[HN Gopher] The Leaning Tower of New York
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The Leaning Tower of New York
Author : danso
Score : 80 points
Date : 2025-02-04 14:28 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| Willingham wrote:
| https://archive.is/GVcHb
| AndrewSwift wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/161_Maiden_Lane
| thisismytest wrote:
| Has any skyscraper actually just tipped over?
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Not that I can see, but the Citicorp Center in NYC could have
| if not for emergency actions that were taken
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_cr...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _A skyscraper that could have toppled over in the wind
| (1995)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37684604 - Sep
| 2023 (21 comments)
| dieselgate wrote:
| The whole welding vs bolting consideration is what's most
| interesting to me. I'm still in awe the space needle is 100%
| bolted
| greggsy wrote:
| Weiguan Jinlong is the best example, assuming we consider 17
| stories to be a skyscraper.
|
| https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/02/19/...
| crznp wrote:
| Are you not counting the Surfside (Miami) condo collapse?
|
| Also since it talked about the leaning tower of Pisa: the Civic
| tower in Pavia (1989) and original Campanile in Venice (1902),
| probably more examples like that.
| acaloiar wrote:
| At 12 floors, the Champlain Towers South in Surfside would
| generally not be considered a skyscraper.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Approximately the same size of residential structure, a condo
| tower in Islamabad Pakistan collapsed in an earthquake in
| 2005. The earthquake didn't collapse any other condos in the
| same city, it wasn't an _extremely_ severe one, the fault was
| with deficiencies in the structural engineering and
| construction.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=margalla+towers+islamabad+co.
| ..
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Little trivia about... The other famous leaning tower. Pisa has a
| very soft soil, and there are other 2 leaning bell towers. One is
| even more tilted than the tower of Pisa. Although much smaller,
| its tilt is quite strong imho.
|
| https://www.pisatoday.it/cronaca/torri-pendenti-pisa.html
|
| The cathedral of Pisa is slightly leaning as well. If you look at
| the base just above the steps on its side facing the lawm, you
| can see the bricks are misaligned
| dieselgate wrote:
| Cookie consent in Italian threw me a bit. Accetta!?
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Accetta means accept. You can visit in incognito if you don't
| want to retain cookies
| ipnon wrote:
| This building is so perfectly at the Dyatlov threshold it will
| never be demolished. So much money has been invested, a brutal
| court battle, PR disaster for the city government, but despite
| all that it's so _nearly_ close to be salvageable that we will
| keep seeing this same story for another 10 or 20 years before
| someone realizes it should have been demolished in the 2010s.
| mizzao wrote:
| What is the Dyatlov threshold?
| MathiasPius wrote:
| I think it is a reference to the Chernobyl mini-series, where
| the Dyatlov character responds to the news of the level of
| radioactive contamination as "Not great, not terrible",
| unaware that their measuring equipment is actually maxed out,
| hiding the true scale of the problem.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| The Chernobyl mini-series is highly recommended. It is a
| classic example of how arrogance and stupidity are closely
| related. (Where stupidity is defines as knowing the correct
| thing to do, but ignoring the facts or available
| infomation.)
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Just keep in mind that it portrays a lot of the
| characters in a cartoonish way.
| Neikius wrote:
| Isn't the series very dramatized and quite inaccurate
| compared to the actual history?
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| If anyone watches a TV show with the assumption that they
| are getting an accurate view of history, then I wish them
| luck in life, since they will probably need it.
| lores wrote:
| That particular series was presented with very heavy
| emphasis on how "accurate" it was to real events, though,
| and many, many people thought it a documentary.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Sounds like Millenium Tower in SF
|
| https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/series/millennium-...
