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Photography Brooklyn Bridge, 1899

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Brooklyn Bridge, 1899

1899 Brooklyn Bridge Skyline.jpg

Brooklyn Bridge, 1899

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The Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan skyline, circa 1899. A trolley is seen passing over the bridge.

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This week NYC lost an amazing photographer, Peter Kaplan, who fearlessly documented the city's skyscrapers including the installation of Twin Tower's antenna in 1974, which he spent 12 days photographing.

Kaplan also has an incredible series of elevated nudes above the city’s most iconic monuments. Kaplan paved the way for today’s daredevil Instagram photographers that share parts of the city most of us will never experience in person.
From the Times obituary: "Mr. Kaplan’s photographs have appeared in exhibitions in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center for Photography, the New-York Historical Society and the Skyscraper Museum, and in Washington at the Smithsonian Institution, among other places.
They were also enclosed in time capsules to commemorate the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

Beginning decades ago, even when security was looser and Mr. Kaplan was fortified by $5 million in liability insurance, he would often have to spend months negotiating for dispensation to clamber up scaffolds, bridge cables and antennas. "

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Central Park Tower has surpassed 432 Park, taking the title of tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere and tallest roof in NYC. The skyscraper at 217 West 57th Street is quickly rising to its 1550 foot height, over 155 feet taller than 432 Park!

The skyscraper has been criticized for its 350 feet of "mechanical space" which does not count towards the regulated floor area of the building, a loophole in the city's zoning regulations that may soon change.* With a downturn in the real estate market and a surplus in luxury residential apartments in NYC, Central Park Tower is on schedule to be completed next year with 18 of 179 condos priced above $60 million. *See our previous post from January 28th on the mechanical void loophole.

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(Part 2/2) East Side Access is an enormous undertaking, and what has been accomplished is remarkable. After transporting two 640-ton hard rock tunnel-boring machines in pieces through a Queens access point, they were assembled under 63rd Street and Second Avenue. The MTA blasted and bored eight miles of new tunnels leaving one of these machines buried underground forever. 150 feet below Grand Central Terminal, workers labored 24 hours a day, carving a new station out of bedrock under one of the densest and busiest areas of the city without disrupting trains or pedestrians above. Most people who pass through Grand Central have no idea construction is going on below. On East 50th Street a new park was built above a ventilation facility to mitigate noise pollution with sound absorbing planters and a color-changing waterfall. In the 63rd Street tunnel, they built a conveyor belt system to transport all the bored material from Manhattan through the opening in Queens.
The new terminal is a worthy addition to Grand Central – it was smartly designed to emulate and compliment Grand Central’s Beaux-Arts aesthetic, using the same marble from quarries in Italy and Turkey Cornelius Vanderbilt selected over a century ago.

East Side Access will be a major improvement for LIRR commuters who have entered New York City for the past half-century through the low-ceilinged, dark, drab and crowded Penn Station, frequently labeled “the most hated train station in America.” As historian Vincent Scully famously remarked, "one entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat." East Side Access is an opportunity to correct this past – the demolition of the original Beaux-Arts Pennsylvania Station, demolished in 1966 – by providing a new modern space for commuters. Grand Central Terminal is loved by New Yorkers because it makes them feel great when they enter it. New York City has to continue to invest in public transit infrastructure projects and in doing so, create monumental spaces like the great train stations we built a century ago. When it opens in three years, East Side Access will be a shining example of the next era of New York City’s great mass transit projects.

(1/2) Today we wrap up our East Side Access coverage with two posts; costs, and our opine after touring the site. Visit our website (link in bio) to read the full post. Comment below to let us know what you think of East Side Access and what major transit project should come next when it opens in three years?

