Letter From the Editor
From the hourly continuous subway and bus system to the heavily populated streets, there’s no time for slow pace when you’re in New York City. In fact, the city as a whole moves at such a speed that if you blink, you’ll feel left behind. It can be overwhelming especially if you’re not native to the city. Now imagine you do get a chance to slow down; you happen to look up and see a building that appears to span to the clouds. An aspect that can sometimes be overlooked: the amount of high-rise buildings towering over the streets of New York City. We’re striving to educate about and show appreciation to the massive works of art that are skyscrapers. We will dive into the various diverse styles of architecture used throughout New York City. From Art Deco to Greek Revival, we hope you’ll learn more about New York City’s architectural landscape and are inspired to visit them after reading our magazine.
18 Bridges of New York Tour of Hudson Yards
Art Deco Architechure
The Brooklyn Bridge represented cutting-edge engineering in at least two respects. One was its use of pneumatic caissons. These hollow structures filled with compressed air, which allowed workers to safely excavate under water, were relatively new at the time. Once the towers were completed, work began on the steel cables. The handful of suspension bridges that had been constructed up to that point used wire ropes made from iron. But the Brooklyn Bridge employed steel, which was much stronger in tension and eventually became the standard for bridges. Using iron, Roebling had written, according to Wagner, would “necessitate a cable of such weight and size that it would become unmanageable and involve the greatest difficulties in making it.”
According to the HAER report, the bridge’s four main cables “were each composed of 5,434 continuous steel wires.” The total diameter of the cables was 15 ¾ in., and the cables were attached to 60,000-ton masonry anchorages.
The bridge was completed in 1883 and on its first day, May 24, welcomed around 150,000 people and 1,800 vehicles. Within five years, more than 30 million passengers crossed the bridge by train each year.
The Brooklyn Bridge still defines Manhattan and Brooklyn. It is an optimistic American infrastructure style that is equal parts engineering bravura and architectural artistry. On an average day, according to the New York City Department of Transportation, the bridge carries more than 100,000 vehicles as well as 4,000 cyclists and 10,000 pedestrians on its world-renowned promenade.
The bridge has proved remarkably durable over its lifetime. It was remodeled in 1948 by engineer D.B. Steinman to provide more road capacity. In 2019, the NYC DOT embarked on a $337 million renovation of the bridge. This included strengthening the towers against seismic activity and “correct(ing) structural deficiencies in the masonry arches of the bridge’s approaches on both sides of the East River,” according to the NYC DOT.
https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/issues/ magazine-issue/article/2022/07/new-yorks-brooklynbridge-is-an-engineering-marvel
Connecting Manhattan
The Queensboro Bridge is a 3,725-foot (1,135 m) long five-span, two-level cantilever bridge that connects Midtown Manhattan and Long Island City in Queens. Three of the truss spans are over land, one 984-foot (300 m) long span crosses the east channel of the East River, and the other 1,182-foot (360 m) long span crosses the west channel of the East River, the latter of which was the longest cantilever span in North America until it was exceeded by the Quebec Bridge in 1917.
Locally known as the 59th Street Bridge (the title of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Feelin’ Groovy” song) and the Queensboro Bridge, the structure’s cantilever spans are unique in that they have no suspended spans between the cantilever arms and are “through-cantilever” trusses. For this reason, some people mistakenly think that the Queensboro Bridge is a suspension bridge, particularly from the appearance of the upper chords of the eye bar chains in the long cantilever arms across the East River channels – because their overall shape resembles a catenary curve.
The Queensboro Bridge was designed by preeminent bridge engineer Gustav Lindenthal, although other leading engineers were involved in the early planning stages, including Richard S. Buck and Othniel Foster Nichols. The bridge was originally designed as a pure cantilever span. Lindenthal changed it to a through-cantilever truss without a suspended span using massive steel eye bars for the top chord. Gustav Lindenthal reduced the width of the bridge from 120 feet (37 m) to 80 feet (24 m), adding a second deck while keeping the same carrying capacity. A panel of engineers was named to review Lindenthal’s design and concluded Buck’s deck plan was preferred, but also suggested a revised plan which was accepted. The plans were revised and approved in August of 1903.
