From March 6, 1929, the Wurts Brothers give us 10 Sheridan Square, looking east across Seventh Avenue:
Google street view, now:
The facade on the right faces Sheridan Square proper, which is a narrow triangle1. That side of the “square” is a continuation of Washington Place. The facade on the left faces Grove Street.
The apartment house is named the Shenandoah, and it has a nice masonry facade that does not particularly bring to mind anything about the Shenandoah river or valley. The 1929 photo suggests something went wrong in planning the construction: the steel frame is just about complete but the floor slabs look to be lagging four stories behind the steel and the curtain wall has not even started.
While I’m a fan of steel framing, I actually prefer the finished building as an object to look at, and it just a bit better as a place to live than the bare steel frame would have been. That said, looking at the 1929 photo reminds me of where the idea of structural honesty came from. Here’s the structure of the building laid bare, showing exactly how it works. In theory, it seems like it might be nice if we could keep that feeling in the finished building, although in practice we can’t.
- Once again: Greenwich Village is a pocket of non-euclidean geometry. Don’t expect streets, geometry, or addresses to make sense. ↩︎
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