SH Archive Construction: Historic Building Facelift Purposes

[KD Archive]

I was not sure what to call this thread, so I stopped at - Historic Building Facelift Purposes. This Hotel Thread contributed to me asking this questions. May be together we could come up with a few possibilities.

Obviously, when we talk about a renovation type building facelift, the purposes are clear. But what about something like this here?

• Hotel New Netherland & Sherry Netherland Hotel
• Hotel New Netherland - Wikipedia
• The Sherry-Netherland - Wikipedia

​

It appears that officially the building on the left of razed in December 1926. In March of 1927 the building on the right was already up. That allows for about 4 months to demolish, clean up and build a new 560 foot tall building. The old one was 234 feet tall.

Hypothetically: Let's say that the building on the left was never fully demolished, and received a "facelift" after which it started to look like the building on the right.

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Question #1: What did the perpetrators gain by doing this?
Question #2: How can something like that be hidden from public knowledge?
Question #3: If they really demolished and rebuilt in under 4 months - is it possible? What time span would be realistic?

P.S. This is a general topic centered on the above questions. For specific investigative discussion please refer to the below thread:

• Hotel New Netherland & Sherry Netherland Hotel​

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[Felix Noille]

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Username: Felixnoille
Date: 2020-06-10 14:41:34
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Well, that's suspicions confirmed for me...

 

[DanFromMN]

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Username: DanfromMN
Date: 2020-06-10 17:23:04
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Well, I'm guessing that the picture on the left is from FAR longer in the past than were led to believe and that both buildings are built by the same, "pre our arrival", people.

Theres not that much to gain by saying they're both from the same 6 year period, other than just covering up the fact that the information wasn't destroyed before we found it

 

[Timeshifter]

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Username: Timeshifter
Date: 2020-06-10 18:03:29
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Could the later build be a shell, around the old facade? Similar to modern cladding techniques? It would still mean they completely added the tower 250 ft section in no time.

More probably, at least a few years between photos? Poor research (by the wiki folks) who do they think would believe it? (Yeh I know most would)

More likely a longer build, obscured for some reason.

Could this be one of those, 1 year could equate to 3 years in real time scenarios? Any other strange happenings same period ( probably lots)

Out of interest, when I saw the original building I immediately thought of this place n Liverpool, UK.

Albian House, White star building, constructed between 1896 and 1898, still standing....

 

[Archive]

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Username: jd755
Date: 2020-06-10 18:08:42
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Question #3: If they really demolished and rebuilt in under 4 months - is it possible?

Demolition in four months of a steel frame building of 17 floors I would say is doable with enough labour. Rebuilding in four months impossible no matter how much labour.

Question #1: What did the perpetrators gain by doing this?

A wider view.
Cities suck people off of the land thus depressing the book value of 'rural land' & crucially for the system of commerce make them dependent on the system alone for their lives. The co-dependency of living on the land is crushed. Financially wealthy people rely almost totally on financially impoverished people to supply them with their wants & needs. The impoverished people are totally dependent on the system. No, job, no income, no life. Cities keep going via continual expansion of their area, population & needs. Should any one of these falter the city fails.

By using land that once occupied by the mansion household & staff & replacing it with a multi room residential hotel significantly more people occupy the same area & require significantly more impoverished people to look after & supply them who in turn require all their living needs within the city limits including their accommodation.
With the madness of land ownership/title those holding land at the ever expanding edge of the city sell up voluntarily or under coercion & the monster keeps itself going.
As the once residential hotels residents see the area around them go downhill from what they are used to (& some inevitably die out)they relocate to newer hotels in better areas. The once residential hotel is now of little use as it is configured for the 'wrong' customer so it is either razed & built afresh or remodelled to cater for a greater number of less wealthy customers.
With each successive change more & more people are sucked into city life & the book value of the land holding increased exponentially.

This too me is the process which we see time & again on here shrouded in half truths, misdirections or outright lies by those who profit & who own & control the record. It doesn't explain everything but it does explain a lot.

EDIT to add these links
5th Avenue’s Millionaire Row
5th Avenue’s Millionaire Row 2

EDIT to add.
There si also the human ego to consider. Oneupmanship seems to become ever more important the more one falls into the ego personality. Friends become rivals very easily & just like two people bidding against each other for an item they both desire on e-bay the only upper limit to the cost is the depth of pockets.

And yet another angle I hadn't considere relevant in the United States but is very apparent over here, is the old money vs new money syndrome which according to the lady who wrote the linked article was rampant at the time.

Went looking to find the Astor thread in all of this & not sure if it belongs in this thread or not to be honest but on balance it does.
Not done with the Astors yet but a large amount of buying selling 'demolishing' 'remoddelling of buildings in New York went on in 1926. Be interesting to see if the same thing went on in other cities emulating New York.

 

[Revelinmusic]

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Username: revelinmusic
Date: 2020-06-10 19:16:05
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There are many old tall buildings that had many windows and rooms. What did the perpetrators gain by destroying many of these tall buildings. Resources and money could have been saved by just expanding the city outwards.

 

[Felix Noille]

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Username: Felixnoille
Date: 2020-06-11 10:08:41
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It's clear that after a few months the original has been replaced by something completely unrecognisable. One wonders what happened to the original owner - was there a financial transaction involved or was it a hostile takeover?

