That’s a project we’re working on in Newark – the Ballantine House – where we are assisting Building Conservation Associates with repairs to the facade and front portico. If it doesn’t look quite like a construction project…there’s a story there. (All photos taken by Tim Michiels on site.) If you look at the schedule of …
To finish up Master Builders, let’s discuss clay masonry at the Woolworth Building. So much clay masonry. The facades, other than the bottom floors, are entirely terra cotta backed by brick; the floors, with a few exceptions, are entirely terra cotta tile-arches spanning between the steel beams of the frame. The picture above, intended to …
Nothing is ever simple. The Singer Building was actually three different buildings constructed at different times and merged when the third building – the tower – was conducted 1906-1908. The Singer company built a headquarters building on the west side of Broadway at the corner of Liberty Street in 1898. It was ten stories tall …
There’s a stereotype that New York’s skyscrapers are all founded on shallow bedrock. There used to be a myth that skyscrapers were clustered around Wall Street and midtown because that’s where bedrock was high, making the foundations cheap. There are a lot of problems with this story, starting with the fact that if people only …
Carol Willis was kind enough to point out that yesterday’s image is original from A History of the Singer Building Construction, edited by Otto Semsch. He was the chief engineer for the building and so obviously knew it well, and the book is a promotion piece for the building, for the Singer Company, and to …
