that came from. But it was evidently successful my head.”

While immoderate of the places featured connected the bid absorption connected projects of large governmental oregon economical import — the aqueducts that allowed Los Angeles to boom, the Hoover Dam that provided adjacent much powerfulness and h2o to the portion — others were included much for the boldness and passionateness of the builders.

“The Crystal Cathedral did not unfastened up America,” Varney says. “It wasn’t immoderate elephantine engineering task that made a full continent abruptly available, acold from it.

“What’s charismatic astir the Crystal Cathedral is the thrust and vigor and bonzer vision,” helium says. “The grit and determination that it took to get that happening built, and past flooded the sheer engineering problems.”

Schuller’s passionateness to physique an all-glass cathedral, William Mulholland’s thrust to bring water much than 200 miles from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles, and the others whose works are featured successful the bid are each connected by a communal bond, Varney believes.

“The transportation we person recovered is the can-do spirit,” helium says. “That’s remarkably antithetic from Europe. Europe whitethorn person had that tone 100 years ago, 200 years ago, but America had it implicit the past century.

“And erstwhile you get successful America, you consciousness that,” Varney says “You prime up connected it existent fast. You spot obstacles successful the way of an American they tin usually get implicit it someway oregon other. They’ve got the thrust and the determination to get implicit it.

“That’s what this amusement celebrates, the can-do tone of America.”