Guastavino tile vaults were used to decorate the ceiling of the cathedral-like space below the Manhattan approach of the 59th Street Bridge. First used as an open air farmers market from 1914 until 1930, the area designed by Raphael Guastavino was largely forgotten when it was later used by the Highways Department as a garage, sign shop, and storage area. After decades of extensive planning and restoration work, the 98,000-square foot (9,100 square meter) vaulted interior space east of First Avenue reopened as the “Bridgemarket” in 1999 and now includes a restaurant, supermarket, and home furnishing store.
Along with the Quebec Bridge in Canada and the Firth of Forth Bridge in Scotland, the Queensboro Bridge was considered to be one of the great three cantilever bridges in the world and had the largest carrying capacity among these structures. After the collapse of the Quebec Bridge during its construction in 1907, another panel of engineers was called in to review the design. The Queensboro Bridge was found to be safe, although they concluded that the structure was under designed and would not be able to accommodate four tracks for elevated railroads as originally intended. Two of these tracks were removed from the design and later built in a parallel tunnel under the East River along to accommodate BRT subway trains. The 60th Street Tunnel opened on August 1, 1920.
Manhattan to Queens
The Queensboro Bridge opened to vehicles and pedestrians on March 30, 1909. The lower deck carried a roadway for vehicles and two tracks for trolleys on the outside. Pedestrian promenades ran across both sides of the bridge’s upper level, affording unobstructed views of the East River and its shorelines. The center of the upper level was reserved for two tracks for elevated trains. Trolleys began running across the bridge in February 1910 and continued until April 1957. The subway tracks across the bridge connected with the Second Avenue elevated line. In its early years the bridge carried two elevated railway rapid transit tracks and up to four trolley tracks. Today the bridge carries nine lanes for vehicular traffic and one pedestrian/bicycle path.
The Queensboro Bridge was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by ASCE in 2009, the year of its centennial anniversary. A bronze plaque is located on the south side of the bridge along East 60th Street, just west of First Avenue. The bridge was also designated as a New York City Landmark in 1974. The bridge was renamed to honor former New York City Mayor Ed Koch in April 2011.
“Where Staten Island Meets Brooklyn
One of the best things about living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is every morning the Verrazano-Narrows bridge greets you and every evening it says goodnight, the lights twinkling like the city’s own stars.
But the bridge, designed by Swiss-born engineer, Othmar Ammann, and the brainchild of master builder, Robert Moses, had a long difficult journey to formation
First, there was a dispute over what to call the bridge. The Italian Heritage Society launched a lengthy campaign in support of naming the bridge after Giovanni da Verrazano. Staten Island residents, feeling their borough was underrepresented, wanted it named the Staten Island Bridge. The neutrals pushed for The Narrows. In the end, the officials compromised with Verrazano-Narrows.
But more than the name, most of the protests regarding the bridge came from the residents of my neighborhood, Bay Ridge. In Bay Ridge, the bridge was not a sign of progress but a harbinger of very real destruction. Eight hundred buildings would be leveled. Seven thousand people would have to find a new place to live. It was a difficult reality for the residents of Bay Ridge, many feeling that their part of the neighborhood was being destroyed.
The Story of the Verrazzano Bridge”
Construction began in 1959. By ‘63, three workers were dead. In protest, 300 of their fellow builders refused to raise a 400-ton roadway section into place until they were given safety nets to work over. After five long arduous years (and $325 million), the bridge opened at 3pm on November 21, 1964.
And what a bridge it was! It surpassed the Golden Gate Bridge as the largest suspension bridge in the world, with a 4,260-foot-center span between two 693-foot towers. The towers are twice as big as the Statue of Liberty! And the bridge is so long that the two towers needed to be angled away from each other to account for the curvature in the earth. Each of the cables contains 26,108 separate strands of galvanized steel wire, each about as thick as a pencil. There is enough wire on that bridge to circle the globe six times!
The opening ceremony was a huge event, attracting dignitaries such as Mayor Robert Wagner, Governor Nelson Rockefeller and “master builder” Robert Moses. The ceremony was capped off with a Navy flotilla including a submarine, two destroyers and three destroyer-escorts passing under the bridge with whistles blowing.
