This beast of a machine was parked in my neighborhood for several days. It's a Wirtgen Cold Milling Machine, used to remove concrete and asphalt, stripping down the road before it's repaved. I really enjoy drawing construction vehicles with really complicated bits and parts. Not sure how successful the background technique was.
I remembered drawing a similar machine some time back, and was able to dig it up. I drew this 11 years ago. I've improved over the decade, but have I improved that much?
I heard about this mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that was about to be torn down. I found some free time to travel out there and draw it for my "Before It's Gone" collection. Scaffolding already surrounded the building, and reportedly the interior had already been gutted. It was a beautiful day for sketching. A passer-by saw me drawing and said, "Beautiful, right? It's about to come down!"
It was the usual story of the property being bought by a developer who was going to build some ugly, expensive glass apartments on the lot. And, as usual, there was a group of people protesting and trying to get the Landmarks Commission to declare it an historic site and thus save it from demolition. The big twist is that this time it worked! In literally the last minutes of the commission meeting, days before demolition was to start, they voted to consider landmark status for this building. It's not a done deal that the building will be landmarked, or what becomes of it if it is, but there's a possibility that it'll be saved.
Jacob Dangler emigrated to the U.S. as a young man from Germany in the 1860s. He began working in the grocery business in Brooklyn, eventually opening his own meat and provisions shop on Myrtle Ave. in Williamsburg in 1880. He had become prominent in the field as well as the real estate business by the turn of the 20th century. He married Louise Dangler, who kept the books for his businesses, and they had three sons.
Theobald Engelhardt, a fellow German immigrant, was a prolific architect who had a heavy hand in determining the architectural look of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Bedford Stuyvesant. He designed Dangler's factory and other properties, and then this mansion, located near Dangler's businesses. Built in 1897, it was designed in a striking French Gothic style and cost $50,000 to construct. The huge home measures 58' X 85' (17.6m X 26m), with over 12,000 square feet (1115 sq m) of floor space, and included a bowling alley in the basement.
Dangler died in 1939, at the age of 87. He'd never retired, working until the end of his life. His son inherited the mansion, but put it on the market in 1940. In 1943, Willow Temple, a lodge of the Knights of Pythias, purchased the building, and in 1967, it was sold to the Oriental Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star, an African-American, female-oriented masonic organization. The interior rooms were expanded, and additions were built, for use by Masonic lodges and other organizations, and for local community gatherings and events like weddings, baby showers, dances, and the like.
Links
Brownstoner History of the Dangler Mansion
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.
On display in the window of Samuel Kolstein & Son, the Manhattan showroom of a Long Island-based business that repairs and restores violins, violas, cellos and basses.
Samuel Kolstein was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in the Lower East Side in 1915. He was accepted to Juilliard as a piano major, and chose bass as a second choice instrument. He came to become a renowned luthier and bowmaker, and established his first shop on 56th St and 6th Ave. in 1943. His son, Barrie, joined the shop in 1971 and eventually succeeded his father, and in 2918 passed the business on to his mentee, Manny Alvarez, another immigrant son.
I've wanted to draw one of these big road saws for a long time, and I finally came across one parked at a place when I had some time to draw. Vermeer is an Iowa-based manufacturer of industrial equipment. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with the Dutch painter.
Some process pix:
Wally Byam was born on the Fourth of July in 1896 in Baker City, Oregon. He loved the outdoors and had a keen sense of wanderlust. But his wife did NOT. So in the late 1920s, he had the notion to attach a tent contraption on top of a Model T chassis, in order to provide her with some more comfort on their trips. He eventually built a proper trailer, and in 1931 opened the first Airstream trailer factory in California.
The business survived the Great Depression and World War II, and business started to boom after the war. He pitched the trailers to the average person, "With no worry as to where you are going to stay or how the means are going to be when you get there . . . you have plenty of carefree time to see the sights instead of hurrying through them." He also led Airstream Caravans across the globe, traveling through Mexico and Central America, Europe, Canada, and from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt. The Airstream Caravans produced a group of owners who formed a club to maintain the friendships they'd made during the trips. In 1955, the first Airstream Club was founded.
