Author Don Friedman Published on: May 18, 2024 Tags ArchitectureNew York Like Looking Down A Well Trinity Church and its yard are surrounded on all four sides by tall buildings. In 1952, when Angelo Rizzuto took
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 17, 2024 Tags ArchitectureCast IronMasonry Half Of A Grand Commercial Palace 380 Broadway has architecture above its station. It was built in 1860 with retail space at the base and loft
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 16, 2024 Tags EngineeringSteel Four, Maybe Five, Maybe Six Bridges Walking along South Street, which is to say along the East River waterfront. First up, the view from Rutgers Street
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 15, 2024 Tags New YorkUrban Planning An Obvious Issue “The Battle for the Streets of New York” by Dodai Stewart and illustrated by Leon Edler, in Monday’s New York
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 14, 2024 Tags Construction Evolved To Fit The Conditions If you’ve always known something, it can be difficult to see how weird it is. New Yorkers walk through construction
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 13, 2024 Tags ArchitectureHistoryNew York Almost Unrecognizeable Most of the 1950s Angelo Rizzuto photos I’ve been discussing recently can be quickly located even if their descriptions don’t
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 12, 2024 Tags New York A Metaphor When I was maybe ten years old, visiting the observation deck of the Empire State Building, I heard someone describe
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 11, 2024 Tags Architecture The Personal Connection Times Three It’s hard to overstate the importance of personal links in discussing how people feel about the built environment. This 1952
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 10, 2024 Tags ArchitectureUrban Planning A Less Obvious Canyon A few months ago I wrote about the appearance of streets lined with old, pre-zoning skyscrapers. I mentioned my two
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 9, 2024 Tags Cast IronDesign Always Something New No matter how many buildings you’ve seen, you can always find something that will surprise you. The picture above is
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 8, 2024 Tags ConstructionDemolition A Holdout In January 1958, Angelo Rizzuto took this photo from the east side of Lexington Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets,
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 7, 2024 Tags Architecture Gain Some, Lose Some This is the Bradbury Building, an 1893 office building in downtown Los Angeles: It’s a nice enough facade but really
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 6, 2024 Tags Cast IronDemolition Exposed During Demolition I had not seen a close-up of the demolition of the Wanamaker Store at Broadway and 9th Street until I
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 5, 2024 Tags New York Head In The Clouds One of my favorite views of tall buildings, again: in the fog. New York Bay has more than it’s fair
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 4, 2024 Tags History Misleading Words In 1941, Robert Moses demolished the New York Aquarium, located in Castle Clinton in Battery Park, in a fit of
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 3, 2024 Tags ArchitectureHistoryNew YorkOld Structures Engineering Being Stalked From The Past Once again, one of Angel Rizzuto’s photos, this one from 1954, gets very close to us. This is the intersection
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 2, 2024 Tags DemolitionNew YorkUrban Planning Outlived Its Welcome But Not The Need I’ve been trawling in the HABS index and came across a survey from 1974 of the Bronx portion of the
Author Don Friedman Published on: May 1, 2024 Tags ArchitectureOld Structures Engineering Close To Home From Angelo Rizzuto in 1950, “Broad Street.” It doesn’t instantly look familiar because we’re all used to seeing the north
Author Don Friedman Published on: April 30, 2024 Tags Cast IronMasonryWood An Advanced Method Of Doing Something Simple This detail takes some explanation. This is from a late-1800s factory building. It’s a bearing-wall building with heavy-timber floors, and
Author Don Friedman Published on: April 29, 2024 Tags PhilosophyTechnology Infrastructure Not all infrastructure is hidden – some, like elevated railroads, is more visible and audible than most people would prefer