Boring Pictures
Nice article from Gothamist on the use of boring machines for tunneling, and NYC’s water supply.
Oddly Real, But Exaggerated
The picture above is a long-abandoned flagpole mount on the roof of a 1905 building. The current roofing was installed in the 1970s and the portion of the mount that was at the roof surface was either removed then or was already gone. When I looked at it, I started thinking about how many building …
A Fake That Is Real
The picture shows an old mansion in Brooklyn, currently in renovation. It’s got the standard 1910 New York mansion construction: brick bearing walls, steel beams and tile arches for the floors, and terra-cotta block partitions for the room dividers. The groin vault on the left is fake: it’s plaster on metal lath, hung from the …
Which Is Worse?
Having graffiti on your brick, or using a sacrificial anti-graffiti coating and not renewing it, so that it peels off the brick and leaves your building with an unpleasant skin disease?
Oddball Variations
Anything that people do, they find ways to do differently. So for anything human-made we have, we have variations of it. Sometimes those variations are harmless and provide entertaining debate – the designated hitter rule being used in the American League but not in the National League comes to mind – and sometimes they are …