We1 are pleased to announce that the Structural Engineers Association of New York has made it official: Donald Friedman is now an Honorary Member. The award comes as SEAoNY celebrates its 30th anniversary—which is particularly appropriate since Don was one of the organization’s founding board members.
In announcing the award, SEAoNY highlighted Don’s longstanding devotion to structural engineering and to SEAoNY, as well as his extensive research and writing on the structural engineering of existing and historic buildings. His books and articles have become essential resources for understanding New York’s existing building stock and the often-hidden structures behind it.
For someone who was born in New York and has spent most of his career working on New York’s buildings, recognition from his fellow New York structural engineers is particularly meaningful. Don is already a Fellow of both the Association for Preservation Technology (APT) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and is unique in having received the high recognition from all three organizations.
His book Historic Building Construction resides—or should reside—on the desk of anyone who works on existing buildings. His other books, including The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871–1900 and After 9-11: An Engineer’s Work at the World Trade Center, along with his numerous technical articles and years of teaching and speaking, have made him one of the people most responsible for documenting how New York’s buildings actually work.
But Don’s contribution isn’t limited to books and conference papers. He has spent more than 35 years investigating, analyzing, and designing repairs for existing and historic structures, from masonry and cast iron to steel, timber, and concrete. He has worked on thousands of buildings and structures – Castle Clinton, Belvedere Castle in Central Park, the St. Urban Apartments, First Presbyterian Church of Stamford, CT to name a few – and has somehow also found the time to share what he has learned about them, generally before the rest of us have figured out that we should be taking notes.
Indeed, Don has written thousands of posts for the OSE Journal, covering everything from obscure structural details and historic photographs to New York architecture, construction history, engineering failures, engineering business operations, and the occasional thing he notices while walking down the street. The result is an unusually extensive—and unusually accessible—record of the built environment.
Don’s interest in existing buildings has also never been confined to his project work. He has contributed his expertise to the preservation of existing buildings by also assisting the Landmarks Commission with structural reviews and by serving on the structural committees for the NYC Building Code and Existing Building Code. Finally, he has taught generations of students and engineers about structures. In other words, he has spent much of his career not only figuring out how old buildings work, but trying to make sure that other people understand them too.
OSE is planning an appropriate celebration, which will coincide with our 20th anniversary in early 2027.
- Don is not the type of guy to high-five himself in public, so although he writes the vast majority of these blog posts, we took the liberty of saying nice things about him—and, more importantly, not letting him edit them. ↩︎
