A Subtle Hint

From an industrial building turned offices, a vaulted lobby: The vaults are quite shallow, which tends to increase the horizontal thrust; the vaults have a decently long span as well. The arches separating the vaults are the most heavily loaded elements in the floor structure… Oh yeah: there’s an air vent in the middle of that first arch, in case you had any doubt that this 1910s industrial building in Brooklyn actually has a reinforced-concrete flat-slab frame. I’m not entirely sure why this building got such a fancy lobby, with a plaster hung ceiling made to look like vaulting. It was certainly more difficult (read: expensive) to make the ceiling vaulted rather than flat, so someone had to actively decide to do this. Maybe there were showrooms there as well as manufacturing space? There’s always a reason for something like this, even if it’s not obvious. Also, my congratulations to the people who converted it to office use. It sure seems obvious to me that the ornamental plaster…