We Become Accustomed – Part 2

Yesterday I talked about the process of erecting a steel frame at the Astor Building. At some point, a curtain wall has to be put on that frame or you have a jungle gym rather than a building. Two photos taken two weeks apart (September 2, 1925 above, September 16, 1925 below) give a sense of that process for an ordinary building just about a century ago.

Above, although you can’t tell if you don’t already know what’s coming, the steel has just about reached the first setback. There are three work platforms for masons – a fancy name for some planks suspended by rope – on the east (Fifth Avenue) side of the frame. There’s a fringe visible along the spandrel beams at the fifth and sixth floors that may be clip angles bolted to the spandrel beams to carry masonry shelf angles. Similar angles are not visible at the fourth floor, but the facade masonry is different below the fourth floor, so the detail may be different. (Alternately, given which floors have that fringe, it may be the connection to the steel beams of the wood formwork for casting the concrete floor slabs.) Honestly, you’d need a higher-resolution photo to be sure. There’s a pile of brick – because it’s a “pile” rather than a “stack”, it’s almost certainly common brick – at the far left on the second floor. Note that the top three framing levels erected so far are bare steel, so the facade is following four floors behind the floor slabs. 

Below, they’ve built not quite two floors of facade in two weeks. There’s now a continuous line of masons’ platforms around the two street facades, suspended by a series of outriggers three stories above. (The fringe has disappeared from view and reappeared higher, suggesting that it is related to the wood slab formwork rather than the facade.) For whatever reason, the lower photo also shows the guy wires used to true the steel frame more clearly, at the near corner one floor above the outriggers. The steel work has reached the setback and continued up, pulled away from the main facades, so that the masons were relatively safe from falling objects, with the exception of when a piece of steel was being lifted by the big crane. Keep in mind that the use of riveted connections meant that red-hot pieces of steel were being tossed around.