 

[Bunnyman]

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Username: Bunnyman
Date: 2020-06-11 10:54:08
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I have a few observations:
a. similarity evocation of emotion of "other worldly" dwellings;
b. change in the trinity pattern of windows to twins;
c. foundation/bottom part of newer building retains arch style
d. Top section of older building shows 3 protruding part middle section (about same height old one) of newer building shows 2 protruding sections
e. change from rounded to square styles

It is almost like many of the buildings that have been purposely destroyed or mutilated may have undergone this to subvert the harmonious vibrations that still seem to invoke a good feeling in most of us. Much of what we ended up with is squared and angled. Pleasing esthetics made way for utility. I cannot imagine that there would have been a need to raze them based on structural arguments.

 

[Archive]

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Username: esgee1
Date: 2020-06-12 04:45:31
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Could the later build be a shell, around the old facade? Similar to modern cladding techniques? It would still mean they completely added the tower 250 ft section in no time.

More probably, at least a few years between photos? Poor research (by the wiki folks) who do they think would believe it? (Yeh I know most would)

More likely a longer build, obscured for some reason.

Could this be one of those, 1 year could equate to 3 years in real time scenarios? Any other strange happenings same period ( probably lots)

Out of interest, when I saw the original building I immediately thought of this place n Liverpool, UK.

Albian House, White star building, constructed between 1896 and 1898, still standing....

View attachment 47205

Timeshifter, I think you're correct about the new building being an outer "shell, around the old facade". If you count the number of floors on the new building, above the bottom floor there are another 15 floors (this is the whole bottom rectangle of the new building. Just those floors plus the bottom floor are the same amount of floors all the way up to the top of the old building to where it says "HOTEL NETHERLAND" on the roof.

It also appears to me that the new building also sticks out more from the adjacent buildings, which would support the new building being an outer "shell, around the old facade". Whereas the older building is perfectly flush to adjacent buildings and not sticking out.

Interesting building, KD. Would like to find out if the new building being an outer "shell, around the old facade" is true or not. As for "tearing down" the old building and erecting a new one, styles change and perhaps new owners wanted something different. Maybe they needed more structural support for the newer top 326‬ feet of building and the outer shell build onto the current inner building structure was necessary in order to support it.

Just my thoughts. Cheers!

 

[Archive]

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Username: jd755
Date: 2020-06-12 05:41:47
Reaction Score: 2

Question #1: What did the perpetrators gain by doing this?
Question #2: How can something like that be hidden from public knowledge?
Question #3: If they really demolished and rebuilt in under 4 months - is it possible? What time span would be realistic?

P.S. This is a general topic centered on the above questions. For specific investigative discussion please refer to the below thread:
Hotel New Netherland & Sherry Netherland Hotel

Then there is the tax & insurance angles to consider.
I realise that more than likely the extremely wealthy are not the controllers in this reality however to keep the masses asleep & paying taxes and insurance, whilst buying life, they have to be see the weaalthy as taxpayers/insurance payers just like them
As today there are tax fiddles, loopholes, evasion, avoidance I'm sure such things were present in the United States when these buildings were being changed, built etc.
Perhaps there was a tax advantage to having something old made to appear totally new. Certainly the things that get written off to tax are in constant flux but maybe the apparently 'demolished building' re-emerging from scaffolding as a brand new building is a tax dodge.

There is also the technique of transferring capital tax free by moving it from company A to company B in the form of payment for work done by company B when in reality company A and company B are two shells so to speak without assets with the same 'family' owner.

I don't know how land taxes worked back then as in what they are based on but it would seem to me the bigeer capacity the building within the same footprint would generate a better return on the land tax so too speak simply because there are more people on the same footprint and as paying to live seems to be the norm in this mad world the more payers in the building the less proportion the land tax takes from the profits.

It is odd how so many of these hotels specifically were not run by their owners. Most seem to have been leased to other people to run so again to me there must be some advantage to the owner by doing this. Was it just the transfer of risk?

I haven't looked but today all corporations of any size lease all their assets from a charitable organisatin aka Trust of some sort with the trading/operating business entirely separate from the Trust which is a non trading entity. It's very tax efficient.

For example.
When a business suddenly closes down and then reappears in a different guise but carrying on essentially as before all that has happened is the Trust has seized its assest and left he operating business out to dry and debtors have nothing to pursue and the new operating business leases all its assests from the Trust.
The Trust is the primary lender and has first claim on anything the operating business uses to trade with and profits it earns. The operating business owns nothing & has no assets. Debts die with the operating company.
I wonder if this could be a reason why these buldings appear and disappear. They are operated as a business for sure but maybe there is a Trust behind them. As I say I haven't looked but suspect there is.

As for hiding in plain sight. Scaffolding with hessian/netting obscure all sorts. Been on both sides of such things & visually the goings on inside scaffolding are effectivey obscured, not hidden from outside eyes. However the hessian/hetting especially does something odd in my experience. Scaffolding itself does the same but to a lesser extet. The eyes and minds get used to seeing them and it is quickly forgotten how long they have been up.
In short it gets taken for granted far quicker than we seem to realise. If a 'labour dispute' stops work from going on all the better if one is actually recladdng & extending the old to make it appear new.
The labour refusing to work will find work elsewhere pretty damn quick so a new crew is hired after the 'dispute' so they will not be privy to what the first crew were doing thus further obscuring what is really going on. Seems far fetched but no more so than the claim of totall rebuild by the recorders of history.