I first learned about the growth of the Tribune Buiding on Park Row reading Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen’s book The Skyward Trend of Thought. The fact that the book’s subtitle is “The Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper” tells you that it’s a polemic rather than a more straightforward history, which is fine. A lot …
Here’s the best contrast I could find to the heavy bridge at Pearl, Illinois, I talked about recently. That’s the 1889 Smith Avenue High Bridge across the Mississippi River between St. Paul and West St. Paul, Minnesota. That 1905 picture does not give a good sense of the bridge overall – it had 28 spans …
That lovely bridge has the lovely name “Strawberry Mansion Bridge,” after a historic house nearby. The bridge spans the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, at Fairmont Park; the mansion is within the modern park. The bridge is a steel deck-arch, where the traffic passes entirely over the arches. This is a modern interpretation of the type …
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 …
