A Drawing of NYC’s Chinatown

Myles Zhang, a PhD candidate in architectural history, created this drawing of Manhattan’s Chinatown several years ago.

Chinatown’s tenements are in the foreground, while the skyscraper canyons of Lower Manhattan rise above. This shows the area of Chinatown bordered by Bowery, Canal Street, and Columbus Park.

It took him around 60 hours to complete; he made a time lapse video of its creation:

There’s a very large scan of the image that’s worth looking at.

• architecture
• art
• cities
• Myles Zhang
• time lapse
• video

Historical Reconstruction of the 1915 Ford Model T Assembly Line

Using photos and films made in the 1910s and 1920s, Myles Zhang made this animated reconstruction of Ford’s Model T assembly line as it would have appeared circa 1915, from start (chassis assembly) to finish (driving it off the floor).

Ford was not the first, but his car and moving assembly line were certainly the most successful and memorable. After creating his version of the automobile in 1896, Ford moved workshops first to Mack Avenue and later to Piquette Avenue in Detroit. These first two factories were small-scale structures for limited car production. Only in 1913 at Ford’s third factory at Highland Park did mass-production begin on a truly large scale. As shown in this film, here Ford applied assembly line methods throughout the factory to all aspects of car production.

There’s also a virtual reality model of the factory you can fly around in.

• cars
• Ford
• Myles Zhang
• video