Creative visions like this 1925 postcard of New York City are interesting for what they get right—and wrong—about the future.

The artist was right about the density of the city. But all the buildings are versions of the masonry-clad, barrier wall skyscrapers familiar at the time. There’s no anticipation of the glass curtain walls that characterize Manhattan a century later, or even of the cavity wall facades of the mid to late 1900s.

On the other hand, many buildings from the 1920s (and earlier) continue to serve tenants to this day. We know this because our office is in one of them (14 Wall Street, Trowbridge & Livingston, 1912) and because hundred-year-old buildings constitute a significant number of our projects.

The artist is also enamored of elevated tracks and highways, but they’re not popular today. In fact, we celebrate elevated structures that have been repurposed as parks—e.g. the Manhattan Highline and potentially the White Pot Junction in Queens, site of a SUPERSTRUCTURES project.

The airborne traffic depicted never came to pass either. Today, drones represent smaller versions of the flying machines that cloud the sky in this illustration (and are now assisting with facade inspections).

Thankfully, we’re not the business of predicting the future. But we do strive to stay on the leading edge of technology, so our building restoration solutions keep pace with the times.