Posts Tagged ‘Brooklyn Bridge’
“Though these developments were sometimes linked to the word progress, the usage was ironic: ‘progress’ unguided by humanism is not progress”*…
Further, in a fashion, to yesterday’s post: from Stewart Hicks, a story of unintended consequences…
How did a humble piece of metal quietly reshape the American suburbs—and with them, our expectations for modern homes? This video explores the history and impact of the gang-nail plate, a simple yet revolutionary invention that transformed residential construction and accelerated suburban growth.
Originally devised to combat hurricane damage in places like mid-century Miami, the gang-nail plate allowed builders to quickly and securely connect multiple pieces of lumber at virtually any angle. By enabling the mass production of roof trusses in off-site factories, it led to stronger, cheaper, and more efficient construction. This efficiency opened the door to spacious open floor plans, complex rooflines, cathedral ceilings, and the sprawling McMansion aesthetic, all of which have come to define much of American suburban architecture.
Yet, the influence of this unassuming invention isn’t entirely positive. While it helped streamline building processes and cut costs, it also encouraged rapid housing expansion and larger, more resource-intensive homes. The result was an architectural shift that contributed to suburban sprawl, increased energy demands, and homes increasingly treated as commodities rather than unique, handcrafted spaces. These changes reverberated through building codes, real estate markets, and even family life, influencing how we interact with our homes and one another…
Via Jason Kottke, who observes…
The story of gang-nail plate illustrates an inescapable reality of capitalist economics: companies tend not to pass cost savings from efficiency gains onto consumers…they just sell people more of it. And people mostly go along with it because who doesn’t want a bigger house for the same price as a smaller one 10 years ago or a 75” TV for far less than a 36” TV would have cost 8 years ago or a 1/4-lb burger for the same price as a regular burger a decade ago?…
“The Invention That Accidentally Made McMansions”
* Steven Pinker
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As we practice restraint, we might spare a thought for Canvass White; he died on this date in 1834. An engineer and inventor, he worked as head assistant to chief engineer Benjamin Wright in the construction of the Erie Canal. Needy of a hydraulic cement to serve as mortar between the stones used to create the Canal’s locks, and unable to afford to import it from England, White developed and patented a locally-sourced waterproof cement– Rosendale cement— which was used to build the Erie Canal then host of major works in the US including the Delaware and Hudson Canal and Brooklyn Bridge. As Bill Bryson wrote (in At Home) “the great unsung Canvass White didn’t just make New York rich; more profoundly, he helped make America.”
An Honest Living…
This print of a clockmaker is the work of Jost Amman (1533-1591), Swiss book illustrator and one of the last major production artists working with woodcuts. While it’s unlikely that Amman set out to catalog all of the jobs of his time, he did record them, and with great clarity. The result is a set of 16th-century pre-photographic “snapshots” of the ways in which people conducted their business and livelihood– an Alphabet of Trades.
Barber/Surgeon
Thong Maker
His illustrations were in collaboration with with Hans Sachs for Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Staende Auff Erden, published in Frankfurt am Main in 1568. (The full text here is from Bibliothek des Seminars für Wirtschafts und Sozialgeschichte; another useful full-text here indexes the images; and another here provides an English indexing of the trades).
More examples of Amman’s work at “Towards an Alphabet of Trades–“Snapshots” from 1568.” (C.F. also, Medieval Occupations.)
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As we punch in, we might spare a thought for Washington Augustus Roebling; he died on this date in 1926. A civil engineer by training, he worked with his father, John Augustus Roebling, on the design of the Brooklyn Bridge; on his father’s death in 1869, Washington oversaw the completion of construction of the bridge– for twenty years from its opening in 1883, the longest suspension bridge in the world. (In 1872, he was disabled by decompression illness suffered in a caisson used in the construction; from that time on, he was directed operations from his home in Brooklyn overlooking the site.)
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