In the picture above, the older buildings mostly have brick or limestone-veneer facades, while the new buildings mostly have glass facades. That’s partly the result of changes in architectural styles over the course of the twentieth century, party the result of advances in glass technology, and partly the result of construction economics. What’s notably missing …
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New York’s municipal buildings were designed to impress, with an emphasis on architectural grandeur, even when the style was bizarre. After a period in the mid-1900s when quality and style suffered, we are now back again in the swing of good design. The picture above is the 1899 …
The Times has a nice gallery up based on the city’s 1980s series of tax photos. Every single building, every single lot, available at the city archive web site. Seen above, my elementary school some 5 years after I had graduated.
Open stairwells are problematic in terms of fire spread and are wasteful of space but they are oh so beautiful.
The Battery Park City master plan created a pleasant park around the South Cove, an indentation in the landfill shoreline that, unlike the North Cove, is too small to be a harbor. It’s technically the north end of Wagner Park (named after Robert Wagner) and is a little over twenty years old. Much of the …
