SEAoNY Honors Donald Friedman with Honorary Membership
We are pleased to announce that the Structural Engineers Association of New York has made it official: Donald Friedman is
Journal
Our work with old buildings has us studying a lot of different topics in addition to structural engineering – for example, architecture, history, and historic preservation – and we like sharing stories about what we’ve found.
Under the Cover
On a regular basis, I walk past the building at 111 Cedar Street/112 Trinity Place/108 Liberty Street, which no one
The Astor Building 2
Keeping on with the construction photos of the St. Regis Hotel under its temporary name “the Astor Building”… Unlike my
The Astor Building 1
Another set of construction photos to look at, starting with a mystery. Here’s photo 22 in the sequence, from August
It Looked Familiar: More Than Usually Obscure
Kate Kane[1], AKA Batwoman, goes for a walk and some errands.[2]: Looking south on William Street, in Street View, with
A Comparison
From a December late afternoon in 2019, a cruise ship heading down the Hudson: A side comment: the fog makes
Some House
From Max Hubacher, January 11, 1952, “Old red brick house in downtown Brooklyn, L.I., on the site a park is
All Gone
From 1914, a postcard misnamed “Hudson Terminal Building.” It’s misnamed because those are two buildings, each of which had deep
Boot Scrapers, Part 6: Missing Something
Two boot scrapers on the same block. First, a fairly ordinary wrought-iron scraper next to an ornate cast-iron newel post:
So Skinny
Continuing yesterday‘s thought for a bit, here’s a Wurts Brothers photo from the early 1920s, showing the intersection of Madison
Assembling A Campus
…in postcard form! The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company decided in 1892 to move uptown, to Madison Square. The new company
Sometimes…
…you find the perfect angle for a photograph. Chrysler, September 20, 2019: In 1986, I assembled a cardboard model of
The First R
I’ve talked more than once about the Reuse Reduce Recycle mantra and how it relates to our work. Here’s a
Historic Structural Detail: Backless
During an apartment renovation in a converted 1860s loft building, a view of one of the cast-iron columns that makes
A Short-Lived Mansion
The kind of construction-sequence photos that I showed a while back for 15 Broad Street exist for other buildings and,
I’m Not Laughing
The northwest corner of North 6th Street and Berry Street in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) in 1940: The four-story building on the
From Standard To Remnant
From the 1930s, postcard nostalgia about the “days of the Square Rigger”: “Stokes” in this case is Isaac Newtown Phelps
Proper Decoration
This is pretty far afield for me, but it concerns the built environment, so close enough. Another old photo, from
Waiting For A Flight
More old photos: from Newark Airport in 2019, looking northeast (on the left) and east (on the right): A close-up
July 4, 2019
Fireworks over the East River as seen from Battery Park City: Tastes vary, but I find this more interesting than