Proto-Modernist, Two Ways

I doubt I’ll ever run out of blog fodder because of what happened with this photo: I’ve walked by 135 Hudson Street many times, but I finally remembered to take a picture. You don’t see something like this every day. The simple facts: it’s a warehouse completed in 1886, facing the St. John’s Park freight terminal of the New York Central Railroad. It’s been converted to apartments and the freight terminal has been converted to the exit plaza from the Holland Tunnel, but the exterior of the building has barely been changed. Here it is in 1940: The designation report for the Tribeca West Historic District has this fascinating quote from Montgomery Schuyler: “no style which yet has style.” In the forty years following the construction of this building, “no style” would become a compliment and the basis for a lot of modernist architectural philosophy. But I want to talk about structure and construction… Here’s a close-up of one end of the arch over the Hudson Street entrance: In no…