Chicago Bridges

Chicago bridges. The La Salle Street Bridge, The Clark Street Bridge, and the Kinzie Street Railroad Bridge, aka the Chicago and North Western Railroad Bridge.

The Kinzie Street Bridge has been unused since 2000, but is still technically active status and is raised and lowered once a year. The bridge in the background is somewhat famous, or infamous, because of an incident in 2004 when Dave Matthews tour bus dumped 800 lbs of toilet waste as it was crossing the bridge, directly onto an architecture tour boat full of passengers.

Mystic River Bascule Bridge

 

The Mystic River Bascule Bridge, spanning the Mystic River in Connecticut. It was built in 1922. It opens hourly at 40 minutes past the hour. A bascule bridge is a type of drawbridge. This one employs two 230-ton concrete blocks to counterbalance the span.

Inscope Arch

Inscope Arch, in the southern end of Central Park, near the zoo and the pond.

Central Park has an intricate system of bridges and arches that were designed to accommodate both pedestrian and equine traffic. These spans allow one form of traffic to pass over or under the other. Originally, there were 27 arches and bridges constructed between 1859 and 1866, with others added later. Each bridge and arch has a unique design, all designed by Calvert Vaux, some with assistance from Jacob Wrey Mould.

The Inscope Arch, built in 1873, is one of the newer bridges. It was built in response to a bottleneck of pedestrians and horseback and carriage drivers on the East Drive near the Pond. Vaux and Mould designed it in the then-popular Ruskinian Gothic style, facing the Tuscan arch with pink and gray granite. Built on swamp land, it is 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, 13 feet 7 inches (4.14 m) wide, and 34 feet (10 m) long. It was restored in the 1970s and then again in the early 2000s.

Process:

As usual, it was drawn on site in pencil, then inked with Pigma Micron pens, and then painted in layers, mostly with water soluble pencils and watercolor washes.

Before It's Gone updates

New York City is in constant flux. Businesses come and go, buildings are torn down, renovated, constructed. A lot of my work has become creating a record of those transformations. At times I have deliberately set out to put down in my sketchbooks places that I know, or anticipate, will soon be gone, which I've filed under the tag "Before It's Gone." And as I travel through the city, I often notice that something I've drawn in the past has disappeared or changed. So here is an update on those posts.

This 1922 building was originally a movie theater, turned into a gas station, and finally an auto repair shop run by the Lee Brothers. They sold the property in 2018. When I passed by last week, it was surrounded by the plywood walls that indicate that demolition is imminent. It will be replaced by a four-story residential building.

The Sunshine Cinema was demolished a few weeks ago. A big, ugly glass tower will go up in its place.

Zoltar is gone, at least from this location. Gem Spa, the store where he was located, is struggling.  Last spring, it lost its tobacco and lottery license after an employee sold cigarettes to an underage customer, which cost them 80% of their income, and they are in debt and being sued for back rent. It doesn't sound hopeful for the Gem Spa, but the Zoltar machine survives. It was relocated to a pizza shop in Bushwick. I recently discovered another one at a crab shack in Red Hook.

13th St Rep, however, is still hanging in there. I found out today that it's featured in a new film,  Before You Know It, that used it as a main location.

Kensington Stables is also still there. I was pretty sure that this Brooklyn stable had reached the end of its rope, but it was purchased by a horse-loving businessman. It has been re-named Prospect Park Stables, its original name from 1917, and the new owner is restoring riding paths in the park and planning renovations and expansion. I'm a little skeptical of the plans to incorporate a "coffee and tea spot" to this building, but I'm very happy there's still a horse stable smack dab in the middle of Brooklyn.  

The old Kosciuszko Bridge was demolished, and a new second span just opened. The new bridges look cool, especially when they're lit up at night, but time will tell if traffic is actually any better.

The old signage on the S Beckenstein building is still extant.

For several years, I worked for a summer theater festival at The Wild Project on East 3rd St., across from the Miracle Garden. This bike and scooter were chained to the fence, in the exact same location, year after year. Until this summer! First, the wheels were stolen off the scooter, and then it disappeared. Then the bike was flagged for removal by the Sanitation Dept., and soon after it was gone.

This strange snail ride was replaced by a kangaroo, I think, and more recently by a horse. This past weekend, the horse ride was out of order, so maybe it will change again. There are other coin-operated rides on this block (every few weeks, by four-year old twins will do a circuit of all of them). They will periodically change from one animal or off-model cartoon character to another. I wonder if there is any sort of schedule or plan for rotating them in and out.

Prospect Park Urban Sketching

I regularly post sketches to the NYC Urban Sketchers Facebook page, but have never joined them for one of their outings. My schedule never seems to allow it. But this past Wednesday, they were in Prospect Park, at the The Boathouse, not far from my apartment, and I was free, so I joined up with them for a bit. I wasn't able to stay that long and so didn't get to meet many of them in person, but hopefully I'll have the opportunity to join future outings.

Brooklyn Bridge at 135

I just found out that today is the 135th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, so that's a good reason to post these drawings I've done of the bridge over the past year.

Providence and Portsmouth

I spent the last two weekends touring with the Bang Group dance company to Providence and New Hampshire/Maine. I've been lighting their holiday show Nut/Cracked for the last couple of years. They're in Boston this week and you can catch it in New York City at the new Flea Theatre.

Providence

Sheperd Company Builidng. This building in downtown Providence used to be Sheperd Stores, which was once one of the largest department stores in New England. The pillar seen in the window is covered with fashion advertisements. It currently housed state offices and local colleges.

Turks Head Building. I went to college in Providence, and always wondered what the deal was with this building. This giant, somewhat racist Ottoman head certainly makes it one of the most WTF subjects I've drawn. (What you can't see in this sketch is that the Turk has fangs.) When it was completed in 1913, it was the tallest building in Providence. A shopkeeper on the ground floor installed a figurehead from the ship Sultan above the entrance. It was later destroyed in a storm, and this stone replica was installed. I was pleased that I finally got the curved architecture almost right; I always struggle with that.

One of the interesting things about Providence is the remaining defunct street furniture, ghosts of the city's past. This tower on Weybosset Street is the remnants of a comfort station that was torn down in 2011. Now it's just a sort of traffic divider. The old night deposit box is outside the Union Trust Company Building on Westminster and Dorrance. The bank is long gone; now it's a restaurant and residences. But this night deposit box remains. Do businesses even use night deposit boxes any more?

Portsmouth, NH

We performed in Kittery, Maine, but stayed across the river in Portsmouth, NH. The World War I Memorial Bridge spans the Piscataqua River between the states. It is a vertical-lift bridge. The center span rises up to allow boat traffic through.

The North Church. The church, constructed in 1854, is one of the main landmarks in Portsmouth, visible from across the city. A winter storm was coming in as I sketched it. I completed it later with photo reference I took. I got the corbels, the protruding support structures, on the lower part, all wrong.