Cranes in the Sky

Filed Under Category Construction, Editorial by Chris Gardner

It’s the wave of the future they say, the Potain Crane.

I had a blast photographing the delivery and erection of this Potain Crane on Chapel St. in ‘ole New Haven last week. The crane sits on a concrete pad in front of Street Hall, a second to another in front of the Swartout building. These cranes support the renovation of both buildings as part to the Yale University Art Gallery renovation and expansion that started with the Kahn building.

The crane erection was an amazing process that started at 7am with setting up the support crane (the yellow one with wheels), and finished at 4pm. Note that the crane I photographed sits low on a concrete pad and up the street the first crane is high on a box structure – so they are at different heights. This makes sense when you see at day end they test crossed the cranes. All folded up the Potain Crane stands up and unfolds all via remote control. I’ll resist a boys and toys comment, as the crane/process is actually rather elegant.

Check out the image gallery and you can see the process unfold. Click on the screen grab image.

Construction Crane Erection Gallery

Thanks to the kind folks at Dimeo for letting me on site. And of course Leslie the Yale Art Gallery for having out for the day.

Chris

April 23, 2010 | Comments Off Tags: Construction, Editorial

Gilead Room

Filed Under Category Architecture, Editorial, Photography of Art by Chris Gardner

A very rainy day, but it was dry inside a huge ex-Bayer building on Yale’s West Campus. This is the conservation and pre-assembly of the Gilead Room from the Young’s family house, from Gilead, Connecticut. Photographed this for a future published story on the West Campus complex. I’ll hopefully have more on that later this spring/summer.

The Art Gallery art handlers had just recently put all the main pieces together and removed cardboard that had been protecting the floor boards. You can see all the parts pre-assembly here (scroll down some, not my image so come back). The framed in room will be taken apart after some more conservation and reinstalled at the Yale Art Gallery in a year or two. The open wall sections and ceiling will be plastered in once reinstalled. Cool!