Blog
As practitioners in New York City, we often come across buildings, technologies or communities that are many decades old and largely unheralded; this blog is dedicated to presenting some of the things we've found. Contact us at info at davidgrider dot com.
December 21, 2012
WTC Lights: NYC Happy Holidays
by David Grider
View of 1 World Trade Center from the future PATH station floor.
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November 12, 2012
Playground of the World: Coney Island's Beach after Hurricane Sandy
by David Grider
Looking southeast from Coney's boardwalk on an unexpectedly natural looking landscape.
The beachscape at Coney Island once included dunes (from The Century Illustrated, 1880)
An adventure playground.
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October 11, 2012
F-POPS: Hoop for your POPS
by David Grider
Bringing together hula hoops & animal-costumed musicians to protect New York's privately-owned public space.
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July 17, 2012
Camouflage: In Defense of the Eisenhower Memorial Tapestries
by David Grider
The Frank Gehry designed metallic tapestries planned for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington DC have been subject to scathing criticism, but I find them deeply poetic for a reason that seems to have gone unnoticed: their direct relationship to camouflage techniques of World War II.
Cover of WWII-era camouflage manual on left, mock-up of memorial tapestry on right featuring a tree from an idyllic Kansas landscape.
(Composite by David Grider, Mock-up courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP, 2012)
Technical Manual TM 5-267 Camouflage, May 1 1943, pgs 28 & 29
(Scan by David Grider)
Mock-up showing a Kansas prairie house, an American longing for
an agrarian peace writ in the canvas of industrial war.
(Courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP, 2012)
Steel mesh camouflage netting deployed at Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego, 1943
(courtesy San Diego Air & Space Museum)
April 16, 2012
Building Information Modeling: Damage Control
by David Grider
Part of teaching my Intro to BIM course at NYU involves consideration of factors leading to adoption of digital modeling, and I recently found a stunning example of analog drawings pushed to the limit of legibility: the damage control plates for the USS Saratoga CV-60.
CV-60 damage control plate courtesy of Historic Naval Ships Association (HSNA)
(click image to enlarge)
Buildings generally don't have to worry about sinking, but they can share a similar level systemic complexity, and as these magnificent drawings illustrate, simply representing this information from a fixed point of view is challenging.
Add in room by room diagnostic & analysis demands (say, for boyancy in the case of a damaged ship, or tenant comfort in the case of a building) combined with the requirement that the drawings be kept current over decades of service, and the case is made for a computer-based model that allows examination from any point of view, runs simulations based on real-world conditions, and broadcasts information updates to the entire data set automatically.
Whether it is in our best interests to have our works of architecture become as complex and expensive as aircraft carriers is another question entirely...
Detail showing the overwhelming density of information, courtesy of HNSA
(click image to enlarge)
April 9, 2012
US Navy Fleet Supply Base: From Bunkers to BrightFarms
by David Grider
The recent announcement of a Huge Hydroponic Farm to be constructed by BrightFarms on the roof of the old Storehouse #2 of the US Navy Fleet Supply Base represents a fascinating evolution for this nearly 100 year old building.
Part of a three building complex that was built in a blistering 7 1/2 months by Turner Construction, the supply base was part of the massive complex of South Brooklyn buildings and piers (including the Brooklyn Army Terminal) that sprung up around Bush Terminal in the 24 months after Wilson's declaration of war on Germany in April of 1917.
And of the many military warehouses built in South Brooklyn from 1900 - 1940, these alone announce their War Building status in the form of observation bunkers on the roof. It is stunning to consider how much Brooklyn, let alone the nature of war, has changed in the century since their creation, but heartening that this old sword is finally being beaten to a (hydroponic) plowshare.
South facade of Storehouse #2 being rehabilitated as a center for light manufacturing called Liberty View Industrial Plaza (click image to enlarge)
The complex as it appeared, all 2,300,000 square feet of it, shortly after completion in early 1919 - a couple of months too late for WWI. It would serve as a clothing depot in the interwar years, realize its potential in WWII, then fall into disuse as the shipping industry left Brooklyn.
Section thru the complex looking west (from an original by Turner Construction) indicating the incredible weight-bearing capacity of the floors, 200 - 300 lbs per square foot.
The site of the future farm, looking north to downtown Brooklyn, with the orange panels of an addition to Storehouse #1
- now a federal detention facility - visible. Note the small structure with slit windows to the close left...
The rooftop has a network of these menacing observation bunkers, designed to at least look like they could withstand incoming shells.
Likely an artifact of the Sedition Act of May 1918, they surveyed the roof for the disloyal
- whether manned or not, saboteurs could never be certain - an example of architecture serving as security camera.
It would be terrific to see these unique structures reused to monitor plants in the new farm.
Looking south to the water tanks of the former Bush Model Factory complex
(now known as Industry City)
Interior at top floor prior to restoration.
Interior at lower floor - note larger diameter of column.
The view west past the Erie Basin, where the canal boats used to over-winter in a makeshift community of thousands, to the Statue of Liberty beyond (click image to enlarge)
April 2, 2012
6 1/2 Avenue: The Big Picture
by David Grider
As Chairman of F-POPS, it was a pleasure to witness the unanimous consent given to the DOT's proposal for new cross-walks connecting six blocks of midtown privately owned public spaces (along the route of F-POPS' Arcade Parade) in a path dubbed "6 1/2 Avenue".
But what also caught our eye was a mention in a related NY Times article of a 1910 scheme by Mayor Gaynor to run a new avenue through midtown all the way from 8th Street to 59th Street. Below is a rendering, published by the NY Times in 1910, showing the new Avenue cutting through Bryant Park on its way north.
