There’s evidence to suggest that Town had a growing awareness of environmental issues, and that strategies in his architectural practice represented a conscious response. It is impossible to measure Town against modern green building, or to expect that environmental damage such as acid rain, global warming, VOC contamination, etc. – could have been foreseen at that time. But the rate of deforestation and early effects of the Industrial Revolution were beginning to raise alarms related to the environment. Research is currently underway to uncover what remains of Town’s environmental record. Sustainable architects today may yet have something to learn, or at least feel confirmed, from America’s earliest professional architects.  

Pre-WWI buildings in the city were framed with old growth timber from the country’s seemingly endless virgin forests. The fact can come as a surprise to modern urban dwellers, with wooden joists hidden behind floors and ceilings. These old bones of New York City were once trees of course, with roots upstate, or in New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, Virginia, Nova Scotia – just about any place that forests were logged, and water or rail transport was available.
There would be no New York without lumber. So at least in part, the city begins in these backwoods, and with the people that logged them. Their methods, tools and culture can seem as remote as that of imported goods today. But where things come from and how they’re made is now knowledge of critical value, but the same awareness of the past speaks to qualities that don’t meet the eye.

The following links to selection of selection of photos, providing a glimpse of the forgotten forest and it’s logging heritage.

Logging Snapshots

How many types of trees on earth? 60,000 is a good working number, according to Colin Trudge, an author on the subject. Of this total, an NYC hardwood dealer carries about twenty-five varieties in the form of solid lumber. The reclaimed wood species that are harvested locally is about half this number (roughly twelve), and half of these, or a handful, make up the bulk of antique and vintage woods salvaged in the city. The list includes Longleaf Pine, Red Spruce, Eastern Hemlock, Douglas Fir, Eastern White Pine and Shortleaf Pine.  Of these, two predominate; Red Spruce (Picea rubens) and Longleaf Pine (Picea palustris) – the former comes from multi-family residential buildings (tenements etc.) and the latter from commercial structures (warehouses, etc). In looking at the antique and vintage lumber that flows into the city’s c & d waste stream, just one, Red Spruce, remains at the top of the waste heap in its potential environmental value. It represents the largest volume of reclaimed lumber and is currently the most difficult to re-use. The issue of recycling this and other “Large dimensional lumber”, is now being taken up by New York City government and an Urban Green Council task force. see “NYC Lumber Law”.  

The following links to a brief profile of twelve woods that are reclaimed from dismantled structures in NYC.

Twelve Woods

Photos from istockphoto.com unless otherwise indicated.

Many things hold NYC together – education, diversity, sustainability, architecture, preservation, sports teams, economy, transportation, terrorism (temporarily) – and nails.  Old joists and timbers in city buildings may contain a few generations of this essential building item. Nails are one of the clues to the age of a city building, especially ones that date from the nineteenth century, when nail-making was developing quickly.
Like the wheel, there’s no record of the first person that had the idea to join two pieces of wood with a nail. But nails have been around since Roman times 2000 years ago. By the 1800‘s, England was the largest nail-making country in the world, with 60,000 people employed in Birmingham nail manufacturing alone. But the evolution of nail making was essentially the product of American Yankee ingenuity. The following briefly marks the nails time line within the built environment.
1700 to 1800 – Hand-wrought nails made by a blacksmith from square iron rods were used. Iron was drawn into rods, the end heated and formed by hammer on an anvil with four quick blows, forming a type of rose head. The rod was re-heated and the process was repeated. It was much lighter work than other types of metalsmithing, and often done by women and children. For this reason, it was among the dark spots from the industrial era, motivating machine advances in the process.
1790s to early 1800s – Machines were invented in the United States for making nails from bars of iron, shearing nails off like a guillotine, with a taper formed by wiggling the bar from side to side with every stroke. The heads were made as before, struck into a rose head by hammer blows on an anvil. These became known as type A cut nails. Eventually,  machines were developed that pounded a head on the end of each nail mechanically. This type of nail was made until the 1820s.
Early 1800’s – late 1800’s – In the USA, towards the late 1700′s and early 1800′s, a nail machine was invented. It had three parts. Flat metal strips about two feet long fed into the machine. One lever cut a triangular strip of metal, a second lever held the nail in place, while the third lever formed the head. The strip of metal was then turned around 180° to cut the next equal and opposite nail shape off the strip. The nails were known as “cut nails”. But still, the process was labour intensive with a man (or woman) at each machine. Nails made by this method are known as type B nails. And these are the nails most commonly found in many 19th c. New York City buildings today. Type A nails and the later type B nails can be distinguished by a small burr along the edge or the Type A. Both of these types are inexact, with each nail looking just slightly different. With exposure to time and the elements, the iron nails can begin to corrode, and slightly ‘bleed’ into the surrounding wood, leaving the ingrained mark of it’s history, without compromising the woods structural re-use.
Late 1800‘s – With the rapid development of steel making through the Bessemer process during the 1880s, iron nail making dropped off. By the 1880’s, 10 percent of the nails produced in the United States were made of steel wire. Within six years, more steel-wire nails were being produced than Class B cut nails. By 1913, 90 percent were wire nails. 
In the early 1900′s, the first coils of steel round wire were produced and quickly machines were designed to use this new raw material. And the first automatically produced wire nails with no human intervention other than to set up the machine immediately showed that this was the future.
Additional sources:


