Manhattan, New York Manhattan

Manhattan Buildings

Steam engines,  electricity, made energy available to do many more times the work that people and animals had done before. A new method of smelting iron produced huge quantities at low prices. Other inventions gave builders steel, a material even stronger than iron. Cities grew an skyscrapers provided a solution to the problems of overcrowding because they take up little space on the ground. Skyscraper frames were first built with iron, then with steel. New engines powered elevators to hoist people to the top. The weight of a tall building can easily cause it to sink or lean, so the early skyscrapers were usually built on solid rock. This is why so many were built on Manhattan, a rocky island in New Your City.

You can see here some photographs showing Manhattan not very well known... All the pictures have been taken by Elena.

South Pear.. In the XIXeth century,  thus South Pear was built one of the first iron structures to be constructed in the city.

Manhattan, Liberty Place. The world gained a new construction material when inexpensive iron was developed.

Skycrapers are a product of the Industrial Revolution, as new inventions revolutionized the way people lived. 

The first skyscraper was built in 1884 in the city of Chicago, Illinois. It was only ten-stories high.

Union Square. Manhattan's heart.

UN building, center of the worlds most well-known organization.

HM. Computers check all the designs, and the prestressed concrete roofs are made by casting concrete pieces that are placed on the building before steel cables are threaded through them and pulled tight.

Place in face of the Police Museum. The Art Deco style, a novelty of the 1930s, inspired the triangle-shaped windows. These are set within tiers of arches on the crown of many buildings.

Soho, Manhattan.

Old and modern buildings. The architect's imaginative design become a unique masterpiece which is recognized throughout the world.

The steel in prestressed concrete is stretched tight so that it squeezes the concrete around it.

Steam engines powered the first elevators, which were used only for freight. The first passenger elevators were installed in 1857 after a way was found to stop them from falling if a cable broke. By 1889, they were powered by electric motors. The elevator doors of the Chrysler Building are decorated in the Art Deco style.

Native Americans were some of the earliest construction workers on skyscrapers. They worked at great heights while standing only on 8-in wide steel beams.

A strong frame is built inside the building for the elevators. This frame also helps the building resist the pushing and twisting forces of the winds.

You may not like the way a particular building looks oe even understand why it is thought to be a great building. But once you learn about the lives and thoughts of the people who build it and about the time and place in which it was built, you may find something about the building they do like.

Giant cranes require dozens of trucks each to be transported to the building sites where they are assembled.

New York Loft.