Mayor Gaynor's vision for a new avenue, May 1910. Courtesy NY Times.
And yet: when one considers the scale of the new Park Avenue being built one avenue over at the time, or the cut and cover operations in connection with contemporary subway construction, the idea doesn't seem as absurd.
Looking south along the future Park Ave., August 1909. Courtesy Municipal Archives.
Lower East Side looking west about 1941 showing the original streets.
Lower East Side looking west today, almost all of the original streets (and buildings) erased.
February 13, 2012
The Radical Geometry of Leonardo da Vinci
by David Grider
On a research trip to the S.C. Williams Library at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Mr. Adam Winger, the Digital Initiatives Librarian, provided this architect with the distinctly analog privilege of turning the pages of an ancient pressing of Pacioli's De Divina Proportione, originally printed in 1509 and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci.
Five hundred years ago. Cut into wood. By hand.
See additional images from the Stevens Digital Collections here.
January 31, 2012
Fort Wadsworth: The Visitor Center Catch-22
by David Grider
This architect finally made the trip to Fort Wadsworth and you should too: it is a magnificent site laced with foot paths that offer incredible views of 19th century battlements, the New York harbor, and the Verrazano Bridge.
Just don't count on actually getting to enter the forts.
Like contemporaries such as Castle Clinton in Battery Park, Fort Jay on Governor's Island, or Fort Schuyler at SUNY Maritime, the main structures of Wadsworth, Battery Weed (the eastern structure) and Fort Tompkins (containing the former parade grounds) were constructed with 6' thick walls to withstand bombardment and the wear and tear of garrisoned soldiers.
But unlike their contemporaries, the staffed visitor facility for Fort Wadsworth is so removed from the historic buildings that Fort Tompkins is generally shown only once a day, and Battery Weed is totally off limits.
So we close and stop maintaining the perfectly serviceable historic forts to build and staff a new strip-mall-like visitor center; its not quite the same as destroying a village in order to save it, but certainly a logic that Joseph Heller would have appreciated.
Looking over the tiered granite cannon mounts of Battery Weed to the harbor beyond.
A terrific juxtaposition of construction technologies, topography & time.
Site plan indicating where the visitor center is and where it should be.
The arcade of former Quartermaster offices & shops in Fort Tompkins that bustled with people for decades and is now, inexplicably, abandoned.
An example of the Quartermaster offices, closed to the public except for special tours.
It is one of many spaces within the fort that would have been a fantastic for a Visitor's Center.
Instead of access to the forts, we underwrite a banal Visitor Center with blacked-out windows, an inglorious front door to one of New York City's finest sites.
December 12, 2011
Underemployment: Telephone Exchange Buildings
by David Grider
The Postal Service's recent notice of layoffs and facility closures brought to mind another building type once full of people and now empty: the Telephone Exchange Building.
Begun in earnest during the 1870s as an outgrowth of telegraphs, the voice-carrying telephone system spread rapidly throughout urban areas, with every single telephone line returned to central buildings known as telephone exchanges. Here, these lines, tens of thousands in dense urban neighborhoods, were routed to human-operated switchboards where connections were made by hand.
In New York, the exchanges reached a zenith in the years leading up to WWII, with untold lines gathered & distributed in solid, well-appointed civic buildings that sometimes rose over twenty stories and were often humane, finely wrought works of Architecture.
Beyond hosting a once cutting-edge technology, these centrally-located buildings also provided a place of employment within their communities, where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people - mostly women - worked shifts 24/7.
Employment demand stayed high for some time after WWII until automated switching, a technology almost as old as the telephone, finally matured sufficiently to replace local, then international, human operators.
Ben Mendelsohn's recent Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors, shows how these buildings have retained their role in the city's nervous system as internet data routing hubs, while also revealing how few onsite people are required. Many exchanges, however, sit nearly vacant and awaiting creative reuse, hundreds of thousands of square feet made obsolete by advancing technology.
And so it goes now with the Postal Service, another community-based bricks & mortar civic infrastructure, based largely on paper and human effort, that is coming to difficult terms with automated digital communication - lets hope that the men & women who have carried our mail, and the civic buildings that have housed them, can be put back to work soon.
Bell Telephone scribed into stone at a 1920s central exchange building in New York that once employed thousands and is now down to a
handful of technical overseers. The architectural treatment of exchange buildings was often similar to libraries of the time.
A typical empty exchange space awaits fit-out, generous daylight exposing the ghosts of human-operated switchboard consoles still visible on the floor. A remote closet of
incomparably smaller digital switches now handles all the work.
Cut copper cables that reflect both changing equipment and in this case, like vacant lots and burned-out buildings, a residential
depopulation of the surrounding community; each paired strand, hundreds in each cable, used to run to someone's telephone.
Telephony was once a radical invention, and its rapid installation throughout NYC (thanks in part to bundling lines with subway construction) gave the city a huge business advantage and a distribution backbone that remains vital.
A typical Operating Room: switchboards line the perimeter of the otherwise open space, with a central desk for the chief operator.
Front & back view of the switchboards in the plan above.
The electro-mechanical genius of the human-operated switchboard.
Though the telegraph had employed young men to tap out Morse code, telephone companies preferred women employees, noting their superior voice
and "agreeable temperament" - early 20th century code for hoping they wouldn't unionize.
Photo from The Outlook, April 21 1920.
Gender politics and industrial labor collide in the domestically-themed
retreats that are punctuated by massive columns needed to support
heavy-duty fireproofed floors.
Photo from The Outlook, April 21 1920.
November 22, 2011
Means of Egress: 7 hours on the Tarmac
by David Grider
An observation by an architect and former pilot on the hundreds of JetBlue and American Airlines passengers trapped for over 7 hours on the tarmac at Bradley International Airport a few weeks ago.
