December of 1901 at the construction the St. Regis Hotel, temporarily called “the Astor Building.”
At the beginning of the month, the steel skeleton, the concrete floor slabs, and the heavy masonry facade were all simultaneously in progress. The 55th Street (north) side:
And the Fifth Avenue (west) side:
I mentioned in the last part of this series how out-of-scale the building was with its neighbors, rowhouses on Fifth and more-pretentious single houses on 55th. Obviously that disparity only got worse as the building got bigger. The bare steel frame also provided a stark contrast to the masonry all around, although that disparity got smaller as the facade of the new building was constructed, hiding the metal. In these pictures, and particularly the view from 55th, note how many floors of bare steel there are, with only temporary planks laid over the beams and no facade yet nearby. This looks like a temporary failure of planning on the part of the contractor, although of course it’s easy for me to criticize 125 years after the afct.
Three weeks later:
The floors have mostly caught up to the frame. The frame itself is four stories taller, the ornate street facades are moving, albeit slowly, and the brick side facade on the east side is moving ahead quite fast. Note the wood masons’ platform on the east, apparently cantilevered through the window openings.
Part 1: here.
Part 2: here.
Part 3: here.
Part 4: here.
Part 5: here.
Photos from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “The Astor Building” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902.
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