AOL News:
Retaining Wall
Collapses on New York City Highway; No Injuries, but Cars Buried After
Hillside Gives Way; Gab & Eti are Safe, But Preservation-L Listserv
Wiped Out
(May 13) - A 75-foot-high stone retaining wall
built in 1908 collapsed in a roaring avalanche onto the Henry Hudson Parkway
in Upper Manhattan yesterday afternoon. No one was believed killed or hurt,
but parked cars were buried and traffic in the region was thrown into bedlam
for the evening rush.
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I know this wall well,
having driven past it scores of Times on my way out of town - it's on the
northbound west side highway, just north of the GW bridge. Charles V.
Paterno built it in 1905-8 to enlarge the site for his wildly Rhinish
castle. Of course, everyone is scrambling to find original
drawings for this thing (which I have never seen, except a crude
cross-section published in the Times at the time) but I have examined
closely the photographs of the collapse.
The wall is laid in what I
would call random ashlar, big, VW-bug sized stones. The collapsed area
reveals walls which are, to my mind, rather thin construction, considering
that the fill (which has now spilled out onto the highway) is all
dirt. The walls seem to be only 4-8 feet thick, even near the
bottom.
I am sure that Signor
Paterno - who was a real estate developer - had the wall built to standard,
and of course it stood without problem for many years. But to my mind such a
wall - with loose fill behind it - should have been built like a dam, with
perhaps 45 degree slope on the inside face.
The important thing, of
course, is that Gab & Eti are safe. But how do others think about
retaining wall construction.
Christopher