Architects and Airline Transport Pilots (ATP)s share a similar apprenticeship: they work for many recorded hours under the guidance of senior hands, take a battery of exams for licensure, and have yearly requirements to keep their license active.
Why all the fuss? In matters of life safety, we need to know that, when it counts, a licensed professional will place regard for public safety & welfare above all other considerations - particularly those of profit, prestige or corporate policy, allegiances to which architects and pilots are equally vulnerable.
Which made the events at Bradley so disheartening: when one ATP accepts being a runway jail keeper from 2pm to 10pm it's bad enough; when a squadron of them create a medium-sized prison on the tarmac, something is seriously wrong.
It's not hard to understand their failure to act: a terrible job market; a creeping sense of powerlessness in the face of computerized replacements; equipment designed to prohibit initiative (in this case, airplanes designed to prevent deplaning without ground equipment); a fear of lawsuits - factors that are weighing on licensed professionals in all fields.
But I can't imagine the chief from my old flight school, Ted Steckbauer, a former Navy Test Pilot, being reduced to ineffectually begging a ground crew for assistance for hours on end. Once their predicament was clear, he'd have marshaled the other pilots, fetched the equipment needed to lead the passengers into the terminal and, if necessary, taken volunteers on the twenty minute walk to bring back lunch from Papa Gino's Pizza.
It may not have been as dramatic of act as, say, Sully's dead stick landing or Steven Slater's rage-fueled deployment of an emergency slide, but in an age of failed supercommittees, pepper spray and aimless camping, leading passengers trapped by a Kafka-esque bureaucracy to their freedom would have been a splendid tonic.
And you can bet they would have never tasted a better slice.
An MD-80, one of the last common jet types that had built-in deplaning equipment - perhaps its time to reintroduce such simple contingencies?
The quick one mile walk from Bradley's ramp area to Papa Gino's Pizza -
no Air Traffic Control clearances required.
October 31, 2011
Defying Gravity: Hair & Structure
by David Grider
For most participants, the excitement of the Wella International Trend Vision Award 2011 event at Pier 94 took place on the runway - but for some of us, the action was on the roof.
Pier 94 is a wonderful shed, built for the Cunard Lines in 1961 and now used for an exhibition hall, but while its exposed roof trusses make it easy to hang things, they can be delicate if rigged the wrong way. For a spectacular such as Trendvision, careful arrangements are required to make certain that the weight of all the temporary equipment is hung safely.
Load-in of theatrical equipment at Pier 94, with lighting truss and chain motors used to raise & lower in the foreground. Photo by David Grider
Portion of diagram showing exact placement of loads, including circular truss shown at right.
You might, for example, trade for hanging heavier lights by promising gravity that the roof won't have to carry the snow it was designed for - its October after all, it never snows in October...
Front page of NY Post the day before Trendvision.
Fortunately for us, the deal held, the snow on the roof never getting so thick that we had to deploy our contingencies - and though the weather event had our undivided attention, it must be said: it wasn't nearly as hair-raising as Wella's fabulous show.
Wella 2012 Trend Reveal Catwalk, Pier 94, Hair Design by Paul Nasrallah
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October 24, 2011
SULSA and Vickers Wellington: When will we print a building?
by David Grider
The recently developed Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft (SULSA) offers a glimpse of a revolution in design, fabrication and material science that will alter architecture as dramatically as the blast furnace, elevator and finite analysis did 150 years ago.
Machine-printed SULSA: form is digitally optimized free of manufacturing constraints.
The Wellington Bomber: consideration of its inventive, lightweight structure was dominated by the material constraints of incredibly labor-intensive assembly.
Architecture as we know it is dominated by a number of economic rules (steel is rolled in straight pieces; glass is made flat; there are many pieces that are be put together, etc.) against which all buildings are designed. Meaning comes from, among other things, the success with which these rules are exploited.
But when walls, for example, can be "printed" in container-sized panels, in any form, with integrated glass and structure, we'll see many of our present experiments in architectural form as both fairly tame and generally crude in execution.
One needs only to look at typewriter-composed reports, Kodachrome slide shows or hand-drawn acetates on overhead projectors from forty years ago to understand what is coming to architecture and its existing practices.
As digital fabrication tools for buildings become more common & powerful, the creation of form will stem increasingly from a numbers-based paradigm as computational tools, unfettered by constraints in form or material, seek every optimization: economic, environmental, contextual relationship - any parameter can be included.
So, like chess players, airline transport pilots or even writers are finding, our ideas of creativity, problem solving and meaning will be challenged by our digital counterparts, and it will be the machines' imagination for form, optimized in ways that will exceed our abilities, that will become the rule against which we judge (or reject) our notions of success.
Flat floors, desire for sunlight, and private property regulations are likely to remain constants; everything else will soon be up in the air.
(We will explore these and other digital themes in my Introduction to Building Information Modeling(BIM) seminar at NYU, January 20th & 21st)
Architectural Drawing: a script (the visual display of logical connections between algorithmic modules) used in the generation of complex form (courtesy Parametric Wood.)
From dust: a Nendo Diamond Chair caught in the process of being made (these photos are staged - in actual manufacturing, the form is printed in its entirety and then carefully excavated from the tub of unfused particles). A laser hardens a thin layer from the nylon medium (similar to the laser/toner operations in a printer), the table is lowered the thickness of the layer, and the next layer is "printed" in an additive process.
This printed metal prototype of a pipe manifold is notable for making a fantastic HR Giger-esque optimization of the interstitial structure into an unremarkable technical achievement, as meaningful as a ball-bearing (or Duchamp's urinal).
