Old Structures...
Eerie
Of the roughly dozen main-line railroads that terminated in New York in 1938, only the New York...
2 weeks ago
Of the roughly dozen main-line railroads that terminated in New York in 1938, only the New York Central and Pennsylvania came into Manhattan. The rest all had combined rail-and-ferry terminals in Jersey City, Hoboken, or other New Jersey towns facing the Hudson River. Hence...
Old Structures...
So Close
Berenice Abbott took three photos that I know of from the top of the Irving Trust Building in 1938....
2 weeks ago
Berenice Abbott took three photos that I know of from the top of the Irving Trust Building in 1938. Yesterday’s was the first, looking east down Wall Street. The picture above is the second, looking south along Broadway. You can’t quite see Bowling Green because of the slight...
Old Structures...
The Empire State, Again
Yesterday was the 92nd anniversary of the Empire State Building opening for business, which is as...
a month ago
Yesterday was the 92nd anniversary of the Empire State Building opening for business, which is as good a day as exists to pick as its birthday. To celebrate, the Skyscraper Museum had a one-hour program where Carol Willis and I discussed some aspects of the construction of the...
Old Structures...
Two, Maybe Three
The 1938 picture above, from Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” project, shows the original 542...
a month ago
The 1938 picture above, from Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” project, shows the original 542 West 110th Street. It’s a wood-frame house from the mid- to late-1800s, trapped between two 1920s steel-frame apartment houses. It wasn’t necessarily built on that site: as the...
Old Structures...
Probably Not Very Dramatic
There are a number of reason why an old building, like this Old-Law tenement, might have its stoop...
a week ago
There are a number of reason why an old building, like this Old-Law tenement, might have its stoop removed. The most common is that the sidewalk was narrowed to widen the driving lanes of the street, and the stoop took up too much of the new sidewalk. That might be true here, but...
Old Structures...
A Downside of Setbacks
Plan setbacks are what made New York’s 1916 zoning law work – and work well – but they can be...
2 weeks ago
Plan setbacks are what made New York’s 1916 zoning law work – and work well – but they can be confusing if combined with any kind of change in architectural style. The Singer Building, seen above in a photo from the HABS survey made as the building was being demolished in 1967,...
Old Structures...
Anachronism
This is the third picture Berenice Abbott took from the roof of the Irving Trust Building in 1938,...
2 weeks ago
This is the third picture Berenice Abbott took from the roof of the Irving Trust Building in 1938, literally in-between the pictures I posted yesterday and Monday. Monday’s looked east, Tuesday’s looked south, and today’s looks southeast, past the curving line of Broad Street to...
Old Structures...
Recent Readings On A Theme
Three closely related articles were stored away in my browser bookmarks and it’s time to spread them...
4 weeks ago
Three closely related articles were stored away in my browser bookmarks and it’s time to spread them around. First, “The Carbon Footprint of Material Obsolescence” by Blaine Brownell. The article looks at the life-cycle carbon cost of various construction materials. We need to...
Old Structures...
It Looked Familiar: Kafkaesque
Above, a statue in Gotham Harbor, with Batman sitting on the scales. In Amerika, Franz Kafka’s...
a week ago
Above, a statue in Gotham Harbor, with Batman sitting on the scales. In Amerika, Franz Kafka’s least-read novel, the protagonist emigrates from central Europe to the US. As his ship sails through the harbor into New York, he sees “the Statue of Liberty, which he had been...
Old Structures...
Dizzying
Berenice Abbott, in 1938, set up on top of the roof of the Irving Trust Building, at One Wall...
2 weeks ago
Berenice Abbott, in 1938, set up on top of the roof of the Irving Trust Building, at One Wall Street, and took several photos for her “Changing New York” project. This one is “Wall Street, showing East River from roof of Irving Trust building.” The building on the lower left with...
Old Structures...
Another Rooftop, Another View
In 1986, while killing time, I built a prefab paper-craft model of the Chrysler Building. It’s about...
a week ago
In 1986, while killing time, I built a prefab paper-craft model of the Chrysler Building. It’s about three feet tall and has followed me around every since, moving from apartment to apartment. On those occasions when someone has asked, I explain that it’s my household god and...
