History

The Woolworth Building

by Don Friedman on May 5, 2013

More events for a 100th birthday party:

{ 3 comments }

Talking History

March 30, 2013

I’ll be speaking at the Skyscraper Museum on May 15. The talk concerns the engineers and engineering developments of early skyscrapers that culminated in the construction of the Woolworth Building in 1913.

Read the full article →

Historic Structural Detail 4

March 5, 2013

Because technical language changes at a different rate than technology, we sometimes use obsolete words to describe new things and we sometimes use new words to describe old (or oldish) things. Case in point: people started referring to “curtain walls” in the  1890s, when the non-structural walls in question were 12 (or more) inches of [...]

Read the full article →

International News, Sort Of

February 4, 2013

Here’s OSE’s very own Gabi Pardo, helping describe Grand Central for a Spanish news show on the terminal’s 100th anniversary: Grand Central cumple 100 años.  

Read the full article →

Talk at the Skyscraper Museum

April 9, 2012

I’ll be talking at the Skyscraper Museum (6:30 PM, April 24) on the history of structure in early skyscrapers. This is part of a lecture series in conjunction with the current exhibit on early skyscrapers and specifically the headquarters buildings of New York newspapers erected between 1870 and 1905.

Read the full article →

A Building Ghost

September 26, 2011

We often find remnants of old buildings that had previously been on a site we are working – fragments of old foundations and reused old foundations being the most common – but sometimes you see ghosts of buildings that have been demolished on the site next door. This most commonly happens with old rowhouses where [...]

Read the full article →

Talk, Down South

September 6, 2011

I’ll be speaking at the AIA-North Carolina conference this Thursday. The talk is on a topic of greg interest to me and close relation to our work: do designers learn lessons from the past. The specific topic I’m going to discuss is the relation of current facade-inspection laws such as New York’s Local Law 11 [...]

Read the full article →