We went to the city early on the day we were going to the theater, and went down to 14th street to visit a friend of Kathy's who has been in the hospital for a bit. While they were talking I was standing at the window looking south over lower Manhattan and looking for something to photograph, of course. This building is just across the street, and I was taken with how pretty the brick was with the white lintels over the windows. It grabbed my attention right away and so here you go!
4 comments:
The first thing about this photo that caught my eye was the roofing material. This building illustrates two different sections of EPDM (ethylene propylene diene terpolymer) Single Ply Rubber Membrane. The small section on the left is loose-laid and ballasted with river rock. The larger section on the right is shows EPDM rubber membrane that has been adhered to rigid insulation using rubber contact adhesive. Your blog post today brings back memories from the 1980's.
Primo: i love that you can spot this stuff from miles away... :-) You say it brings you back to the 1980's - does that mean that this membrane is an older type of membrane? What is the rigid isulation? Some kind of Styrofoam-like material? Like the pink stuff in Home Depot?
EPDM rubber membrane has been used for commercial roofing since the 1970's. While at Reeves, we got involved with this material and I was the Product Manager. In the beginning, it was profitable but then a couple of the big tire companies got involved (Firestone & Goodyear) and profits got squeezed to the point where it was not a good fit to the specialty nature of our overall business. As the manager, I had lots of fun starting the business and traveling throughout the Southeast training and supervising installations. A few years later, I recommended to management that we get out of the business because our production equipment (3 roll calendar) could not compete against the monster 4 roll calendars used by the tire companies. EPDM (black) rubber roofing membrane is still a very large part of the commercial flat roof market but has competition from other materials like Hypalon and thermoplastic PVC alloys, which can be made in light colors such as white or gray. My first installation was the Flanders Filter Company in North Carolina, my biggest job was the Birmingham Airport, and my most fun job was a high rise condominium on the beach in Destin, FL.
I like the contrast in design shapes - the rectangular white across pieces along the tops of the windows and the triangular shapes across the roofline. bsk
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