Old Structures Engineering

A new tool for reviewing new technologies, the Seinfeld Test: There has been some discussion in our office about the use of AI. There has not, to date, been any use outside of a couple of experiments. Before I describe the way we see the issues, I should discuss my bias: I am pretty much against the use of generative AI in design, although some lesser forms of machine learning are fine. (I’m not giving up predictive spellcheck any time soon.) I’m not particularly against new technology, but I…

From a site visit in 2019, some steel beams in a former restaurant space that might, just maybe, need to be replaced:

Bad guys, scheming, high up (from Ghost-Spider): Note the tall building with a curved facade facing us, underneath the speech bubble. See the smaller building with masonry walls at its base? That combination, with the new wrapped around the old should be easy to identify… Google Earth, looking south over Fifth Avenue, with all sixty stories of 500 Fifth at the bottom of the frame, the roof of the New York Public Library in the middle, and West 40th Street at the top with, at the left, the 1902…

Fraunces Tavern was originally built in 1719, so if you ignore the massive changes to the building over the years, it’s the oldest extant building in Manhattan, constructed some 95 years after the Dutch arrived. In other words, we have nothing standing from the first quarter of our history. The next-oldest extant building in Manhattan is the Morris-Jumel Mansion uptown, and it was built in 1765. Note that there are older buildings elsewhere in the city – some of which will be discussed in this…

I’m Not Going to Use Profanity Here

Time for a new, short-lived series of posts! Time to steal an idea! I’m going to assuage my guilt over this blatant theft by giving credit in each post of the series: Beth Acly, principal of Cirrus Structural Engineering, has been reposting a series credited to her firm on LinkedIn called “Witnessing the Revolution,” in which they describe various buildings that were constructed before 1776. In other words, buildings that are older than the United States and, as they say, “Still standing. Still…

From Max Hubacher, May 14, 1950, “Manhattan (Elevated)”: Both the tall buildings and the rolling stock were at least thirty years old at that point. It also feels like if you opened the windows on the train[1] you could grab a brass ring off the fire-escape on the left. It must have been quite loud in the offices directly adjacent on both sides of that street; before electrification, the smoke from the engines must have been unbearable in those offices. It’s easy enough to place the photo. The…

Part of investigating buildings is simply recognizing when something is wrong. If something looks wrong, it may mean that there’s a problem, or it may mean that there was an old renovation. Case in point, a random building I walked by in the South Slope: First thing that’s wrong: what is that weird drum on top of the corner turret? A lot of victorian-era buildings with turrets have pointy hats over them, and this could be the base of one of such a hat. Second thing that’s wrong: the…

From a 1902 postcard, a profile view of the Brooklyn Bridge (with bonus Fulton ferry) and a smaller view of the walkway. If you know the bridge well, as I do, the promenade view is actually quite accurate, but I suspect it’s a little bit difficult to parse for people who haven’t been on that walkway again and again. Also, it’s a little weird that there’s a big group of people up ahead by the tower but none closer. Is it something I said? This 1910 postcard of the walkway has a much more modern…

Option 1: I was standing in a primitive shelter in the forest primeval. Option 2: This is a leftover picture from the Belvedere Summerhouse from last Wednesday.

Usually, when I post a photo I took from a scaffold it’s to show off the view in a touristy sense, or to show an interesting building nearby. I took this picture a couple of days ago because it gives the feeling of being on the scaffold, or more precisely being on the stairs between levels of the scaffold. We’re looking north up Broadway from Duane Street.

From, maybe, 1911, a postcard that is so heavily retouched it might as well be a cartoon: There really was a big electric sign there showing a kitten tangled in silk thread, but I assume the actual sign had supports that are not visible here. The front gives us a short explanation of the wonders of electric-sign advertising – a new thing at that time – but the back goes all out: The preprinted text is more “gee whiz” stuff about the sign. The handwritten text makes it clear that this particular…

Yesterday, Old Structures personnel competed in the Corporate Challenge Race for the first time. Our team average time was 36:43 for the 3.5 mile course, very much based on the strong performances by Tim Michiels and Melanie McCloy. That was good enough to rank 145th out of the 428 companies competing in New York, and 7th out of 26 NYC A/E companies, which sure sounds like good news to me. As it happens, the route to the starting line passed an auspicious landmark: All of the original entrances…

I spent some time a couple of years ago looking at the photos of Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” project. Abbott was, of course, a spectacularly skilled photographer, and she made art out of photographing ordinary street scenes. That said, one of the recurring themes of that project was juxtaposing the past and (1930s) present in a single frame. Almost thirty years later, May 5, 1961, here’s Max Hubacher with “Manhattan, NY, 2nd Avenue”: We’re looking north up the avenue, probably from a…

A recent notice concerning area codes: When I was a kid, all of NYC was area code 212. In 1984, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island were moved to the new 718 area code because 212 was running out of numbers. In 1992, the Bronx was also moved to 718. In 1992, 917 was assigned as an overlay for the whole city. In 1999, 646 was added as an overlay in the Manhattan. In 2011, 347 and 929 were added as overlays in the outer boroughs. And, per above, we now have 465 being added to the outer boroughs.…

The news of the first nationwide Memorial Day, remembrance for the Civil War: Reporting from all over the country in the Times, including as far away as Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The local news that begins in the third column serves to remind us that life goes on.

