{"title":"Heat Consumed, Heat Wasted: Pipe Politics and the Migration of the Hearth in New York City, 1877–1882","authors":"Jia-Rui Weng","doi":"10.1162/thld_a_00783","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In 1932, on the fiftieth anniversary of New York steam service’s inauguration, New York Steam Corporation (NYSC) published a drawing to illustrate how steam was generated, distributed, and utilized in the city. On the spread reproduced in Figure 1, a boiler station stands against a generic apartment building. A blownup sectional perspective of the steam main connects these two buildings. Rather than lying underground as a bare pipe, the steam main is placed in a conduit constructed out of hollow tiles, mineral wool, and asbestos. At the apartment building, the pipes snaked beneath the floor and inside the wall, entering each room as private fixtures: radiators, gate valves, meters, and dispensers. Despite each room’s apparent independence, the steam pipes reveal an inadvertent collectivity. They not only connect the faceless tenants but also indicate a broader landscape of supply and service that go far beyond the apartment building’s enclosure.","PeriodicalId":40067,"journal":{"name":"Thresholds","volume":"1 1","pages":"214-225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Thresholds","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00783","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHITECTURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In 1932, on the fiftieth anniversary of New York steam service’s inauguration, New York Steam Corporation (NYSC) published a drawing to illustrate how steam was generated, distributed, and utilized in the city. On the spread reproduced in Figure 1, a boiler station stands against a generic apartment building. A blownup sectional perspective of the steam main connects these two buildings. Rather than lying underground as a bare pipe, the steam main is placed in a conduit constructed out of hollow tiles, mineral wool, and asbestos. At the apartment building, the pipes snaked beneath the floor and inside the wall, entering each room as private fixtures: radiators, gate valves, meters, and dispensers. Despite each room’s apparent independence, the steam pipes reveal an inadvertent collectivity. They not only connect the faceless tenants but also indicate a broader landscape of supply and service that go far beyond the apartment building’s enclosure.