E. V. Haughwout Building

With the Haughwout store in New York in 1857 by Daniel D. Badger ( 1806-1884 ) was a very forward-looking for the architectural history of New York buildings completed. This building is considered a forerunner of the later skyscrapers, because here two key innovations were applied immediately, without which no high-rise is conceivable: the cast iron and the elevator.

The five-storey building stands on the corner of Broadway / Broome Street ( department store EVHaughwout & Co.). The facade design by John P. Gaynor reaches for former tradition back to a model of European art history and clearly oriented to the stylistic principles of the Venetian Late Renaissance. But there were also significant improvements: First, all were equally high 92 windows not made of stone but of iron.

Cast iron

The prefabricated cast iron elements were the basic prerequisite is that you could construct a steel skeleton of high altitude, which then makes the other structural elements, floors, walls and facade parts could be installed. Only with stone as a material one would later height of the building can never reach. Thus, even the builders of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages had their difficulties, and in their church towers had to be drafted no habitable storeys.

Up to this time was used in New York for the most wooden ceiling joists, only in exceptional cases used to iron girders. With the cast iron structure means a was now found, which was extremely robust, which could be of any shape and any size of individual elements in the desired final shape could be welded or riveted together. This means that you preforming it elsewhere and was transported to the construction site in Parts with carts. Thus, a similar revolution was heralded as the ancient Romans with the invention of cement for the architecture.

The height of the houses was henceforth no longer a problem - but how do you get people and goods to the upper floors? In earlier times they worked in such cases with pulleys, but their capacity was of course eventually exhausted and this agent was used only for goods, barely human. Within buildings, the residents went down stairs since time immemorial, but hardly more than 10 to 20 floors each day.

The elevator

The mechanic Elisha Graves Otis invented in 1853 a safety catch device for elevator systems, the case of a breakage prevent a crash of the cab. These he led in May 1854 the New York Crystal Palace for the first time publicly before. The Haughwout Store was then the first building in which a passenger elevator was installed with fall protection.

This steam-powered elevator could be put into operation on 23 March 1857. Only after Thomas Alva Edison in 1882 a few hundred meters further on the first power station had created, the drive was gradually converted to electricity. This provides the basis for extremely high houses were created. Everything else was just a matter of dimension.

40.721805 - 73.999515Koordinaten: 40 ° 43 ' 18.5 "N, 73 ° 59' 58.3 " W

  • Building in Manhattan
378482
de