Herzog & de Meuron's beautiful Prada Tokyo:
A hand-crafted glimpse of the machine-printed future.
October 16, 2011
Arcade Parade: The dedication of Holly Whyte Way
by David Grider
As the Chairman of Friends of Privately Owned Public Space, it's a pleasure for me to report that our Arcade Parade yesterday was a great success. Below are a few images of the event, with others coming to the F-POPS website soon. You can also download a map for your own self-guided walking tour here.
Graham Coreil-Allen calls the parade to order and prepares us to march under the gaze of Barry Flanagan's Hare on Bell at the south end of the AXA Galleria POPS. Photo by Jill Burgess.
After a ceremonial watering of the AXA Galleria's POPS logo, the Hungry March Band and our Sol LeWitt-inspired flags leads us across West 52nd Street. Photo by Jill Burgess.
The Hungry March Band briefly pauses at the Flatotel Galleria POPS. Photo by Jill Burgess.
David Grider reads the rules of seating design, flanked by Graham Coreil-Allen and Brian Nesin, at the spike-capped seat walls of the Metropolitan Plaza POPS. Photo by Jill Burgess.
Simone & Claire Ghetti perform the rain-inspired sound piece Storming the Corporate Lobby as Brian Nesin deflects
the security guard's increasingly belligerent demands to "keep moving" through this public space at 127 West 55th Street. Photo by Jill Burgess.
Graham Coreil-Allen, Brian Nesin, and David Grider offer final commentary on public space at the Le Premier plaza at West 55th Street. Photo by Jill Burgess.
September 19, 2011
Galloping Ghost
by David Grider
A brief observance of the awful crash of a modified P-51 Mustang at the Reno Air Races that, as of this writing, has claimed eleven lives. Its been twenty years since I've been to Reno, but as a pilot and someone who's been enthralled with World War II flying machines his whole life, I hope they find a way to keep the old birds circling the pylons.
David (left) and Andrew Grider with F-4U Corsair, San Diego, mid-1970s.
Photo by George Grider.
September 13, 2011
9/11 Memorial: Avoid Condition
by David Grider
As an architect who witnessed the towers collapse and walked home among ash-covered survivors it was a privilege to see the 9/11 Memorial Plaza so soon after it opened.
It was a nice plaza to visit, tastefully designed with modern details and several architectural pavilions of warped polygonal geometry.
click to enlarge
But seeing the old WTC columns sequestered behind glass & hidden below grade was a reminder of what was sorely missing from the space: any direct physical sense of what had happened there and the terrible wreckage that New Yorkers witnessed and lived through.
click to enlarge
Combined with the terrified bunker taking shape at the base of One World Trade, the nondescript blocks of World Financial Center at the western horizon, and the massive amounts of energy being consumed to keep it all operational, it feels more like a memorial to 20th century corporate architecture than the site of tragedy and remembrance.
click to enlarge
Place the old WTC columns where they belong: on the plaza.
Let them stand as mute witness to a terrible day, broadcast their solemnity to the otherwise unconcerned, and fill this highly-stylized and tightly controlled void with a sorely needed, difficult and authentic presence.
The columns are tough enough to handle the exposure. Can't we?
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September 5, 2011
Labor Day: Observations from the New York State Fair
by David Grider
With the recent national budget debacles and stock market jitters resembling some financial version of pilot-induced oscillation it felt poignant to visit the New York State Fair.
The goat and pig exhibit shed.
Interior of the Poultry Building.
1913 Exterior rendering of Poultry Building. James A. Randall, Architect.
The back side of a mobile funhouse, ingenious in its own right.
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July 25, 2011
The Lavanburg Foundation: Requiem and Beyond
by David Grider
Fred L. Lavanburg was an early 20th century industrial magnate in the concern of making colors, an alchemic art of mixing caustic ingredients to arrive at beauty. His fortune was built in New York, based on ingredients from all over the world, and as he ascended in wealth his eyes turned to philanthropic architecture.
The principal legacy of this effort is the Lavanburg Homes, a precedent-setting experiment in low-income housing that was completed by his Foundation shortly after his death in 1927 and still exists at 124 Baruch Place.
The Lavanburg Houses at 124 Baruch Place with exterior repairs underway, July 2011.
Built by Lavanburg as a place to house young Jewish working women at a time of few societal safety nets, 331 East 12th Street accomodated various owners and uses in correspondence with the rise of the modern welfare state: Corner House, a home for homeless youth; Youth House, a detention facility for delinquent boys; Callagy Hall, a shelter for girls and young women that slid into intolerable conditions in the late 1960s and was shuttered in 1972; and, finally, reopened by the City nearly forty years ago as the Sirovich Senior Center.
The former Lavanburg House for Working Girls and Welcome Home Settlement,
now Sirovich Senior Center, July 2011.
Though the foundation has closed, the handsome, unassuming building it created on East 12th Street remains open, is being adapted and used in arguably its most successful configuration yet, and is poised for many more decades of service – another great legacy for Lavanburg, and a fine example for Architecture.
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July 12, 2011
James Gregory Bell: Shinnecock Coast Guard Station
by David Grider
Another Gregory bell has surfaced at the Shinnecock Coast Guard Station.
As described by Weapons Petty Officer Michael Fusco "the bell is sitting in front of our flagpole and is a staple amongst the crew here. We would love to put up a pedestal sign with the history and origin of this bell."
Note the subtle change in inscription format from Gregory's Dreamland Bell.
Shinnecock Coast Guard Station Bell by James Gregory, Cannon Street, 1890. Photo courtesy of Weapons Petty Officer Michael Fusco.