Old Structures...
The Trigger
New York’s first zoning law, which went into effect in 1916, wasn’t caused by any single building....
2 weeks ago
New York’s first zoning law, which went into effect in 1916, wasn’t caused by any single building. However, there are a few buildings you can point to that caused alarm. They were used as examples of what would happen if there were no controls on skyscraper development. The photo...
Old Structures...
Lucy Moses Award: St. Mary the Virgin
Two project that we worked on received Lucy Moses awards from the New York Landmarks Conservancy...
3 weeks ago
Two project that we worked on received Lucy Moses awards from the New York Landmarks Conservancy this year. The first is the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, at 145 West 46th Street in Manhattan. It was designed by Pierre L. LeBrun of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons in...
Old Structures...
Bragging Found In The Wild
I used the piece of an old magazine above a while back to illustrate the cross-section of a Phoenix...
4 weeks ago
I used the piece of an old magazine above a while back to illustrate the cross-section of a Phoenix column: a group of arc segments with flanges that allow them to be riveted together into a circular column. I haven’t seen that many Phoenix columns, in part because most of the...
Old Structures...
Observation Bias
There are obvious forms of observation bias, such as thinking that because nearly every building I...
3 weeks ago
There are obvious forms of observation bias, such as thinking that because nearly every building I see has some serious damage that they all do. If I’m looking at a building professionally, it’s usually because there’s something wrong with it. The photo above shows a more subtle...
Old Structures...
Memorializing
The oldest monument in a New York park is the statue of George Washington in Union Square, erected...
5 days ago
The oldest monument in a New York park is the statue of George Washington in Union Square, erected in 1856. The subject and the form (an equestrian statue) are not very surprising. The second oldest, erected the following year, is more satisfyingly obscure: the General William...
Old Structures...
Lucy Moses Award: Castle Clinton
The second project we worked on that won a Lucy Moses Award this year was Castle Clinton, the fort...
3 weeks ago
The second project we worked on that won a Lucy Moses Award this year was Castle Clinton, the fort at the very southern tip of Manhattan. Over the last 210 years, it’s been a fort, a theater, New York’s immigration station, New York’s aquarium, and now a historic monument. In...
Old Structures...
Structure in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
That remarkable roof is part of the Smithfield Market in London, constructed in the 1860s. I’m...
a month ago
That remarkable roof is part of the Smithfield Market in London, constructed in the 1860s. I’m reasonably sure that the green and dark blue elements are wrought iron, riveted together, the gray and red ornament is cast iron, and the light gray roof structure is wood. Whether or...
Old Structures...
Look Up!
I was on a rooftop in midtown recently and had a good view of the top of 570 Lexington Ave,...
2 weeks ago
I was on a rooftop in midtown recently and had a good view of the top of 570 Lexington Ave, originally the RCA Victor Building, later the General Electric Building. The national register designation report suggests that the figures represent spirits of electricity, although the...
Old Structures...
A Little of This, a Little of That
This picture from Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York Project, “El, Sixth Avenue Line, 28th Street...
a week ago
This picture from Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York Project, “El, Sixth Avenue Line, 28th Street Station” doesn’t have any single big topic, but it has a bunch of small ones, all a little interesting. The el began in 1878 as a railroad pulled by coal-burning steam locomotives....
Old Structures...
Two Fields Of Engineering
The towers in the photos above and below are part of the system carrying electricity from the...
3 weeks ago
The towers in the photos above and below are part of the system carrying electricity from the generating plant at Hoover Dam to Los Angeles. The photos are from the HAER survey “Hoover Dam, Los Angeles Bureau of Power & Light Lines 1-3, U.S. Highway 93, Boulder City, Clark...
Old Structures...
Skymarks | Landmarks
There’s a new exhibit opening at the Skyscraper museum later this week that feeds several of my...
3 weeks ago
There’s a new exhibit opening at the Skyscraper museum later this week that feeds several of my interests. How many skyscrapers are New York City designated landmarks? Maybe 84. Carol Highsmith’s photo above shows at least two: the Chrysler Building and the Chanin Building across...
Old Structures...
A Local Landmark
The picture above, from the New York State archive, is labelled “New York City, 98th Street”. It...
