Sometimes we don’t agree with that reason or it’s obsolete, but people never do things for no reason. It can be difficult to understand some old structures, particularly if they have been demolished for a century or more, but the starting point that they made sense to someone when they were built helps. The 1901 …
I’ve mentioned several times, including yesterday, my preference in bridges for through trusses (where the deck is aligned near or at the bottom chords and the trusses are connected to one another top and bottom) or deck trusses (where the deck is aligned near or at the top chords and the trusses are connected to …
This bridge, opened in 1897 and replaced in 1923, has an appealing name: it was the Free Bridge, carrying Little Rock’s Main Street across the Arkansas River. The name was descriptive of a crossing rather than inspirational: the purpose of the bridge was to provide free crossings. It was replaced, as was so common in …
I’ve talked around the edges of Federal Hall, but it’s worth spending a moment to discuss its most distinctive feature. And that’s not the big colonnade facing Wall Street. Despite the name, this is not the building that served briefly to house Congress when New York was the capital, it’s the 1840s building on the …
That handsome building, which still exists, but not in that form, is the post office adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. When train travel was the main form of long-distance travel, every major railroad terminal (and quite a few minor stations) had post offices nearby, because the mail was delivered from one city to another by …