April 24, 2011
WTC: Site Visit
by David Grider
This architect’s recent tour of the massive construction site that is the former World Trade Center brought forth an unexpected memory: that of his first glimpse of the Grand Canyon.
We have an unknown distance yet to run,
An unknown river to explore.
What falls there are, we know not;
What rocks beset the channel, we know not;
What walls ride over the river, we know not.
Ah, well! we may conjecture many things.
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January 3, 2011
MTA Nostalgia Train: Unstoppable!
by David Grider
The NYC MTA runs their Nostalgia Train for a few weekends around the winter solstice, but don’t let the name and the maudlin posters of yesteryear fool you – as spirited as any New Yorker, this subway train and its crew are all business, running regular passenger service on the main line, making each stop as timely as the modern cars and just as ruthlessly closing its doors on the dumbstruck and laggard alike.
Nostalgia Train pulls into 2nd Avenue Station to pick up passengers
An operator quickly unjams the door before departure; note exposed lamp bulbs, whirling fan blades, and glorious lack of waivers to be signed
The unpolished appeal of the functioning rough & tumble
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December 6, 2010
New York City and the Nation at War: 1917
by David Grider
A few remarkable images to illustrate the frenzied mobilization that swept through New York City after the United States joined World War I.
German Submarine UC5 on the Sheep Meadow, October 1917.
Submarine was converted to a Liberty Bond Booth, rechristened from UC5 to U-Buy-a-Bond.
Navy Recuiting Station in Union Square, looking east towards 15th Street, Summer 1917
Peace and Goodwill to All.
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November 17, 2010
The Dream of Industry: Bush Terminal
by David Grider
The recent issuance of EDC's Bush Terminal Ground-Up Development RFP recalled research we’d done earlier this year for another site at this former industrial marvel.
Site Plan from 1916.
The working waterfront, 1914.
Rail yard looking north, 1914.
Though the rails are gone, and the ships of the sea are no longer 'longside, these yards are still used to load & unload vehicles, and
though not obvious there are goods in storage and small manufacturing outfits behind the windows.
November 8, 2010
Veterans Day: The Running Gear of the USS Intrepid
by David Grider
The USS Intrepid is a site of remarkable heritage: she has witnessed everything from the fiery impact of suicidal aviators to the triumphant recovery of humans who’d orbited the earth, and she has become one of New York City’s most popular museums whose decks now throw banquets and weddings instead of Vigilantes and Crusaders.
Engine room repeaters.
Propellor shaft.
Soot blower and aux 600lb steam lines.
Double-reduction gearcase.
15 feet below the water line.
November 1, 2010
The Stacks of the Gould Memorial Library
by David Grider
Stanford White’s magnificent domed Gould Memorial Library sits beautifully at the western edge of the Bronx Community College, serving as a point of interest and inspiration for campus development since it was erected (under the banner of New York University) in 1899.
Glass-floored stacks with light well and tension rod hangers.
Curved wall of rotunda to left.
The audacity of narrow passages and steep stairs.
The 1899 version of a 4GB thumb drive
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October 25, 2010
On Being Direct: Unloading an 18-wheeler in Arkansas
by David Grider
A brief entry this week as the photo, snapped while driving north on Route 61 on the way to Osceola, Arkansas, largely speaks for itself – though it was unclear whether the driver remained in the truck while it was lifted.
Its terrible majesty - will it launch? - reminded this observer of the old Yale Express Truck advertisement that was perched on a building on the West Side (and has since been removed).
That truck/billboard had a sublime menace about its skewed proportions and uncertain construction, a sort of truck taxidermy gone wrong, that as it turns out was doomed: New York City’s Waterfront Zoning Signage Regulations strictly prohibit such exuberant signage displays in new construction.
One wonders whether a genuine working truck, such as the Arkansas example, would be any more accepted…
Hydraulics lift the whole truck to get it to spill its guts.
The old Yale Truck Sign at 39th St & the West Side Highway (since demolished).
October 18, 2010
Preservation & Climate Change: How a Train Grew in Brooklyn
by David Grider
The confluence this past week of the Municipal Arts Society’s Conference on Preservation and Climate Change and complaints about construction along the 2nd Avenue Subway line (eighty years in construction and still nowhere near done) naturally led this observer to thoughts of the 4th Avenue Subway line in Brooklyn.
Built in 1909 – 1911 (and documented in a remarkable October 1912 report to The Municipal Engineers of the City of New York by Mr. Henry Oestreich, Senior Assistant Division Engineer, Public Service Commission) the line was run through a dense urban area in a series of open cuts, tunnels, temporary scaffolds to support existing above-grade trains, and other mammoth-scale interventions that are almost inconceivable in today’s litigious (and, lets admit it, safer and more comfortable) world.
This line was also run through former salt marshes, the Gowanus Swamp, and in doing so had to deal with construction techniques, storm sewer relocations and waterproofing issues that will become more common as global warming lifts sea levels.
And look closely at the 1912 map below: the swamp contour is from 1776.
A significant year because it was near this swamp where, on August 27 1776, Stirling's Maryland Troops stood & fought the British to cover Washington's retreat at the Battle of Brooklyn , the first major battle of the Revolutionary War. This courageous, desperate action helped the surviving Continental Army to fight another day; it is a battlefield where American patriots lost their lives.
Mr. Oestreich's enterprise proves insensitive to history, devoting 14 words of recognition (“…where it was hoped to find some relics of The Battle of Long Island”) before getting back to the business of slurry walls, Edison cables and vitrified pipe grade-crossings. Whatever relics were there are lost now, and doubtless some historic buildings were lost too.
But the entire line, a marvel of transportation efficiency that has kept tens of thousands of cars off the road every day for a hundred years, was finished in just 24 months.
