41 Cooper Square

As an alumnus of the Cooper Union, I was invited to do some party time in the new building. The following are personal highlights, in no particular order:

Corner detail of the Alumni Terrace on the 8th floor.

A grated egress stair.

I believe this is a wind tunnel.
I'm sure this is a urinal.
This is a tension-compression machine. It was put in the cellar before the slab was poured above it; that means it's big. Word on the street is they used it to test what it took to punch through a NYC manhole cover.
You can see it sits on several W Sections [think I-Beam] embedded in concrete. The whole thing slides on the steel beams, if you need to reposition it--for any reason.
Atrium stair detail.
The red egress stair.
Classy recycling.
Framing the Foundation Building.
At the very end of this garden, you may be able to see one of the original eagle sculptures from the original Penn Station. It used to sit in the courtyard of the old engineering building.

Sweet eyewash.

Detail of the steel mesh that runs through the atrium meeting a column
The atrium.
Artist studios on the top floor. Notice the north-facing skylights above?

Intimate auditorium in the cellar. The texture is brought to you by some fine, crumpled wire mesh. Both acoustical and aesthetic.

350 5th Avenue, 54th Floor

aka: The Empire State Building

350 5th Avenue, 54th Floor

1 Wall Street, 49th Floor

I had to stop myself from uploading more photos; there are more. This is the Bank of New York Mellon building. It's kind of unbelievable that they started building this at the beginning of the depression in '29, to me anyway.

Towards Jersey.

M'kay.

That's 49 stories down.

Quite erotic, if you ask me, and a fine coat rack indeed.

This is the private bank on the first floor. Private meaning you can't enter unless you have a Radio Flyer full of cash. The red tile walls are pretty nuts. "The artist Hildreth Meière coordinated the installation of the mosaics, which were made by Ravenna Mosaics in Berlin and Long Island City."

The ceilings in this room are about 30' high and are clad, I shit you not, in Indonesian sea shells. This is the seven diamond hooker of board rooms.

Oragami?

I think these could possibly be the original furnishings from '31, less the exit signs. That green marble mantle-thing is more green in person.

65 East 55th Street, Roof

First things first: this is David Copperfield's triplex penthouse, allegedly. I went ahead and tried to indicate the extent of it with that faint orange bracket on the left (go ahead, click on it). Take a look at those 25' columns. Odd detail, no? It looks alien. It looks as if it's descended from space and attached itself to a normal apartment house.

Citicorp.
I'm going to start a series on this blog called "Show Me Your Window Washing Rig." This is the first installment. All buildings of this size have them, though you don't see them much and we never talk about them, do we? I find them rather beautiful.

The railing you see there is the track that the window washing rig rides on. The rig itself is stored in a glass and steel pyramid on this level. There's a giant garage door that opens and the rig rides around the perimeter, then back into the garage/pyramid.

Below: if you'll direct your attention to the upper left, those are the reflecting pools of the Segram's Building.