Whorf, Amy. A Thumbnail History of Nails, Country Living, June 1993, p. 72.
                                                Sloane, Eric A Reverence for Wood, Dover Publications, 2004. 
                                                                 Bolles, Albert Sidney Industrial history of the United States, from the earliest settlements to the present time: being a complete survey of American industries.                                                                                 Henry Billing Publishing, 1889.
http://www.glasgowsteelnail.com/nailmaking.htm
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Nail.html                                                                                                                             http://www.uvm.edu/histpres/203/nails.html

Old woods rough-sawn surfaces, stress cracks and nail holes, it’s visible growth rings back to year one are – it’s silent history. But over the centuries, other surviving documentary evidence may surface – a found photo, postcard or related artifact. It’s most recent past is so current and unceremonious as to barely seem like history. But the pace of modern life seems to compress time, so that the experience of the historical dates closer and closer to the present, with popular terms like ‘vintage, retro, and mid-century‘ taking on more of the allure attached to an old object. The expanded historical imagination comes to include the current moment – or at least the one just before – like the vital outer sap rings of a living tree.
And why not – demolition contractors function like the original logging crews; flatbed truckers drive the ox carts, river rafts and ships of the past; the sawmill still rips logs with steel tooth blades, and lumber yards buy and sell wood. The following are encounters with more recent points along the timeline between American old growth tree and the contemporary design of the exhibition.

Link to audio interview

Info at www.wanteddesignnyc.com

Many things hold NYC together – education, diversity, sustainability, architecture, preservation, sports teams, economy, transportation, terrorism (temporarily) – and nails.  Old joists and timbers in city buildings may contain a few generations of this essential building item. Nails are one of the clues to the age of a city building, especially ones that date from the nineteenth century, when nail-making was developing quickly.

Like the wheel, there’s no record of the first person that had the idea to join two pieces of wood with a nail. But nails have been around since Roman times 2000 years ago. By the 1800‘s, England was the largest nail-making country in the world, with 60,000 people employed in Birmingham nail manufacturing alone. But the evolution of nail making was essentially the product of American Yankee ingenuity. The following briefly marks the nails time line within the built environment.

1700 to 1800 – Hand-wrought nails made by a blacksmith from square iron rods were used. Iron was drawn into rods, the end heated and formed by hammer on an anvil with four quick blows, forming a type of rose head. The rod was re-heated and the process was repeated. It was much lighter work than other types of metalsmithing, and often done by women and children. For this reason, it was among the dark spots from the industrial era, motivating machine advances in the process.

1790s to early 1800s – Machines were invented in the United States for making nails from bars of iron, shearing nails off like a guillotine, with a taper formed by wiggling the bar from side to side with every stroke. The heads were made as before, struck into a rose head by hammer blows on an anvil. These became known as type A cut nails. Eventually,  machines were developed that pounded a head on the end of each nail mechanically. This type of nail was made until the 1820s.