1912-era map showing route of 4th Avenue Subway (north is pointing left) superimposed with 1776 contours of the Gowanus Swamp (which was dredged & bulkheaded into the Gowanus Canal).
Typical cut & cover operation, a loud, disruptive, and an incredibly fast way to build a subway.
View at the intersection of 4th Avenue and 10th Street prior to the construction of the F-Line. Compare with modern image below.
Modern view of the intersection with the viaduct for the F-Line at the north side of 10th Street; George Washington didn't get much sleep here.
October 11, 2010
Report: The New East River Science Park (& Mall?)
by David Grider
A brief report on the public space of the recently opened Alexandria Center for Life Science (ACLS), which is the initial phase of the East River Science Park being realized in the blocks directly south of the Bellevue Medical Center.
The clean modernism of the ACLS’s physical environment could have been airlifted in from present-day Berlin, and it reminded this observer of the spirit (if not the architecture) of the utopian plains of many La Jolla-based biotechnology industries: cool isolation.
But New York abhors cool isolation, and has provided a savory surprise – arriving at the base of the gleaming tower, one is enveloped in the noise and glares of the drivers on the FDR, as if the new plaza was supposed to focus our attention on the old Moses-designed East River Drive itself.
I found the experience both unnerving and, in an odd way, poetic: the decaying road and cars, as surely as the river, serve as a barometer of our own well being. This stretch of the FDR is, after all, a relic that seems held together with patching cement and layers of paint, a thoroughfare for solo humans being carted around by 4,000lb pollution machines, a virulent survivor, an old New York institution that has not been gentrified, a large-scale walking coronary that we have the privilege to view from behind delicate stainless steel guard railing, all which could help focus, for better and worse, deeper research into life sciences…
My reverie was interrupted by a guard telling my kids to get off some bench height stone walls. It was a mall-inspired moment (“kids can’t walk on there, that’s how they want it”) that does not bode well for public space; let’s hope it was merely opening week jitters.
Entrance to the new Alexandria Center with the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital to the left and river side plaza straight ahead.
The Psychiatric Hospital was supposed to have become a bespoke hotel but remains a homeless shelter, which like the FDR seems a living reminder: Attention Must Be Paid.
The FDR as extension of the river side plaza.
The Child moments before being told to live life off the wall.
October 4, 2010
Introduction to Building Information Modeling, 1940s style!
by David Grider
An architect discussing their computer systems seems a little like a chef talking about their kitchen utensils – yes, other chefs may find it interesting, but for diners, the kitchen is usually someplace unworthy of exploration.
However, in consideration of my upcoming Introduction to Building Information Modeling (BIM) course at NYU, I mention a transformation underway in the kitchens of architecture: BIM is an evolution in digital design & fabrication software that will allow a building to be fully designed, sourced & manufactured from a 3D database.
This digital integration began in other industries many years ago. Naval architecture, aeronautical engineering, music; each has seen huge impacts in terms of both design & production, and lessons will be drawn from these examples in my course.
But in the spirit of this blog, shown below are instructive examples from the 1940s of how complex form-making and intense engineering coordination requirements were met before digital technology.
And its awful for this BIM-evangelist to admit, but: those models, huge cameras and the laying around on the loft floor making drawings looks kinda fun...
Analog Sheet Sort Management: Designers shuffle their barn-door sized drawings in a climate controlled room
Analog Clash-Detection: General Motors engineers coordinate trades over a large physical model.
Analog NURBS: The circa 1940 process of translating the compound curves of physical aircraft models to full scale templates involved giant cameras and squads of drafters in loft rooms scribing projected lines into enamel-coated, temperature-controlled aluminum. From Popular Mechanics, Sept 1940 issue.
September 27, 2010
The Great Hall: Wallace K. Harrison, ArcAttack, and the resuscitation of Architecture.
by David Grider
The New York Hall of Science’s Great Hall has been closed for years but for those of us Maker Faire attendees who witnessed this weekend’s Tesla-coil performances of ArcAttack, the effect was haunting: suddenly, out of the refined, proper modernist manners and child-oriented design of the institution’s recent additions, this space from another world crackled to life and struck us dumb: here was a great work of Architecture.
Designed by Wallace K. Harrison for the 1964 World’s Fair, its magisterial presentation of blue stained glass owes a debt to Paris' 750-year-old Sainte Chapelle, and has much in common with the 1961 Chapel by Egon Eiermann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin.
But the Great Hall's catechism is Science. Its curved walls are willful, playful, the deliberate venture of a rational mind seeking spatial affects within the limits of the concrete grid construction system. Its interior is outer-space itself, a luminous deep blue curtain flecked with bits of ruby red glass like so many planets. It is a far-out, space-age geode that is puzzling at the exterior and jaw-dropping beautiful inside.
And animated by the live wire sounds of ArcAttack it fulfilled the highest sensory aspirations: a concert of pure abstraction, of deep physical and aural quality, thickly layered sounds heard and felt as the lightning crazed against the deep blue backdrop, a unity of space, sound, light and theme as inspired as Bach in Reims.
The present institution's well-intentioned additions and exhibits are sorely missing the messy heart of science: a sense of Wonder. ArcAttack's 1/2 million volts just restored its pulse; lets hope they keep it alive by keeping the Great Hall open!
The interior of the Great Hall with lightning by ArcAttack, photo by David Grider
Detail of colored glass, photo by David Grider
The Plan of the Great Hall showing the undulating walls atop a hexagonal base.
