An article by Michael Beschloss in the New York Times, entitled A Place That Made Travelers Feel Important, recalls the 1963 demolition of Pennsylvania Station and hints at the possibility of a new Penn Station. The loss of Penn Station was a watershed event in the historic preservation movement, influencing the passage of the National Historic Preservation…
Capitols are among our favorite types of buildings to work on, and since our first investigation of the Massachusetts State House twenty years ago, we’ve had the pleasure of visiting ten of them – eight state capitols in addition to the U.S. Capitol and Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador Confederation Building. Earlier this month, Vertical Access returned to the…
By Kristen Olson The Near Tomorrow We are now living in the future envisioned at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, which opened 50 years ago last week and attracted over 50 million visitors to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. With the theme “peace through understanding,” the fair promised a utopian, technologically-driven “near tomorrow.” For many…
By Kristen Olson Showcasing New York State The 1964-65 New York World’s Fair was timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the founding of New York City (or more accurately, the city’s capture and renaming by the British). In representing the fair’s host state, the New York State Pavilion would stand out as…
Getting to see exclusive spaces is one of the perks of our work at Vertical Access. Last summer we were asked to join Robert Silman Associates and the New York Landmarks Conservancy to work inside a rarely-seen Lower East Side Landmark: Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, a historic synagogue and home to this country’s oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox…
Kent Diebolt was in Denver on the evening of February 5th to help celebrate the Stephen H. Hart Awards for Historic Preservation, honoring the Western Colorado Interperative Association, Anthony & Associates and the Bureau of Land Management for their work and leadership on the Hanging Flume project. Vertical Access has been involved since 2004. [vimeo…
Check out our February 2014 Quarterly newsletter.
Once one of the most popular attractions in New York City, today Grant’s Tomb is off the beaten track tread by most visitors to Manhattan. Constructed with the assistance of donations from 90,000 people totaling $600,000, the most money raised for a public monument at the time, the structure later suffered from neglect and fell…
A structure planned to “stand with practically no visible sign of change for 5,000 years.” That assessment, by Perry Borchers, was published in the Ohio State Engineer journal in 1940, soon after west façade of The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine was completed and just before the entire length of the Cathedral was…
The Capitol Dome Will Get A $60 Million Face-Lift, by Eyder Peralta, National Public Radio, October 22, 2013 The U.S. Capitol Dome is about to undergo a $60 million restoration. Construction is scheduled to begin in November and last for two years. “From a distance the dome looks magnificent, thanks to the hard-work of our…
