City February 21, 2010 10:41 AM

How Things Are Made

STEEL 5

I stumbled on this great old drawing showing a section through the dome of the Buffalo Savings Bank (M&T Center) and thought it was worth sharing in a quicky post.

I don't have much to say other than other than I find drawings like this to be endlessly fascinating in the way they show how very simple and surprisingly delicate things can be. I love how the cornice stones are precariously stacked onto the spindly steel frame.

In a way, it exposes how impermanent we and all our efforts are in this universe.

I found the drawing here.

View image

Comments

5 Comments Leave a comment

eco_logic

February 21, 2010 1:39 PM

great find! the other drawings also help to see what resists wind and gravity! elegant!

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300miles

February 21, 2010 4:39 PM

cool find, Steel!

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bustedlogin

February 21, 2010 9:02 PM

If it's worth sharing it's worth sharing a decent image. This lo-res, over-compressed jpeg, symbolic of the lo-res, over-compressed generation we live in, hardly qualifies.

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STEEL

February 21, 2010 10:44 PM

I certainly would share a better quality image if I had one but I personally find even this low resolution version full of great information worth sharing.

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PeytonsCorner

February 22, 2010 3:32 PM

Thanks for sharing STEEL these older hand drawings are not only historic, in many cases they are works of art. If you're a Buffalo fan like most of us here, find them, copy them and frame them, they make great works to display and certainly make for intersting discussion.

These drawings almost always went to another level of detail by the contracted masonry or stone vendor. These corice stones especially had non-ferrous metal pins and anchors that were tied back to the steel or concrete structure.

In the case of the ever falling masonry cornice on the statler towers well... a buidling can take only so much before things start to come apart on their own. One of the reasons the Statler is not getting a lot of interest is that it is very likely that these cornices need to be removed and reset entirely! Big $$$$

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