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 …
The illustrations in old skyscraper marketing books tend to fall into two categories: pretty pictures of the exterior or main interior spaces, and construction photos. The pretty pictures are a traditional form of showing off architecture, and the construction photos were the 1900 way to show off high tech. The Broadway Chambers building’s book, because …
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 …
Someone’s been doing a lot of exploratory work on the rear and side facades of 120 Broadway (we’re looking at the Nassau Street/Cedar Street corner here). This building, the second Equitable Life Assurance headquarters on that site, was completed in 1915 (the previous building had burned in 1912) and has a steel frame supporting masonry …
More or less a typical building ghost, on West 96th Street, but worth looking at in the context of this week’s discussion of the differences in perception between engineers today and in the past. The five-story height of the ghost suggests it was a small apartment house rather than a rowhouse. If you look at …