September 20, 2010
The Ongoing Life of the Brooklyn Army Terminal
by David Grider
On the heels of a recent visit to the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT), I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Eva Cramer, the leader of SUNY Downstate's BioBAT Initiative, an ambitious biotechnology program which has joined with a number of other EDC-managed enterprises to bring life back to this Landmark building. It seems a poetic inversion that a building once devoted to the global export of materials of war is now being positioned to export ideas & materials that cure & heal.
And in this regard, I caught a detail: the original renderings of the Cass Gilbert designed project, from 1919, were delineated by none other than Hugh Ferriss, a virtual unknown at the time who would later become the hand of urban setbacks and mood, and who in 1929 published a collection of renderings including Night in the Science Zone accompanied by the following passage. Reflecting upon its publishing just ten years after the horrors of WWI (117,000 Americans killed) and on the eve of the Great Depression, it is an invigorating manifesto of architecture and optimism as we head into Fall:
Buildings like crystal.
Walls of translucent glass.
Sheer glass blocks sheeting a steel grill.
No Gothic branch.
No Acanthus leaf.
No recollections of the plant world.
A mineral kingdom.
Gleaming stalagmites.
Forms as cold as ice.
Mathematics.
Night in the Science zone.
A recent waterside view of the BAT, photo by David Grider
Interior atrium of BAT, photo by David Grider
An empty floor ripe with possibility, photo by David Grider
Hugh Ferriss' 1919 Rendering of BAT from Turner Construction's A Record of War Activities
Hugh Ferriss' 1929 Rendering of Night in the Science Zone
September 13, 2010
Derelictitron: Kayaking the shipwrecks of the Staten Island Sound
by David Grider
Along the west shore of Staten Island lays a cove of shipwrecks, derelict craft jutting from the water in amazing states of disrepair and framed by views of the Fresh Kills Landfill/Park and a pair of enormous (and apparently abandoned) LPG tanks. As led (and photographed) by my brother Andrew Grider, we paddled amid the ruins in inflatable kyacks, a powerful contrast between the rusting immobile hulks and our light, flexible, human-powered systems that could be folded into a duffel bag and carted away at the end of the voyage.
Rusting ship & kayak, photo by Andrew Grider
The techtonics of a wooden ferry wreck and red lead paint, photo by Andrew Grider
A rig of unknown purpose assembled from left-over trusses, photo by Andrew Grider
Our church bell shows the name "W. Buckley, New York”
as can be seen in the attached image - they must be the same company.
Our church was built ca. 1829; we know the bell predated the Civil War,
and may even predate the church building to a previous ca. 1818 building.
“The silver watch of the ringer and the silver tones of the bell still linger in the
memories of thousands of American shipwrights” James Gregory, the fabricator of the recently recovered Dreamland Bell,
ran a brass foundry at the corner of Cannon and Stanton Street in Manhattan,
and is known to us principally because, in 1880, he cast the Mechanic’s Bell. Marked simply “Mechanic’s Bell - Gregory – New York 1880”, it had
a storied history. As fully described to me by Pat Prescott, the resource librarian
at The
Webb Institute, the bell was a triumph of The New York Journeymen’s
Shipwright’s and Caulker’s Benevolent Society, rung by the workers of
Manhattan’s 19th century shipyards to mark the 10-hour day they
had won from owners accustomed to working them much longer. The bell was initially
installed in 1831, recast and enlarged in 1834, and when it cracked in 1880,
Gregory melted and recast it. As the shipyards declined and left the city, it lost its purpose and
was donated to the Webb’s Academy and Home for Shipbuilders in 1897. It remained
in their custody until WWII, when to aide the war effort it was melted for
scrap. The Dreamland Bell, marked “James Gregory – New York - 1885” appears to have been a
virtual twin to the Mechanic’s Bell. Five years younger, of approximately the same size,
and in a similar four-sided framed mount, it stood at the end of the Coney
Island’s New Iron Pier to announce the arrivals of steamships. It was in
active duty until the 1911 Dreamland Fire. But where fire would consume
its older sibling, for the Dreamland Bell it was a savior, burning the
pier out from under it, allowing it to fall into the safety of the sea. With its recovery, the fates of both bells were now known; but
it was unclear what happened to Gregory himself. We found tantalizing clues using Google Books: he was mentioned in
an 1853 catalog; in 1861, he cast a part for the USS Monitor and was cataloged in
Trow’s New York; in 1871, he was given an honorable mention for a gong and
contributed $25 to the Chicago Relief & Aide Society for victims of
the great fire; on Feb 5, 1889 his foundry was visited by the fire
department. But with nothing conclusive about his fate, I followed a hunch: I reached out to
The Green-Wood Cemetery. Green-Wood is a 478 acre National Historic Landmark in the heart of Brooklyn, a beautiful,
active cemetery that was created in 1838 and is still serving as a
cultural repository and final resting place for much of New York’s history. Theresa LaBianca, Green-Wood’s Archivist, worked with me for many days to see if any of
their James Gregorys was the right one. Addresses were compared, dates
reviewed, grave sites checked, but still nothing conclusive. Then Theresa’s fax arrived: “Eureka!” she proclaimed, and included a copy of a letter on
James Gregory’s letterhead (“Brass Bronze and Composition Castings”),
addressed to Green-Wood, dated Sept 25 1888, with instructions for his
family plot. I soon stood in front of his tomb, a marble slab inscribed
with text as simple and direct as his bells.
