The main observation deck at the Empire State isn’t the very top, the 102nd floor. That’s a basically a drum with windows. The main observation deck is the 86th floor, where there’s an outdoor terrace and indoor space. The last time I was there – admittedly, some years ago – there was a souvenir stand …
Walking through Battery Park just after sunset…do you see it? Huh? Huh? Do you see it? Here’s a blow-up: The Statue of Liberty, the moon, the cranes at Port Newark, and a tiny cloud.
The first thing to note about the picture above is that it’s wrong. The tall building on the left is the Hotel McAlpin, at the southeast corner of 34th Street and South Avenue and the cute palazzo is the New York Herald Building between 35th and 36th Streets, Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Herald Square is …
I talked yesterday about elegant designs versus kludges; here’s an example of what I consider to be an elegant design from the same era as the elevated trains’ third tracking. The Detroit Publishing Company’s title for the 1905 photo above is “Where the subway is an elevated, New York City” and that’s spot on. This …
Engineers want to take pride in their work, just like everybody else. We are sometimes forced by circumstances to create designs that are less than elegant – the fact that the word “kludge” was created fifty or sixth years ago to describe that kind of design suggests it may be less rare than we’d like …