Early 1800’s – late 1800’s – In the USA, towards the late 1700′s and early 1800′s, a nail machine was invented. It had three parts. Flat metal strips about two feet long fed into the machine. One lever cut a triangular strip of metal, a second lever held the nail in place, while the third lever formed the head. The strip of metal was then turned around 180° to cut the next equal and opposite nail shape off the strip. The nails were known as “cut nails”. But still, the process was labour intensive with a man (or woman) at each machine. Nails made by this method are known as type B nails. And these are the nails most commonly found in many 19th c. New York City buildings today. Type A nails and the later type B nails can be distinguished by a small burr along the edge or the Type A. Both of these types are inexact, with each nail looking just slightly different. With exposure to time and the elements, the iron nails can begin to corrode, and slightly ‘bleed’ into the surrounding wood, leaving the ingrained mark of it’s history, without compromising the woods structural re-use.

Late 1800‘s – With the rapid development of steel making through the Bessemer process during the 1880s, iron nail making dropped off. By the 1880’s, 10 percent of the nails produced in the United States were made of steel wire. Within six years, more steel-wire nails were being produced than Class B cut nails. By 1913, 90 percent were wire nails.
In the early 1900′s, the first coils of steel round wire were produced and quickly machines were designed to use this new raw material. And the first automatically produced wire nails with no human intervention other than to set up the machine immediately showed that this was the future.

Additional sources:
Whorf, Amy. A Thumbnail History of Nails, Country Living, June 1993, p. 72.
Sloane, Eric A Reverence for Wood, Dover Publications, 2004.
Bolles, Albert Sidney Industrial history of the United States, from the earliest settlements to the present time: being a complete survey of American industries. Henry Billing Publishing, 1889.

http://www.glasgowsteelnail.com/nailmaking.htm

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Nail.html                                                                                                                             http://www.uvm.edu/histpres/203/nails.html

The structures primarily span from the Erie Canal era (1832, 211 Pearl St.) to modern times (NY Public School scaffolding planks c. 2005).  Some are rare architectural treasures, others are rarely given a second look – but there wouldn’t be another building like it again. Every stick of lumber has a story to tell – whether about a building (862 Washington Ave., NY), a city neighborhood (1099 Leggett Ave., South Bronx), a structural icon (a Park Ave. rooftop water tank), a person associated with the site (P.S. 17, Henry David Thoreau School), or the timbers and trees themselves – prior to becoming the structural heart woods of a world class city.

Replaced: 2010

Wood: Brazilian Ipe (Tabebuia chrysantha), Cumaru (Dipteryx, odorata) and
Greenheart (Chlorocardium rodiei)

History: The Coney Island boardwalk was dismantled recently – a three block stretch at the heart of the amusement area that included Nathan’s Hot Dog stand, Cha Cha’s Bar & Cafe, and Shoot The Freak. The fabled boardwalk (installed in the early 20th c. and then replaced in WWII), is made from Rainforest hardwoods, has been transformed into benches, decking, flower planters, and now modern furniture.
Coney Island has recently been in the spotlight, with NYC buying back a prime area from Thor Equities. Preservationists are campaigning for the city to incorporate the classic features of the original amusement area into future development.
The Dutch name for the island was Conyne Eylandt, or Rabbit Island, due to the large populations of wild rabbits, which were eventually wiped out. Now environmental activists charge that animal and wildlife species are still being made extinct, not on Coney Island, but in the distant Rainforest, where the removal of a whole acre of jungle will often yield just a single useable Ipe tree.
For this reason, they are now succeeding in weening NYC away from the use of these exotic lumber products. Seventeen miles of boardwalk line the boroughs, making NYC the largest consumer of tropical Rainforest woods in the U.S. Most NYC boardwalks are now replaced with concrete. The stretch of Coney Island boardwalk, however, will still use Ipe.
Video clip of Coney Island Boardwalk demolition