He rests in Brooklyn, next to his wife, among the shipbuilders and
Coney Islanders within Green-Woods gates, and about 5 miles from the
Dreamland Bell. His firm appears to have carried on for several years past his death,
run in part by his brother William, but this is a story for another day. So here is Gregory removing the Dreamland Bell from its loam mold;
and here, 124 years later, is diver
Gene Ritter, wrestling the bell from the ocean
sand in a similar act of revelation. With the help of the
Coney Island History Project, it now travels
Brooklyn, protected from oxidation (and perhaps fire) by a continuous
sheet of water, representing layers of history extraordinarily rich and deep. But history and time dissolve in the right-now joy of pulling the clapper and ringing the
Dreamland Bell, hearing the peals that Gregory and almost three decades of
Coney visitors would have, and being in the immediate presence of it's
silver tones. My sincere thanks to Gene Ritter, of Cultural Resource Divers, and Tricia Vita,
of the Coney Island History Project, for inviting me to join their adventure.
December 20, 2009 Updated October 21, 2010
William Buckley, Bell Founder
by David Grider
“… so a new bell was cast from the
metal of the old one by James Gregory of Cannon Street, the brass founder,
who had been in that location since about 1850, being the successor of
William Buckley, the bell founder.”
- History of New York Ship Yards, John Harrison Morrison, 1909
Buckley Bell: Halifax, Virginia
While there is no direct evidence of it, it seems likely that William Buckley cast the
original Mechanic’s Bell in 1834, and this is why Gregory was given the
recasting commission in 1880. Thanks to Mr. Douglas Powell, the Historian
for the
Halifax United Methodist Church, we now have
evidence of Buckley’s bell handiwork. Mr. Powell wrote to me:
It appears that Gregory was a true apprentice of Buckley, not only taking over
his business upon his death in 1850, but apparently also possession of his
burial plot – heavy responsibility for a 23-year old Gregory.
Bell by William Buckley at Halifax United Methodist Church, cast in New York City
Buckley Bell: Monroe Township, New Jersey (Oct 21, 2010)
Another Buckley bell has surfaced, this time in Monroe Township, NJ. As described to me by
historian John D. Katerba and picked up in this story by
MyCentralJersey,
the 70lb brass bell was found in the ruins of a building
that had burned to the ground in the 1870s. The site was at the original crossroads
of Bordentown Turnpike, and had been occupied by Mr. James Buckelew, the founder of Jamestown, NJ.
As for the bell itself, it’s mounting and purpose is for the moment unknown; all we
can say with some certainty is that it was born on the Lower East Side.
Bell by William Buckley recovered in Monroe Township, NJ by John D. Katerba.
October 11, 2009
James Gregory and the Dreamland Bell
by David Grider
View of original placement of Mechanic's Bell looking SE toward the East River, NYC, 1845
The 1885 Dreamland Bell as recovered by Gene Ritter in 2009
James Gregory Letterhead
James Gregory's Tomb at The Green-Wood Cemetery
Vicinity of James Gregory' Shop, corner of Cannon and Stanton Street looking toward
the East River, as it appeared in 1938.Everything visible in this image (and much more) was torn down to
build Baruch Houses - just one of dozens of superblock projects executed
by the NYCHA. The scale of condemnation, displacement and demolition
employed in support of NYC's mid-20th century housing projects is
staggering. (Photo courtesy NYCHA Archives)
NW corner of Cannon and Stanton Street as it appeared in 1953 (Photo courtesy NYCHA Archives)
Composite of Google Earth imagery and 1879 Bromley Map
(courtesy www.davidrumsey.com) indicating site of James Gregory's shop and
the original location of the Mechanics' Bell. Note proximity to other
machine shops and industrial uses, notably the Aetna Iron Works, suppliers
of the engines for the USS Dunderberg as built by William H. Webb's
shipyards (a few blocks north at East 6th Street) in 1865. Thomas Edison
bought Aetna in 1881 to form the Edison Machine Works and for eight years
produced the world's most advanced electrical power machinery before
decamping to Schenectady in 1888. By 1893 Gregory's shop had become a coat
& clothing manufacturer; by 1915 through at least 1941 a movie
theater; and, by 1959, condemned and razed by the NYCHA to build the
Baruch Houses.)
SubscribePrevious Posts:
Playground of the World: Coney Island's Beach after Hurricane Sandy
F-POPS: Hoop for your POPS
Camouflage: In Defense of the Eisenhower Memorial Tapestries
Building Information Modeling: Damage Control
US Navy Fleet Supply Base: From Bunkers to BrightFarms
6 1/2 Avenue: The Big Picture
The Radical Geometry of Leonardo da Vinci
Fort Wadsworth: The Visitor Center Catch-22
Underemployment: Telephone Exchange Buildings
Means of Egress: 7 hours on the Tarmac
Defying Gravity: Hair & Structure
SULSA and Vickers Wellington: When will we print a building?
Arcade Parade: The dedication of Holly Whyte Way
Galloping Ghost
9/11 Memorial: Avoid Condition
Labor Day: Observations from the New York State Fair
The Lavanburg Foundation: Requiem and Beyond
James Gregory Bell: Shinnecock Coast Guard Station
WTC: Site Visit
MTA Nostalgia Train: Unstoppable!
New York City and the Nation at War: 1917
The Dream of Industry: Bush Terminal
Veterans Day: The Running Gear of the USS Intrepid
The Stacks of the Gould Memorial Library
On Being Direct: Unloading an 18-wheeler in Arkansas
Preservation & Climate Change: How a Train Grew in Brooklyn
Report: The New East River Science Park (& Mall?)
Introduction to Building Information Modeling, 1940s style!
The Great Hall: Wallace K. Harrison, ArcAttack, and the resuscitation of Architecture
The Ongoing Life of the Brooklyn Army Terminal
Derelictitron: Kayaking the shipwrecks of the Staten Island Sound
William Buckley, Bell Founder Updated Oct 21, 2010
James Gregory and the Dreamland Bell
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A Daily Dose of Architecture
Failure Magazine
Design Observer
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Doors of Perception
Engadget
SlashDot
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