There are four very large rivers in the northeastern U.S. that flow basically north south: the Connecticut, which that makes up the boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire before cutting Massachusetts and Connecticut in two and entering the Long Island Sound at New Haven; the Hudson which runs south near the east edge of New …
I took that picture recently on West 44th Street. I assume the the lot will be redeveloped in the near future, but for now we’ve got a nice clear building ghost to examine. (Also, way off in the distance, formerly hidden by the small demolished building, we’ve got 30 Rockefeller Plaza, my second-favorite skyscraper.) (Also, …
That’s the ravelin east of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, protecting the sally port. In ordinary language, it’s a mini-fort that protected the main entrance to the main fort. That picture is from HABS, but Marie and I both worked at McHenry about thirty years ago, when employed by another firm. McHenry is famous for exactly …
I’ve talked about this before, but time to bring it up again. Engineering is not science or applied science. There are, in my opinion, two main areas where engineering differs from those two fields: the idea of design, and the importance of empirical fact. The picture above is an excellent example of why empirical fact …
It’s easy to fall for hyperbole. Some old skyscrapers in Chicago may have been fore-runners of modernism, but that doesn’t mean they were unornamented in the modern fashion. The Marquette Building, above, is a good example. Yes, its overall facade design was, for 1895, forward looking, but when you get closer you get a good …
