A Bit…Simplistic?
I’m off to Charleston tomorrow for a conference. When I teach the history of construction, I always point out how much of the evolution was based on protection from fire. Before industrialized...
View ArticleThe Steel Order
The conference hotel in Charleston is one of the very few steel-frame buildings in the historic downtown area. It was built in 1924, at which time steel framing was rather advanced elsewhere in the...
View ArticleNo Escape
It doesn’t matter what you’re designing or where you are, arches develop horizontal thrust that must be accounted for. The tie rod for this old arched commercial storefront is an elegant solution, IMO.
View ArticleOld-Timers Disease
Halfway through my paper presentation at the conference, my metric knowledge fled, leaving me stuck with “ten inches” on the tip of my tongue and “200 millimeters” nowhere in sight. I got it. Eventually.
View ArticleWalking On Air
Via Gothamist and Untapped New York, sky bridges. And of course, my office:
View ArticleIt’s All A Stage Set
NYC’s cut-and-cover subways were covered with wood plank while under construction so that there was some semblance of a street. The problem was, the exposed utilities and wood street make it look...
View ArticleSandy, And Thoughts On How Things Work
This is probably the first of a series. I spent three days stuck at my parents’ apartment in Queens* watching TV and getting pissed at how few people understand physical reality. In part I blame the...
View ArticleSandy Thoughts, Part 2
I have an old friend* who works for the NYC Department of Buildings making sure dangerous buildings don’t kill people. I deal with him regularly when I have a project in an unsafe or semi-safe...
View ArticleSandy Thoughts, By The C Shore
So what do we do? Abandon all cities and towns near the ocean as likely to flood? Not likely, for economic, historical, and stubbornness reasons. Accept shit like is going on here* or the far worse...
View ArticleAlso Under The Stone
Now that GCT has posed naked, it’s time for a naked zombie. I give you Penn Station. If you look off to the right, the gleaming white is the completed portion of stone facade going over all that steel.
View ArticleNever Worth It
The Hoosac Tunnel was a marvel of its era. Over four and half miles through solid rock, just to get a railroad from Troy NY to Boston a little faster. The problem was, there were no safety controls...
View ArticleThat’s Not A My-Bolt
Back to trawling through the HABS HAER collection, looking for single-use index terms. Under “U-bolt”, we have this cute little truss* bridge in Pennsylvania. Where are the U-bolts, you may ask?...
View ArticleSoooo-ey!
In trawling the HABS/HAER index, I came across a term I’d never heard: a pigtail bridge. It looks like an ordinary short-span girder bridge, albeit in a remote part of the country: Then you look at...
View ArticleNaming Don’t Make It So
Daniel McCallum was a talented engineer, but he should have stuck to what he was good at: railroad logistics. His poetry is, in my opinion, unreadable. More importantly, the wood truss he bridge he...
View ArticleClever People
Whenever I teach, I try to get the students to understand that people working on buildings in the past were just as smart as us, and maybe smarter, but were limited by the technology they had to work...
View ArticleSomething New, Something Old
Technological change doesn’t happen all at once. People started constructing fully steel-framed buildings in the 1890s, but that doesn’t mean they had all the details worked out. Since they didn’t have...
View ArticleMini__Lenticular
Not all good ideas have to be done on a large scale. As much as I like the Smithfield Street Bridge and its ilk, a little baby truss is good now and again. Say hello to the Mount Vernon Street Bridge...
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