The picture above is not the building I’ll be talking about. It was simply the first one I came to in my collection that had bearing masonry arches. The building I’m talking about will remain nameless: it was large, owned by a non-profit institution, and located in upstate New York, and it was demolished some …
Yesterday’s post about the Parachute Jump got me looking for more oddball towers. Most of the search turned up old stone forts, which are interesting in their own right, but not what I was looking for. Then I found the photo above, a circa 1910 view of a “New concrete observatory tower, Vicksburg, Miss” built …
That bizarre steel umbrella is the Parachute Jump at Coney Island, a ride constructed for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair (where it was the second tallest structure, behind the Trylon) and moved from Flushing Meadows Park to Coney Island after the fair closed. The ride itself has been closed since 1968, but it is visually as …
That’s the Taft Bridge, AKA the Connecticut Avenue Bridge in northwest Washington, carrying the avenue over Rock Creek. It’s an impressive structure by any standard, over 1300 feet long and with its deck about 130 feet above the creek at the bottom of a steep valley. It’s a spectacular location, with the gorge and Rock …
I’ve had the tab with this picture open for months, and I forget why. That’s the National Shoe and Leather Bank Buliding, at the southwest corner of Chambers Street and Broadway, shortly after completion in 1895. The trees on the left are City Hall Park. The building was as bizarre as this photo makes it …
