The New York General Post Office used to be located at the south end of City Hall Park, when most of the business district of the city was south of there. Around 1900, when Penn Station was planned as the first direct rail connection between Manhattan and the west, plans were made to move the …
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 …
Maybe twenty years ago or so, there was a vogue for putting plastic owls on roof tops and bulkheads. This is one we found inside a building we’re working on. The idea was that owls scare pigeons and therefore the plastic bird would keep the real ones from nesting on your building. Pigeons have a …
“Hidden Histories: 6 Little-Known Designs for Central Park” is a nice preview of Cynthia Brenwall’s book The Central Park: Original Designs for New York’s Greatest Treasure. All of the items she highlights are worth reading about, but the plan for a floating music pavilion to save wear on the grass captured my imagination. I would …
If you zoom in, you can the original purpose of the building, carved over the door: this was built in 1911 as the First Precinct house of the NYPD. The first precinct includes Wall Street and City Hall, so perhaps the over-the-top architecture is to be expected. The building is too small and poorly laid …