OutsideViewoftheVessel
Worms’ Eye View of the Vessel
Inside the Vessel at Night
Outside view of The Edge
City view from The Edge
Alternate Angle of the views from The Edge
HudsonYardsSkyline
Skyscraping Art Deco:The the Chrysler
For 339 precious days in the 1930s, the Chrysler Building was the tallest structure in the world. In the lead up to the building’s completion, that was the prize that its owner, automobile entrepreneur Walter P. Chrysler, was chasing. Though it might have been a brief stay at the top, attraction to the building has proven to extend beyond just the year its height was particularly impressive. The Chrysler Building is now widely regarded as an Art Deco masterpiece, and its steel ornamen-
tation is a welcome reminder of a different era in New York. Below, we detail everything you should know about the beloved structure—from its architectural details to how you can experience it for yourself.
The story of the Chrysler Building begins not with Walter P. Chrysler, whom the building is named after, but with an altogether different figure. William H. Reynolds, a Brooklyn developer and politician known at the time for building Dreamland Park in Coney Island,
was at the helm of the project in its early days. Reynolds began renting the land from Cooper Union college, which still owns the plot the building stands on, in 1921. He then began discussions for a new structure with architect William Van Alen that same year. According to The Chrysler Building: Creating a New York Icon, Day by Day, Reynolds “asked him to design an 808-foot skyscraper with an illuminated glass dome for the 42nd Street site” in 1928.
Deco:The Architectural Genius of Chrysler Building
That same year, Reynolds sold the project to Walter P. Chrysler, the founder of the massive automobile company Chrysler Corporation, who kept much of Van Alen’s design the same. However, he asked Van Alen for several car-centric amendments. For example, gargoyles on the facade were inspired by the hood ornaments on the Plymouth and other Chrysler products. Similarly, ornamentation on the 31st floor were modeled off of Chrysler radiator caps from 1929. The entrepreneur’s intent was to “build a monument to the golden years of the automobile industry,” according to Skyscrapers by Antonino Terranova, so these changes were crucial to his vision for the building. The period was a prosperous time for the Chrysler company and the man himself. In 1928 he was chosen as Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. In the cover story, he assured the public that the building endeavor was entirely separate from the work of the company, more of a passion project than anything else. “I like to
build things,” he told Time Magazine. “I like to do things. I am having a lot of fun going thoroughly into everything with the architect.”
Though the Empire State Building ultimately took the top spot heightwise, and held onto it for decades, many people favor the appearance of the Chrysler Building. This is largely because of its distinctive, undeniably Art Deco crown, which is easy to spot in the crowded Manhattan skyline. This section of the building is clad in Nirosta stainless steel in an arched sunburst pattern unlike the crowns of most skyscrapers built before or since.
The car-centric amendments that Chrysler requested his architect make to the building’s design were many. These included the aforementioned wing ornaments modeled after Chrysler car radiator caps on the corners of the 31st floor, steel eagle gargoyles on the 61st floor, and plenty of wheel motifs inside and out. This level of ornamentation is typical of Art Deco architecture.
The Art Deco style of the building’s
exterior is very much present in the building’s lobby too. A mural, Transport and Human Endeavor, covers the entire ceiling and red African granite lines the walls, creating a moody entrancing atmosphere that’s far from the modern monochrome lobbies of many 21st century office buildings. A number of iconic New York buildings like One World Trade or the Empire State Building welcome visitors inside to an observation deck or a ticketed tour, but the Chrysler Building has no such options. Tourists can enter the building’s lobby for a quick glimpse of the Art Deco interior for no cost and without a need for a ticket. It should be noted, though, that visitors are not allowed to linger in the space, so you shouldn’t expect anything more than a quick look when you visit. Some tourists opt to simply view the building from afar.
Rachel Davies from https://www.architecturaldigest.com
The American Radiator B Gem of t
The American Radiator Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Howells & Hood, and built between 1923 and 1924 in New York, NY. American Radiator Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as American Standard Building. Its precise street address is 40-52 W. 40th St, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here. The American Radiator Building is a
structure of significant importance both for the city of New York and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the American Radiator Building was officially declared as a national landmark on November 12th 1974, and was included in the National Register of Historic Places on May 7th 1980.
