Todd Boebel

The Manhattan Bridge was the last bridge completed on the lower East River joining Brooklyn and Manhattan.  Designed by suspension bridge engineer, Leon Moisseiff (1872-1943), the Manhattan Bridge officially opened to the public in 1909, twenty-six years after the Brooklyn Bridge and six years after completion of the Williamsburgh Bridge.  Though a faded hue in this photograph, the blue paint used to maintain the deck and towers of the Manhattan Bridge is reminiscent of Delft pottery made in the Netherlands during the 16th Century. 

The mill at Weirton began producing steel in 1909 with open hearths, then shifted to the basic oxygen process in the late 1960s, when the smoking behemoth pictured was erected.  It was razed in 2007 when Weirton and other Ohio River communities prepared to enter a post-steel era.

The first rolling mills were erected in Bethlehem during the Civil War when "The Steel City" was yet a fledgling iron producer.  Located on the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania, Bethlehem began producing steel at the turn of the century, becoming America's largest shipbuilder by World War I.  During much of the twentieth century, Bethlehem was second only to Pittsburgh's U.S. Steel in production of steel.  Bankrupted in 2001, the remaining assets of Bethlehem Steel merged with Luxembourg headquartered, Arcelor/Mittel.  The above view has been obscured by new construction.

Railroads spurred the growth of America and continue to serve the nation in decreased numbers.  Diesel fueled locomotives began replacing the old steam-fired locomotives during the 1930's.  The undercarriage engineering of modern trains is unchanging. 

In the Summer 1999 Michigan Quarterly Review, photographer Camilo Jose Vergara made a proposal for this prominent American ruin to be converted into an abbey or monastery, adapting its rooftop, parking lots and rail yard for gardens and grazing for live stock. 

American architect, Robert A. M. Stern, rolls back the scrolls of time 2,600 years when borrowing elements from the Doric Order to adorn this East Hampton, New York cottage.  The Doric Column consists of a fluted shaft, smooth capital and square abacus.

The teal-glazed ex-Lazarus Department Store in Richland County, Ohio is a stark example of vacant modern architecture.  A 1973 photograph of this same view appears in Stephen Shore's 1982 classic, Uncommon Places.  Shoppers were drawn to suburban malls in the 1960s for their ample parking spaces, forcing many merchants on Main Street to close their shops or move to the mall.  Multilevel malls like this one have become an oddity as suburban consumers have taken to plaza-style shopping.

Multipurpose dwellings like these in New York City's Meatpacking District served as slaughterhouses and meat freezers for much of the twentieth century.  Today this corner houses the latest in high-end retail.

Oak Hill Cottage is an unspoiled Carpenter Gothic brick estate built in 1847 and the setting for the 1924 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Green Bay Tree, by Louis Bromfield.

Fallon.

Randall

Career day, P.S. 276 Canarsie, NY