There are obvious forms of observation bias, such as thinking that because nearly every building I see has some serious damage that they all do. If I’m looking at a building professionally, it’s usually because there’s something wrong with it. The photo above shows a more subtle version. That’s the station at Seventh Avenue and …
The towers in the photos above and below are part of the system carrying electricity from the generating plant at Hoover Dam to Los Angeles. The photos are from the HAER survey “Hoover Dam, Los Angeles Bureau of Power & Light Lines 1-3, U.S. Highway 93, Boulder City, Clark County, Nevada” which is an accurate …
I used the piece of an old magazine above a while back to illustrate the cross-section of a Phoenix column: a group of arc segments with flanges that allow them to be riveted together into a circular column. I haven’t seen that many Phoenix columns, in part because most of the remaining structures with them …
A number of the old photos I’ve been picking at here in the last few weeks have been construction shots, taken at intervals to show progress of the work. Today’s trio doesn’t break any new ground, but is a good example of what you can pick up from them. Above, 530 West 86th Street as it …
The late 1920s picture above, from an unidentified building in Washington DC, was taken in an odd location. The gable roof above is a skylight. The plane that looks like the floor is actually a “laylight,” which is glass that looks like a skylight but is not. Typically, laylights are located below skylights, as seen …
