I was in Bushwick recently and took that picture of three old houses. Most likely they were identical when built, or nearly so; all have been modified. The house on the right has lost all of its trim, the house in the middle has lost its cornice and (I think) has those weird extended hoods …
Two weeks ago, I described The Structure of Skyscrapers in America as being a longer and better-written version of some of the arguments I make in this blog. In the interest of multi-media presentation, I’d like to point out that I will be discussing these same topics – the intersection of construction history, the history …
In 2016, I wrote a blog post about a replica Viking boat which had just crossed the Atlantic and was then docked in New York. I’m happy to link to it because, fortunately, I still agree with what I wrote. The picture above is not that replica, but rather a replica Viking boat that crossed …
In case you thought the sailing ship in my post a couple of days ago was some kind of fluke, here are two views of the East River docks around 1900. The first picture shows the new skyscrapers of the financial district from a funny angle (low and from the east); the second picture shows …
Over the years, I’ve been to a lot of historical restorations (e.g., Willamsburg, Virgina) and a lot of house museums and other buildings that are meant to recreate a specific era. The better ones recognize that the target year is only an end date. Unless people have specifically thrown away or lost all of their …
