Old Structures Engineering Blog
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Recognized as one of the leading consultancies in structural engineering for historic and old buildings, Old Structures Engineering (OSE) provides reports, drawings, and specifications that give detailed guidance to owners, designers, and contractors, enabling the preservation, restoration, and alteration of landmarked and other older structures.
Old Structures Engineering Blog
5h ago
Howe trusses look backwards to me. Structural logic generally says that compression members should be stockier than tension members because, while the gross stresses are the same (force divided by cross-sectional area), compression members may buckle and tension members will not. If a truss has square panels (i.e., the verticals are spaced the same distance ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
15h ago
I looked up a bit more than usual today on a street that I’m on three or four times per week, and got this nice rear view of 75 Broad Street. The upper setbacks and tower are aligned with the overall cityscape; the lower base is aligned with ther curve of South William Street. Deep ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
2d ago
With the partial exception of industrial buildings, you can always distinguish buildings constructed before the 1950s from their later counterparts by looking for light courts. If your lights are, at best, incandescent bulbs, and your ventilation is mostly or entirely though windows, your floor plans will have a lot of edges and corners to create ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
2d ago
In two weeks, I’ll be giving a talk in Philadelphia for the Delaware Valley Association of Structural Engineers, which is the eastern-Pennsylvania chapter of the Structural Engineers Association of Pennsylvania. The topic is “Engineers’ Guidelines for Historic Buildings” and I’m not exaggerating much to say that the DVASE selected me and that topic as a ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
3d ago
From a 1924 aerial survey of New York City, a funny-looking blob: Looking down on a building is one of the most difficult ways to recognize it. Fortunately, the late-afternoon shadow helps: That’s the Woolworth Building’s silhouette. Our office building was constructed in 1932, so it’s missing: The southern tip of Manhattan ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
4d ago
I like birds to begin with; this hummingbird sculpture in Montreal seems designed specifically for a structural engineer who likes birds ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
5d ago
I highly recommend the soon-to-be-released book The Elements of Construction: N. Clifford Ricker, Architecture, and the University of Illinois and not just because I wrote on chapter of it. Marci Uihlein, the editor, an architect and engineer, and a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had the fantastic idea of explaining ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
6d ago
One of our stranger projects… The pictures below show a sidewalk vault in Manhattan. The vault extends from the sidewalk (its roof) down two floors or about 25 feet, and was built around 1895. Since reinforced-concrete was still in its infancy then, it was not used for foundation walls, and the outside wall of the ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
1w ago
From the New York Public Library scrapbooks, a page from 1918 showing the Hotel Marguery on the west side of Park Avenue, between 47th and 49th Streets. The building’s address was 270 Park Avenue. That odd two-wing configuration is what happens when you plan a building around a street, in this case Vanderbilt Avenue. Vanderbilt ..read more
Old Structures Engineering Blog
1w ago
From one of the New York Public Library’s scrapbooks, a view north from Park Avenue and 41st Street in 1920: The focal point of such a view is, of course, Grand Central Terminal. The big vacant lot, protected only by an easily-hopped fence, was the former site of the 1860s Grand Union Hotel, and the ..read more