Mary Jane Watson and Felicia Hardy go for a bite to eat: A view up Sixth Avenue from Waverly Place: Note the Jefferson Market Courthouse Library in the background.

The New York Public Library gives the date of this photos as "1890 (Questionable)" but that seems roughly correct. It's a view of the foot of Fifth Avenue, where it ends at Washington Square. It's snowing, and there's a reasonable amount of fresh snow on the tree branches, but the sidewalks were cleared long enough ago that there are piles of snow in the gutters. I'm thinking this was the second snowfall in two or three days.

No snow today, but supposedly a decent amount tomorrow. Meanwhile, the 1880s give us two views of Central Park in the winter:

Some holiday cheer: In case you're wondering about the painting, here's the back of the card: We've met Wills's Cigarettes before: publishing a construction photo of the Singer Building as "Famous Invention No. 36: Steel-Frame Building" and a construction photo of (probably) the Flatiron Building as "Engineering Wonders No. 22: Building a 'Skyscraper,' U.S.A." It's good to see that their apparently compulsive need to create lists of things to put on trading cards included art from their own country.

A while back I discussed my feedback-cycle theory of movies and skyscraper design influencing one another. The origin of that theory is Fritz Lang's statement, some hundred years ago, that seeing Manhattan for the first time is what gave him the inspiration for Metropolis. Whatever you may think of the movie, it's hard to deny that it is, in part, a celebration of the visual effect of a dense city of tall buildings, and as such has inspired people who design skyscrapers.

I previously discussed the proposed New York City Existing Building Code, and it's time for an update. When I wrote the previous blog post, in September, we were waiting for the proposed legislation to make it to debate and voting by the City Council, so everything was theoretical and in the future. The news - the reason for today's post - is that the bill, …

As I was walking around, I got a good view of 30 Hudson Yards and its observation deck, The Edge: No comment:

Tony Stark conducts some business while walking: Street view of Broad Street, looking south from Wall Street: The New York Stock Exchange, on the right with the roman temple front, will put up huge banners for important events among the listed companies; the big event in the comic is Doctor Doom taking over the entire world. C'est la vie. Broad Street bends south of Exchange Place - if you could see past the curve, our office is two blocks further down on the right.

One of my favorite jokes: In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is. Recycling seems like a clean idea. Instead of throwing things away to rot in a landfill or, worse, not rot in a landfill but simply stay there forever, you reuse the material to cut down on pollution. In reality, the process begins with collecting an enormous amount of garbage.

I've written before about the caisson foundations at the Woolworth Building but here comes the New York Public Library with a fantastic Irving Underhill photo from May 1, 1911: We're looking south with Broadway on the left. The tallest building, partially lost in the haze, is Singer. I believe this photo was taken from a window or the roof at Underhill's studio, which was at the corner of Park Place and Broadway.

This post may not seem like it's about the built environment, but it is. I'll get there eventually, just with a detour. Baba Yaga is a woman with a considerable presence in Slavic, mostly Russian folk tales. I've never been clear on whether she's a witch or even human; she can definitely be terrifying but also sometimes helpful. (Like a lot of folklore characters, she's neither all good nor all bad.) Her most memorable feature is not actually about her, it's about her house.

More than five years ago, I wrote about the see-saw history of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge: built in 1939 with the slender profile that having only plate-girder stiffeners can give you, modified in 1943 with the addition of big stiffening trusses as a reaction to the collapse of the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and then back to a slim profile in 2003 with the removal of trusses and the addition of wind fairings based on modern dynamic analysis.

During a rooftop site visit in midtown a couple of years ago, I turned around and there it was: the old General Electric Building. It's sometimes overlooked - it's only 50 stories tall and slender - but it's one the great examples of the romantic-corporate version of Art Deco. Chrysler is psycho-corporate Deco, and Rockefeller Center and the Empire State are simply corporate Deco.

For various reasons, I went to two different elementary schools, even though we lived in the same apartment from when I was 4 until I left for college. The second school, from 4th to 6th grade, was PS24. Here's a picture I took three years ago when I happened to be in the neighborhood: The school I went to is on the right.

In honor of the cold weather we've been having, some of it with clear blue skies and tonight with snow, some pictures from a few years ago. First, 17 Battery Place, 20 West Street and 21 West Street with a clear sky: Next, with some clouds: And finally a close up on 17 Battery: Pretty.

I've more or less run out of Lewis Hine photos of the Empire State Building construction, so let's head south for Irving Underhill photographing the Woolworth construction about twenty years earlier: The photo, from February 20, 1912, is titled "Woolworth Bldg. iron work" and shows the steel frame erected up to about the 16th floor. It appears there are three derricks up top for picking steel, as well as a whole bunch of masons' scaffolds lower down; the masons are working on the facade at the fifth floor.

A beam - maybe steel, maybe wrought iron - in a sidewalk vault, photographed several years ago: Just to be clear about what you're looking at: A is some white paint (almost certainly lead-based) on the beam web. B is a big hole where the web has rusted away completely. C is what's left of the bottom flange after a lot of delamination and other material loss.

The attic of a very old house: Yes, that is a chimney on an angle. That's a fairly common sight in very old houses, as is the wood framing on the underside of the angle, propping (maybe) the masonry. This is what happens when the fireplaces are located where the logic of the interior rooms dictates and those locations are not where you want the chimneys to be.

From the Wurts Brothers, "General View - Rivers - Hudson River - looking west from Whitehall Building": Once again, that is an accurate description of the framing of the photo - the Whitehall Building at 17 Battery Place, among other things, is where the New York harbor pilots used to be based - but it really misses the point of the photo.

Some old houses in Chelsea, on Ninth Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets: To quote from the designation report for the Chelsea Historic District, "These three smalI wooden buildings bring a touch of nostalgia to the District, as wooden buildings characteristically do, wherever they survive in Manhattan." The report lists the southernmost building (the one that's been restored) as constructed in 1856, and the other two as constructed in 1868.

A newspaper headquarters in Gotham City: The Chrysler Building: Photo by Dan Smedley on Unsplash Of all of the possible criticisms of the design of Chrysler, I never expected to come across "it's not busy enough."

I was on site with Ellie Phetteplace yesterday, and she took this picture of me. I like it so much, it may become my preferred portrait for official correspondence. I don't usually wear a hoodie, but it was below 20F when I left home, and this was the easiest way to keep my neck warm during a cold visit in a damp location.

I'm returning to this topic - a tip on how to do field investigation of buildings - for the fourth time in the last two years, mostly because I took a picture that illustrates it perfectly. An apartment house in a landmark district, lit from the south: And close up: Obviously the second picture was pushing the limits of the (limited) camera in my phone.

View of 270 Park Avenue between 432 Park Avenue and One Vanderbilt from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building after dusk on March 14, 2025. by Jfendi. I frankly enjoy a good savaging by a critic1, whether I agree with it or not. There is something deeply satisfying about a well-constructed and well-written assault.2…

Lewis Hine titled this 1931 photo of the construction of the Empire State Building "Workers having lunch" and it's hard to argue with the accuracy of that. There is, however, a whole lot more in the frame… First, given the choice of sitting on a pile of wood plank or sitting on a roll of wire mesh, I'd choose the wood.