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No matter how many buildings you’ve seen, you can always find something that will surprise you. The picture above is not an underwater shot from the Titanic, it’s the cellar of a circa-1900 rowhouse. This was a house of some pretension when first built. As in most wider rowhouses, the stair-hall partition is a wood-stud […]
10 months ago

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More from Old Structures Engineering

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From Scientific American, December 8, 1894, an interesting view of two buildings: drawings that include both the above-ground portion of the buildings, more or less as you would see them, and the foundations as they could never be seen. The foundations are seen as if the earth had been turned transparent. The image of the […]

3 months ago 47 votes
Happy Christmas

I’m not so sure about that vest.

3 months ago 42 votes
Genteel

That’s the Hotel Marlborough at 36th Street and Broadway, shortly after 1900. The hotel opened in 1888 when the entertainment district on Broadway was further south; by the time it was demolished in 1922, that district had moved to Times Square, a few blocks to the north. It’s a story repeated for hundreds of buildings […]

3 months ago 45 votes
Once Again, In Plastic

The restoration of Notre Dame deserves all the praise that has been heaped upon it, but have I mentioned recently that my son and I have built the LEGO Notre Dame? We finished our small Notre Dame about a week after the official opening of the large one, but they had a head start on […]

3 months ago 38 votes
It Looked Familiar: Archetypical

From a graphic novel about art called Naked City: how do you capture the spirit of New York? A relentless grid and Old-Law tenements.

3 months ago 45 votes

More in architecture

A New Cafe In South Korea That’s Inspired By A Walk In Nature

Architect-K has shared photos of MIGIUI, a modern cafe and various social spaces that lies within the hanok village of Ulju-gun, South Korea. The building was designed to blend seamlessly into this natural setting, and was inspired by a forest path. Major tree species, rocks, and water flows were scattered across the site to reawaken […]

23 hours ago 3 votes
The Graveyard of Styles in Home Design

Is the huge and sprawling “modern farmhouse” next?

yesterday 2 votes
Preserving Common Food as a Defensive Strategy: the Ghorfas of Southern Tunisia

The ghorfas (in arab غرفة [ghurfa], meaning “room”) are common granary chambers found mostly in southern Tunisia and certain areas of Libya and associated with Berber populations. In more recent times, they have also been used as dwellings. They consist of barrel-vaulted rooms measuring 4 to 5 metres in length and 2 metres in height, […]

2 days ago 6 votes
Reading List 03/29/25

US bridges at risk of ship collisions, Airbus testing an unducted fan, an earthquake in Myanmar, China’s undersea cable cutter, and more.

3 days ago 5 votes
Secret Mall Apartment

The new documentary Secret Mall Apartment is about a group of artists who built, you guessed it – a secret apartment, inside of the mall. We interviewed the group’s ringleader Michael Townsend a few years back, and after the story, we’ll have an update about what’s happened since then. Plus, mall history with Alexandra Lange.

a week ago 6 votes