New York City Signs 20191024

How do you wash the windows?

Every decade has specific architectural cues in NYC. From pre-USA clapbord, to federal style, to tenements to Art Deco, to Iron, Brownstones, to glass and steel, to exoskeleton to modern wild buildings, you can tell when something was built within a few years – or a decade by the architectural cues.

Construction techniques have developed. Today building elements are made somewhere else and trucked into the city where they are assembled like a Lego kit on-site. These pre-fabricated elements speed building construction and it often feels like outrageously shaped glass and steel skyscrapers sprout up, virtually overnight, like weeds.

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The “One Way” sign above is pointing towards the one of the newest style buildings. They fit on one city plot and are very tall.

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One of the first glass and steel exoskeleten buildings was the Jacob Javits Convention Center. You can see the skeletal structure elements looking through the glass in the photo. It was a wild concept 33 years ago. It came out well. The designers only forgot three things that became abundantly clear when it opened in a searing hot August. They forgot the Air Conditioning, The window washers and Parking. Whoopsie!

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The Javits Convention Center is big. it’s 5 city blocks wide by one long block.

Notice this massive early 1900 building – and the freedom tower on the right. The Freedom Tower is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Look at all those windows, how do they wash them?

Do you see the derrick hanging over the edge of the roof to the right?

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Well Attached to it is the window washer scaffold. Is this a new definition of job security?

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and there’s the scaffold!

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Here it is several days later with clean windows.

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There’s the Trade Center, from the Hudson River Greenway (bike path), in the distance, all but the lower section and antenna obscured by clouds.

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Besides the Chrysler Building, which is The Jewel of the NYC skyline, Via 625 is one of my favorite buildings in NYC.

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The legacy of The Jacob Javits Convention Center is that window washing is now an integral design element in every commercial project.