At the time of its completion in 1924 the American Radiator Building incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included the elevator doors, which could be opened by pressing a button instead of doing it manually as in most other buildings back then.
The building underwent a major restoration in 2001.
Building: An Architectural he 1920s
The American Radiator Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.
The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it’s widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.
Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and
lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.
The American Radiator Building was completed in 1924. These were the early days of the Art Deco movement, when the style hadn’t yet reached its maturity, and there fore it is more likely to to still have traces of the Classical or Gothic Revival periods which preceded Art-Deco.
Howells & Hood took a risk by designing a building that was ahead of its time, and which other architects sure took inspiration from as the Art Deco movement evolved.
Source: https://buildingsdb.com/NY/newyork/american-radiator-building/
The El Dorado: New
The The El Dorado is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Margon & Holder, and built between 1929 and 1931 in New York, NY. The El Dorado is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as 300 Central Park West. Its precise street address is 300 Central Park West, New York, NY.
The The El Dorado is a structure of significant importance both for the city of New York and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the The El Dorado was officially declared as a national landmark on July 9th 1985.
The building has been restored 4 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1980, 1982, 1995 and 2000.
York’s Art Deco Gem
The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it’s widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.
Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.
The The El Dorado was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features yellow cast stone covering the first three floors. Starting from the fourth floor, the facade features a combination of toasted and brown bricks along with light terracotta. The
main entrance is framed by three angular metal arches. Stone is present on some of the balconies, and terracotta and bronze are used for the facade pillar decorations. Other materials found at the The El Dorado include, marble, used in the floor of the main lobby, and wood, found in panels covering the walls of the lobby.
Source: https://buildingsdb.com/NY/newyork/the-el-dorado/
Greek Revival
Brooklyn was a growing community when it was incorporated as a city in 1834. The following year a competition was held for a city hall. While the cornerstone for the Greek Revival style building was laid in 1836, only the foundation was built due to financial problems. Construction began again in 1845, and the incomplete City Hall opened in 1848. It served as the Brooklyn City Hall for nearly fifty years, before the consolidation with New York City in 1898, when it became the Brooklyn Borough Hall.
This imposing Greek Revival style structure is clad in Tuckahoe marble. A monumental staircase leads to an entrance with six fluted Ionic columns supporting a triangular pediment. The cast-iron cupola is a 1898 replacement for the original, which burned in an 1895 fire that also destroyed part of the interior. The statue of Justice, part of the original plan, was finally installed on top of the cupola in 1988. https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/business/dcasmanagedbuildings/brooklyn-borough-hall.page
The two-story rectangular lobby, known as the rotunda, has been restored to its 1845 glory. The stairs removed in 1897 were restored, as was the black and white marble floor. The elaborate Courtroom has a coffered domed ceiling, carved wood paneling, fluted Ionic columns, and ornate plasterwork.
Brooklyn Borough Hall is one of the most significant government buildings in Brooklyn and the heart and soul of Brooklyn’s Civic Center. In the 1980s, one of the City’s most ambitious efforts to date was commenced to restore the exterior, which had suffered serious decay over the years. The award-winning work included stone work restoration, replacement of copper shingles on the cupola and installation of stainless steel cladding on the main roof, and repair of the clock and tower elements.
Brooklyn Borough Hall is a designated New York City Landmark. It is also listed on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The BluePrint
Editor
Rian Dowridge
Art Director
Rian Dowridge
Designer
Rian Dowridge
Photography
Unspalsh.com Pexels.com Pixabay.com
Text
https://www.architecturaldigest.com
https://buildingsdb.com/NY/new-york/american-radiator-building/
https://buildingsdb.com/NY/new-york/the-el-dorado/
https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/ issues/magazine-issue/article/2022/07/new-yorksbrooklyn-bridge-is-an-engineering-marvel
https://www.ascemetsection.org/committees/ history-and-heritage/landmarks/queensboro-bridge
https://www.urbanarchive.org/stories/ZoNbgfSZkaa
https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/business/dcasmanagedbuildings/brooklyn-borough-hall.page
Letter To the Editor
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Sincerely,
Mark From Queens, NY
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Will from Brooklyn,NY
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Sincerely, Shawn from Bronx,NY
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