For a very long time, the New York City Building Code has required that the portion of floor directly in front of a fireplace, somewhat confusingly called the hearth, has to be of non-flammable construction. That way, if sparks or pieces of wood fall out of the fireplace onto the floor, they don’t immediately start …
I haven’t done one of these in a while, partly because of the Covid-19 lockdown and partly because of the luck of the draw in which projects I’ve visited. I like this photo because the failure is quite subtle but also completely visible. That’s a piece of a stone-masonry facade, visible up close from a …
More fakery, down the block from the building I was picking on a few months ago. The masonry over the entrance to the garage and courtyard is not supported by that supposed flat arch. This is a concrete-frame building with thin masonry veneer. The shorter the span, the easier it is to get a masonry …
That’s a new building – probably apartments with stores at the first floor – at the foot of Sixth Avenue in Tribeca, where it merges into Church Street. The style may not be to everyone’s taste but it jumped out at me because (a) it’s not another glass curtain wall and (b) some inventiveness was …
That’s a brownstone quarry in Portland, Connecticut, probably in the 1870s. They should have left it in the ground and used a better stone in construction.
