Old Structures Engineering

More evident alterations at an old subway station, similar to one I discussed a couple of years ago. A view of the westbound-platform roof at the Kosciuszko Street station on the J train:

There’s a lot going, ...

Max Hubacher, on December 21, 1954, titled this photo “New York City: Third Avenue Elevated”:

And, sure enough, there’s the el over Third Avenue on the right. The small park being enjoyed only by pigeons is Cooper Square, where (if you are heading south to north) the Bowery splits into Third Avenue (on its proper line) and Fourth Avenue (on a temporary diagonal ...

The “valley of ashes” as portrayed in a graphic-novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby:

A pile of coal ash in the dump created in the swamp adjacent to the Flushing River, circa 1920:

The site was drained and cleaned up for the 1939-40 World’s Fair, and has been the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park ever since. The name is a good reminder that the word “m...

In the foreground, the rear facade of the Seventh Regiment Armory, famous for its ornate rooms in front, some designed by a young Louis Tiffany, but also containing a huge arched-truss drill hall that stretched the long-span roof technology of th...

From “1922 – 1940” (according to the New York Public Library) a postcard of “Bryant Park in 1853”:

Except, of course, it wasn’t Bryant Park then (a) because it wasn’t a park, just vacant land behind the big distribution reservoir located where the NYPL i...