More information on The Structure of Skyscrapers, my history of the development of tall-building structural technology put to 1900, is at the link above. Or click on the book cover below. More information on City of Brick and Steel, our guide to the structure of buildings in New York City, is at the link above. …
There are two reference books I’ve used continuously since high school. The first is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, which is not the most comprehensive guide to the English language – the 3rd edition is 71 pages long – but is the most efficient. It has a handful of simple rules that …
The main building of the New York Public Library is one of the city’s gems of Beaux Arts architecture. There’s a good argument to be made that it’s the best we’ve ever had, surpassing Penn Station, Grand Central, and the Metropolitan Museum. But is was also built using, in part, some fairly advanced structural techniques: …
More of the NYPL construction… The library, as built, had a huge area devoted to stacks at the west side (the rear) of the building. The main reading room located directly above the stacks, and there’s a cross between a conveyer belt and dumbwaiter that brings the books up to the reading room. Eventually the …
If you go to the New York Public Library’s digital collection and search for “construction” you get, among other things, a collection of hundreds of photos of the construction of the main branch of the library between 1902 and 1911. The library is an incredibly complex building with a series of large interlocking public spaces …
Wills was a British cigarette company that apparently decided to use its packs for semi-educational fun. The description on the back, below, is reasonably accurate, putting economics as the prime mover behind the development of steel-frame technology. I have no idea whether the average Wills smoker would have recognized the picture on the front. It …
