Not Quite Right
It’s just a guess, but I don’t think that beam is working the way it was intended.
Steel
A Strange Assignment
As I was trawling through the Underhill collection at the Library of Congress, I stumbled over another building that I have a personal connection to: 95 Maiden Lane. I worked on hypothetical repairs in 1988 or 89 and I have no idea if any of them were ever performed. I was only at the building …
Failure Portrait: Not Yet
An office building in midtown has a slight rusting problem… The column is still performing adequately, still carrying load. Obviously, if it continued to deteriorate that would end at some time, but since the project we’re part of includes both reinforcing the steel and waterproofing it, that unfortunate outcome will not happen. This level of …
Paper Thin, From A Distance
That’s the back (east) side of the Con Ed building on east 14th Street. (One of the many arguments between Boston and New York that will never be settled to anyone’s satisfaction: their utility company was long ago named Commonwealth Edison, after the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ours was long ago named Consolidated Edison after the …
Hybrids
I participated this fall in the Skyscraper Museum’s “Fall Semester” lecture series. This was a series of virtual lectures and virtual discussion planned so that the museum could keep programming going while physically closed because of the Covid pandemic. The fact that I was doing this just as The Structure of Skyscrapers was released is …