That picture was taken in a theater attic. The diagonals on the upper right are portions of the timber-framed roof; the wall separates the auditorium area from the lobby. It’s the thing embedded in the wall that is rare and odd. In short, that’s the end of a long-span steel truss (over the auditorium, on …
Yesterday’s picture of the St. Paul Building (repeated above) had an interesting detail in the background. The problem of how tall a chimney should be has been around ever since people started building cities: it has to be tall enough so that smoke (and potentially burning cinders) don’t blow onto a neighbor’s roof or into …
The last of our Boston trip… That picturesque little bridge is in the Public Garden. As far as I can tell it doesn’t have a name, which is fitting, since it is described in some places as the “world’s shortest suspension bridge.” I don’t know if there are any shorter suspension bridges or how to …
That is not the fanciest arch you’ll ever see. It’s a flat arch made with common brick, and it looks like a few bricks were hand cut or broken on site to fit the “keystone” in the center. On the other hand, it’s been working for some 120 years, so I feel like I’m being …
That odd photo is a brick pier in the cellar of an uptown brownstone. There’s some water damage at the base from rising damp, but otherwise no reason it couldn’t perform its structural role. The line of piers and girders in the cellar is below the stairhall partition on the floors above, which is an …