Costs - East Side Access proved to be much more complicated and expensive than originally anticipated. The most recent estimate is projected to reach $11.1 billion once completed – more than 2.5 times the original budget. The New York Times labeled East Side Access the most expensive mile of track on earth, reporting it cost $3.5 billion for each mile, seven times the worldwide average and even higher than the $2.5 billion per mile of the Second Avenue Subway. The diminished credibility of the MTA following these over-budget, over-schedule projects will make it more challenging to attempt much-needed large-scale transit improvements in the future.
There are many factors that account for the exorbitant price tag: According to reporting by The New York Times and City Journal, large projects were split up into multiple contracts that were not competitively bid on, due to lack of competition, and difficult to coordinate. The MTA spent $4.4 billion (43% of the total expense) on labor, with unions requiring job sites be staffed with four times the number of workers compared to similar projects around the world. The New York Times reported in 2017 that 900 workers were getting paid for tunneling that only required 700 jobs. After finding out about the 200 additional workers, Michael Horodniceanu, then the head of construction of the MTA, confirmed "nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything [or how long they'd been employed]...All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.” In Queens, Amtrak required they assist all MTA construction at Harold Interlocking with “force protection,” then couldn’t find enough workers to do the job. Additionally, Amtrak struggled to provide assistance on weekends, the opportune time for the MTA to get work done when there are fewer trains. (Continued in post 2/2)

#MapMondays Driving Road Chart of the country surrounding New York City (1890)

Tap to purchase a fine-art print from our website.

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The Tri-line BQE proposal calls for extending the Brooklyn Bridge Park berms over Furman Street, burying the six-lane expressway under them, and creating a multilevel cantilevered park with direct connections to the Promenade.

This is the third proposal in response to the DOT’s proposed alternatives this past fall. What do you think of the Tri-line?

(East Side Access continued)

Yesterday we left off with a 1969 proposal for a LIRR terminal on Third and 48th in Midtown. Residents of the Turtle Bay neighborhood opposed the terminal, forcing the MTA to study alternatives, including moving it to Grand Central, but the city's emerging fiscal crisis stalled the project for the next several decades.

In the late nineties, the LIRR had become the busiest commuter railway in the country, and their East River tunnels, signals, interlocking systems, and Penn Station concourse all operating over capacity. Discussion of East Side Access was revived and after several environmental assessments considering multiple alternatives, it was concluded the best option was to construct a new concourse would be constructed to the west of the lower level of Grand Central, connecting four new platforms in two 1,100-foot-long train terminals bored out of bedrock deep below. In 2002 the final plans were approved and construction began.

Despite delays, construction is finally wrapping up with an estimated opening date of December 2022.

The new terminal under Grand Central will consist of two large caverns, each with three levels containing a total of eight tracks split among four platforms. Additional tunnels continuing south from 42nd Street and ultimately terminating at 38th Street will provide room for train storage. The middle-level mezzanine in each cavern terminal connects to a passenger concourse above that runs below Vanderbilt Avenue via 180 foot long escalators (the longest in the state) and multiple elevator banks. The 350,000 square foot passenger concourse runs from 42nd to 48th Streets and will offer 25,000 square feet of retail space with connections to Grand Central’s main concourse and off-street connections along Madison Avenue.

Visit our website (link in bio) to read the entire post on ESA. Follow @eastsideaccess for up to date coverage.

Today we resume our East Side Access coverage with a look at the unbuilt East Midtown LIRR terminal, known as the Metropolitan Transportation Center (MTC). Visit our website (link in bio) to read more about East Side Access, a transit megaproject that connects the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to Grand Central Terminal via more than 8 miles of new tunnels and a new eight-track train terminal 150 feet below Grand Central.

Last week we left off with the construction of the "Tunnel to Nowhere" in 1969, connecting the LIRR in Queens to 63rd Street in Manhattan. The MTA proposed constructing a new $341 million terminal to connect to the tunnel for LIRR passengers on Third Ave and 48th Street with an office tower on top, dubbed the Metropolitan Transportation Center. The expansion plan also included a proposal for constructing the Second Avenue Subway, which would have provided subway connections to the LIRR terminal. This made the Third Avenue location ideal due to its numerous connections for LIRR passengers to Lexington (4,5,6), Flushing (7) and Second Avenue subway lines, #GrandCentralTerminal, bus lines, taxis, and parking.

The expansion plan detailed the need for MTC, "which will not only include the East Side terminal of the Long Island Rail Road, but an East Midtown air terminal for high-speed access to Kennedy Airport via the Long Island Rail Road and a major interchange point for east-west movement of people via a midtown distribution system proposed for Phase Two. The area above the essential floors needed for these purposes and for bus and taxi access and parking will be developed for office use. Rental of such space will cover the cost and development of the expanded center... From this transportation center, a passenger will be able to check his baggage, purchase his ticket and be assured that this will be a scheduled and reliable link in his journey. He will be able to travel swiftly and directly to Kennedy Airport without bothering about his baggage until he reaches his final destination."

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