Kieran Healey – a man who does some truly fascinating things with sociology, data visualization, and the intersection between sociology and data visualization – some years ago used the data available from the NYC government’s open-data policy to make a map of the ages of building in the city. Here’s Manhattan, with new buildings in bright yellow and most of OSE’s projects in purple (get the full size image at the link by clicking on the map): Here’s our office in the light purple indicating the…

From “Daredevil Noir,” an alternate history story with the Daredevil characters set in the 1930s, a gangster acting gangsterish: There’s an interesting peculiarity to the background: the marquee (currently showing The Mask of Zorro, which is what the Wayne family went to see the night that Thomas and Martha were shot and Bruce discovered a career path) says that this is the Pal… Theater (almost certainly the Palace Theater) while the facade higher up says that this is the ORP… (almost certainly…

From 29th Street east of Second Avenue, the spire of the Empire State Building, hidden behind a nearby fence and a far away apartment house water tank: No matter where you go, there you are.

I was walking down a street on Long Island when I saw an interesting building. The gable roof extended past the front facade, to give the front porch a pediment top. This house is probably no more than 60 or 70 years old, but that kind of temple front was surprisingly popular for houses in the early 1800s. Something about the US following in the footsteps of the Greek democratic cities and the Roman republic… As you might notice, there’s something a bit odd here. Specifically, the leftmost…

Apparently, the MTA has decided it’s time to get rid of the social-distancing decals that were put down in 2020 on the subway platforms as part of the Covid response. The Pacific Street station a few days ago, with some minor glue remnants where the sticker used to be: The vast majority of the stickers showed a couple of generic shoe prints, which could be men’s dress shoes or women’s flats, but there were also horseshoes, hooves, and pawprints mixed in. In any case, I expect to see fewer…

From 1915 or so, a postcard showing the Brooklyn Bridge: I suspect this was hand-painted over a photo. The detail of the bridge would be very difficult to get this accurate without a guide, but the Woolworth Building (the tallest in sight) and the Municipal Building on the far right are represented in a surprisingly crude manner. Similarly, the top of Bankers Trust is shown as an actual pyramid rather than the stepped pyramid it is. The angle is interesting. There’s a steep bluff above the East…

From Julia Rez, a group of NASA reports found in the trash: And from Nanoraptor, a slightly modified image: The fake NASA technical report titles are: STRUCTURAL MARGINS OBSERVED IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO EXCEEDANCE PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF UNEXPECTED WOBBLE IN A RIGIDLY NON-WOBBLING SYSTEM OBSERVED PERFORMANCE OF COMPONENTS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN INSTALLED BACKWARDS COGNITIVE LOAD IMPLICATIONS OF ACRONYMS REFERRING TO OTHER ACRONYMS THERMAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MATERIALS DESCRIBED INFORMALLY AS “PROBABLY…

The end is here: both for the construction of the Equitable Trust Building at 15 Broad Street in 1926-1928, and for this series of posts. Some views of the finished interior, and the story is done. First, the main public banking hall: I find it interesting that, in a building with reasonably-modern architectural styling on its exterior, the banking hall was so very retro. Apparently, in the 1920s, it was good public relations for your banker to pretend it was 1890. Ordinary employees got modern…

Batman continues to think deep thoughts about the past, as he looks at the Gotham Stock Exchange and its very slender Corinthian columns: The New York Stock Exchange shortly after the NYSE extension (on the right) had its exterior completed in late 1927: Not as close as I’d like, but close enough.

This series has focussed on relating images of New York (with the occasional foray elsewhere) in comic books to actual images of the city. But sometimes the allusions are in narrative…Batman ponders the history of Gotham City: Some actual history: the second (of the three total) Great Fire of New York began at night in December 1835. At that time, the city’s population was around 250,000; given that the population in 1790 was 33,000, it’s a fair bet that it was 25,000 or less in the 1830s. As…

A 1913 or so postcard showing the Manhattan end of the Manhattan Bridge, looking east towards Brooklyn: If that looks a bit more Parisian than you remember Chinatown as being, you’re not wrong. This is a fantasy in part, and some pleasantly-misguided design optimism in part. The colonnade is real, designed by Carrère and Hastings (the architects of the New York Public Library) and still there. Here’s an early photo of it, from the center of the bridge approach off Canal Street: It’s a bit much.…

One of my weirder old projects…The Verdi Monument at Verdi Square, which is the narrow triangle[1] bounded by Broadway on the west-southwest, Amsterdam Avenue on the east, and 73rd Street on the north, as photographed by Max Hubacher on April 27, 1961: The composer Giuseppe Verdi is on the high plinth in the middle, surrounded by characters from his operas. That’s Falstaff on the left, Leonora on the right, and Aida and Otello are on the other side, hidden at this angle by the base. The base is…

This is not my lunch’s view after I swallow: It is, rather, a picture I took inside a steel tube post – an HSS section, to be pedantic – used as part of some newish dunnage on an old industrial building. I positioned my phone’s camera lens and flash over the end of the tube and here’s the photo. The thing that looks like a bar crossing the interior space of the tube is actually a plate, which extends out on both sides to provide bolted connections for two beams. The fabricator cut a slot in the…

The end is in sight: both for the construction of the Equitable Trust Building at 15 Broad Street in 1926-1928, and for this series of posts. Today’s the last post with exterior photos because, in skyscraper construction, once the facade is complete and the windows are installed, photographing the outside of the building every week gets sort of boring. First, a good overall view on October 4, 1927, of the upper portions of the Broad Street (left) and Exchange Place facades, with masonry work…