Finally some terra cotta! Must’ve gone up yesterday or this morning.
You can see all the large number of different individual pieces needed to make up these podium sections.
Large photo dump
First level of the crown is “done”, composed of shear walls like its other mech floor counterparts lower down the building. The building should top out somewhere below the current location of the crane cab, so only a short way to go.
The terracotta, they’re all such intricate extrusions. there is definitely over 10 different extrusion dies that were used across the whole podium when everything is done.
Not like the old days when you picked something from a catalogue and stuck it all together.
@TKDV Does the manufacturer:
- Save those dies after the project is complete for a rainy day ( in case a section or two get damaged
- Store a few extras of each casting in the attic
- Keep the CAD designs on file and just make a new die on demand
- None of the above
That’s a good question. It will certainly differ from project to project, especially depending on how many dies are needed for each project.
I worked on a project that only used 2 dies. If the fabricator has room I believe they are stored (for if they are needed again as you mentioned) but for projects that use a large number of dies they are probably not kept for that long. I don’t quite recall how long it takes to manufacter the die itself.
There was a concrete topping out ceremony today, the rest of the crown will be steel.
Didn’t get to do a whole lot of exploring in NY (long story), but I did snap this from 59th St before heading to LGA
Come back soon!
On Flickr by Xzeyvion
Fifth is getting that corridor feeling. 
No steelwork going on yet for the crown, but the cladding around two windows on the base is mostly done and it looks great!
Steel related work probably wont begin until all the concrete formwork is removed from the top.
That cladding does look great. This kit-of-parts method of constructing these arched windows seems an efficient method: despite all those seams. A bit lego-like, but I like… 
Imaging the massive hauling & crane lifting work if they were done as ‘monolithic’ pieces - as done over at the other arched windowed building on William Street.
The windows casings at 520 5th may not be ’solid cast stone’ - but no one (but us) will know…. 
Here is a look at the SOLID cast stone done at 139 William street.
130 Williams took the easy way out and used mass produced concrete panels (they aren’t stone or cast stone, which is a subset of precast concrete), even using stone may have made the building look more elevated than the discolored multi section concrete panels they used.
The portions here would not be able to have been manufactured in one giant piece because terracotta can not be formed using such a method. This application wouldnt have looked good in one solid chunk either because the fragmenting of pieces makes it look more realistic (even though it’s already real) having it as one giant piece would make it look cheap.