3 days ago
The picture above, from the New York State archive, is labelled “New York City, 98th Street”. It seems more like Brooklyn than Manhattan because of the lack of bigger apartment houses interrupting the lines of the almost-rowhouse-sized walk-up apartments. Besides the title, there...
Old Structures...
Not So Long Ago
Another picture from the state archives: an aerial view of Manhattan, looking south, from July 6,...
a week ago
Another picture from the state archives: an aerial view of Manhattan, looking south, from July 6, 1951. The 50s were arguably the peak of air pollution in New York, as environmental controls hadn’t been established yet and coal was still being used rather than oil for building...
Old Structures...
Sadly, No.
I recently came across the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection at the Library of Congress, and thought it...
a week ago
I recently came across the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection at the Library of Congress, and thought it was a new vein I could mine for blog posts. The criteria I use are (1) interesting views of buildings or other structures and (2) pictures that are in the public domain, and the...
Old Structures...
It Looked Familiar: Three-Lobed
Above, Barbara Gordon (in a flashback, in her teenage pre-Batgirl days) in a Gotham City park. Below...
3 weeks ago
Above, Barbara Gordon (in a flashback, in her teenage pre-Batgirl days) in a Gotham City park. Below (courtesy of Rosapicci), the Trefoil Arch in Central Park.
Old Structures...
Modesty Forbids
Putting aside the sexism of the presentation – an expected feature of pretty much anything from 1922...
6 days ago
Putting aside the sexism of the presentation – an expected feature of pretty much anything from 1922 – this ad exaggerates the importance of engineering to a degree that makes me uncomfortable. I wish that our profession lived up to the standard being presented here.
Old Structures...
One Or More Rooms
Above, “Studios, 51 West Tenth Street” in 1938, from Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” project....
3 weeks ago
Above, “Studios, 51 West Tenth Street” in 1938, from Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” project. This 1857 building was apparently the first constructed in Greenwich Village specifically for artists and helped create the art scene in the Village. A long list of famous people...
Old Structures...
Odd Names and Missing Symmetry
The photo above is the high-modernist interior of a bank in 1955. It was the branch of the Chemical...
17 hours ago
The photo above is the high-modernist interior of a bank in 1955. It was the branch of the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street; there’s still a branch of the successor-company bank (Chase) at the same location. It’s a decent interior, no-nonsense and...
Old Structures...
“First”
The picture of a lock above, from the New York State archive, is titled “The opening of the first...
a week ago
The picture of a lock above, from the New York State archive, is titled “The opening of the first section of the Erie Canal” and is dated May 15, 1915. My memories of first learning US history in elementary school are pretty hazy, but the canal opened in 1825 and contributed...
Old Structures...
Stolen
Amazingly, I have not already written a blog post about the Edgar Laing Stores…so here it is. The...
a month ago
Amazingly, I have not already written a blog post about the Edgar Laing Stores…so here it is. The picture above was taken during a HABS survey in 1971, shortly before the building was demolished as part of an urban renewal project on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. The project wiped...
Old Structures...
Undoubtably True
That’s a poster created by the Works Progress Administration, one of the main elements of the New...
a week ago
That’s a poster created by the Works Progress Administration, one of the main elements of the New Deal between 1935 and 1943. The WPA created a lot of jobs during the Great Depression, typically through creating projects for people to work on. Because the WPA employed a lot of...
Old Structures...
Anthropomorphizing In Fashion Terms
The title of Berenice Abbott’s 1935 photo above, “Broadway near Broom Street”, is slightly...
4 days ago
The title of Berenice Abbott’s 1935 photo above, “Broadway near Broom Street”, is slightly misleading. We’re looking west on Broome Street to Broadway and beyond. Given the date, this must have been one of her earliest photos in the “Changing New York” project. The center of the...
Old Structures...
Astonishingly Crude
That’s a close-up, obviously, of a street facade of a New-Law Tenement. The arch in the lower right...
2 days ago
That’s a close-up, obviously, of a street facade of a New-Law Tenement. The arch in the lower right is a window head, and is actually four courses of brick, with the top course being headers that cantilever out to create a hood over the window. It’s a nice detail, creating...
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