| dhosek wrote:
| Mentioned in the article
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Mentioned. It's "Millennium" for those trying to find it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| _Abandoned - 1 Seaport (New York 's Leaning Tower)_ -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_8lrUPaLIY - Feb 2024
|
| > Rising 60 stories along the East River of Manhattan, 1 Seaport
| at 161 Maiden Lane, was a luxury condo tower poised to become
| another iconic real estate venture in the city. However, after
| major construction mistakes were made, the tower and its owners
| entered a deep hole of financial turmoil, litigation and failed
| promises. All of this has left a once $400 million condo tower,
| completely abandoned in one of the densest cities on earth, now
| tilting precariously to one side. This is New York's leaning,
| abandoned condo tower.
| hnax wrote:
| FYI: The Old (or Skew) Jan Cathedral in Delft, Netherlands
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oude_Kerk_(Delft)) is off by
| slightly less than 2 meters. As it was built adjacent to a canal,
| and pile-driving technology didn't exists in the 14th century, it
| was built on layers of wood and cow skins that started rotting
| already during its building phase, causing the tower to lean from
| the get go -- curiously, its four pinnacle towers are straight
| up. The church houses Holland's biggest bell (the Bourdon at 9
| metric ton) which, to reduce vibration and further leaning, is
| only rung at special occasions re the royal Orange family (births
| and deaths). Holland's painter Johannes Vermeer also used to be
| buried there -- because of excessive bad small all graves were
| cleared late 19th century and dumped in a mass grave some place
| nobody knows. To the satisfying of many a tourist, an impressive
| grave-like commemoration stone for Vermeer was installed some
| years ago.
| jader201 wrote:
| _> off by slightly less than 2 meters_
|
| For that to be meaningful, you need the height as well, which
| is 75 meters (mentioned in the article).
|
| So about 1.5 degrees off center.
|
| (Just sharing because I was curious.)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The process promised to save the company six million dollars
|
| What an absurd case of penny pinching.
| yellowbeard wrote:
| That was also my immediate thought. However, what was the
| chance that the method they did use would end up not working?
| If sufficiently low, from an EV perspective, perhaps they made
| the right choice? Also the article isn't clear to what extent
| the lean is responsible for the building not being finished.
| roughly wrote:
| > If sufficiently low, from an EV perspective, perhaps they
| made the right choice?
|
| They made the wrong choice. The thing about statistical
| probability is there's eventually a right answer - a 1 in X
| chance collapses into an outcome. They may have made a
| defensible choice given what they knew at the time, but we
| now know it was the wrong one.
|
| (That said, I doubt the choice was a good one at the time,
| either. Wikipedia notes the expected construction budget at
| $273M, so for ~2% of the cost of the project, they sank the
| whole thing.)
| ecocentrik wrote:
| You think they could sell a single unit in a tilted highrise?
| I don't see how risking your entire investment to save a few
| million with any significant chance of total failure could be
| +EV.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| As someone in the medical device field, the concept of
| marketing/selling something before it exists is wild,
| explicitly illegal in the USA per the FDA. But here people have
| written checks for $400k off a sketch of a building. This
| causes 2 things:
|
| 1)enormous pressure to "ship it" on a less-than-ideal timeline.
|
| 2)the bean-counters' perspective gets twisted since they got
| the "profits" up front, every additional dollar put into the
| building feels like it's lost out of their pocket as opposed to
| the required investment to build the product.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The NYC ferry terminal on the east side of the financial district
| has a great view of this, and an even better view from the top
| deck of the ferry slightly out in the river when it gets going.
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| Assuming the neighbor to the north gave up air rights, could this
| be corrected with guy wires planted in the park one block away?
|
| Makes me think a kerbal citybuilder game would be fun.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| The article makes it sound like there is nothing to correct.
| The structure is crooked, but sound.
|
| You can build a house around it.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| i wonder.. what's the average fate/age of such abandoned mega-
| buildings? Does anyone care to blow them up, or just await them
| to fall? i guess it's depending on country, and tempora&mores..
|
| There are quite a few (not that high but no-less-concrete-in-
| them) socialistic-unfinisheds still staying - 30years+ already -
| around here.. with various excuses for not demolishing, (like,
| it's expensive!). Some are in middle of nowhere - fine for them,
| but others are in the center of a city and still..
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(page generated 2025-02-08 23:01 UTC)