pedestal—a "skyscraper" standing on the top of the grand hall. The increased height of the pedestal made the statue appear smaller, and the cycle repeated itself. According to the official narrative, experiments with scale models led to the conclusion that the appropriate height of the statue is exactly . Lenin's head alone had to be almost as large as the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions. The location of the statue and the design by Sergey Merkurov remained controversial throughout the 1930s and were harshly criticized in public by Boris Korolyov, Nikolai Tomsky, Martiros Saryan and other involved artists. American experience A salient function of the palace project was the transfer of modern technology to the backward Soviet industry. At the end of 1934, Iofan, Shchuko, Helfreikh and their associates departed on a lengthy tour of European and American cities. Their main objectives were the reevaluation of the 1934 design against best American practices, and the research and purchase of modern construction technologies. Moran & Proctor, a leading foundation engineering firm, became the first American company to be hired for the project and would assist the USDS throughout the 1930s. More visits and more contracts, facilitated through the Amtorg network, would follow in subsequent years. From a purely architectural perspective, the most important experience was gained at the site of the partially completed Rockefeller Center. Iofan used the stepped-slab motive of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in later projects, and directly inspired careful realignment of the palace's staggered layers. These and other subtle exterior changes proceeded throughout the rest of the decade, along with the subsidiary interior design and urban planning tasks, and the creation of factories and workshops. The definitive exterior design took its final shape by 1937. The number of stacked cylinders was reduced from five to four with progressively decreasing, rather than uniform, spacings between the pylons. The stainless steel moldings attached to the pylons widened progressively with height for a smooth transition from the granite-clad tower to the all-metal statue. The pose and the proportions of the statue also changed. This revised design was presented and discussed at a conference of the Union of Soviet architects in July 1939. A book by describing the design and the construction process in plain language was published one year later. Size The total height of the palace, including the statue, was set at , taller than the recently completed