Talk:21 West Street

A fact from 21 West Street appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 23 March 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that 21 West Street in New York City is possibly the first commercial building in the U.S. to have windows wrapping around the corners?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/21 West Street.

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by 97198 (talk) 13:18, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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... that New York City's 21 West Street was possibly the first commercial building in the U.S. to have windows wrapping around the corners? Source: Architectural Forum 1930
- ALT1:... that 21 West Street, built on filled land near the Hudson River, lacked a basement, a "decidedly rare feature" for New York City buildings? Source: NY Times 1930
- ALT2:... that 21 West Street, built as a speculative office development, was later converted to a residential building? Source: NPS p. 9, NY Times 1997

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Ai Kidosaki

5x expanded by Epicgenius (talk). Self-nominated at 01:45, 17 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Newness: The prose portion expanded from circa 630 to circa 9700 characters, and therefore increased over tenfold, on 17 February.
Length: Easily over 9000 characters, and there are no lengthy quotations.
Hook: Three are currently offered. The first of these interests me the most; and for now it's the only one I'll consider. (If somebody objects to it or if an "Alt" has a strong proponent, then I'll look at one or more of the alternatives.) It's sufficiently compact, and easy to understand. The relevant assertion is easy to find within the article. The assertion comes with three references (and also a note that elaborates on the assertion but in no way questions it). The references (and note) come directly after the sentence. The three references are: (i) an article published in the NYT in 1930 and available online via "Timesmachine"; (ii) a description by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, available as a PDF; (iii) a 1930 article within The Architectural Forum, again available as a (bulky) PDF. Being too cheap to subscribe to Timesmachine, I am unable to view the first of these. The NYCLPC description doesn't directly support it, but it does say that "The contemporary press noted" the fact. The specific source that it cites is an article in The Architectural Forum; there's not the slightest suggestion by the NYCLPC that the claim is inaccurate. The third: The position within this large PDF of pages 905–908 is a bit of a mystery, but it turns out to be the 67th of the 168 pages. Bruner writes on p.905 "This is probably the first commercial building in America to be so designed": The word "probably" may raise a flag, but of course no architect could have been omniscient. So yes, the claim is satisfactorily sourced.
Policy: Nothing about article or hook is problematic.

Cavils:

I almost concluded that Bruner's article was nowhere within the PDF that's linked to. After all, the PDF appears to go from page 111 to 232, and where would pages 905–908 fit within that. But yes, it is there. I wonder if it would be a good idea to provide an additional note assisting the reader in finding it.
I approve of what's currently note c, on the "fine distinction"; but if we take the trouble to say this, then I'd suggest adding the years for the two other buildings that the note mentions.
If US newspapers wish to put article titles, or parts of them, in FULL CAPITALS, that's their privilege; but when we present these titles, let's zap this. Therefore not "LATEST SKYSCRAPER FOR LOWER MANHATTAN; Thirty-one-Story Structure [blah blah]" but instead "Latest Skyscraper for Lower Manhattan; Thirty-one-Story Structure [blah blah]" (or similar) -- and of course the same for the other titles that appear in the references.
Do we really need to provide an ISSN for the NYT? I can't believe that anyone reading this article wouldn't know of the NYT, or that anyone not knowing of the NYT would have any idea of what to do with an ISSN. (Anyway, I doubt that rival publications share the same title.)

But more generally: The article is a pleasure to read. -- Hoary (talk) 13:46, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary: Thank you for the review. Good point on the PDF - yeah, I should have PDF page numbers on the Arch Forum cite. I've also turned the newspapers to lowercase; the uppercase titles happened when I auto-generated these cites in VisualEditor. However, I left the ISSNs for consistency with my other articles on NYC landmarks, as these cites were also generated with VisualEditor. epicgenius (talk) 14:41, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I added a word to ALT1 to reflect that this was only "probably" the case. epicgenius (talk) 14:45, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

[Cough] Actually, you added it to what we might call ALT0, and the word you use is "possibly". Thank you for the other elements of your response; the article is now even better. However, as for this element ... perhaps "possibly" was just a typo for "probably", but for whatever reason it's used, it makes the claim sound feeble -- which is unfortunate and, as the sources are confident enough, quite unnecessary. I suggest (Hoary (talk) 22:41, 17 February 2020 (UTC)) the following (or something similar ["earliest" rather than "first"?), and of course a parallel little change within the article itself:[reply]

ALT0a: ... that New York City's 21 West Street is possibly the first commercial building in the U.S. to have windows wrapping around the corners? Source: Architectural Forum 1930
- @Hoary: Your ALT0` works as well and is much better than my phrasing (I was trying to look for a synonym for probably). However, since you have proposed that hook, if we decided to go with this hook then another reviewer has to tick it off. It's unfortunate bureaucracy, but that's the rule. epicgenius (talk) 00:24, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Oh FFS. If I'd known that, I'd have made the suggestion on your talk page. (But I suppose that would be classed as "gaming the system".) Or of course I could have just kept mum. I could retract it, but you've gone and said that you prefer it. (And I have to say that I prefer it too.) Well, it's clear that I shouldn't have turned on the computer this morning! -- Hoary (talk) 00:35, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Hoary: No big deal, we've all done worse. Assuming ALT0a is fine, we just need to use this icon to ping a new reviewer: epicgenius (talk) 00:42, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Just to clarify, we need a new reviewer to take a look at ALT0a. epicgenius (talk) 00:42, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Approving ALT0a, and otherwise relying on Hoary's thorough review. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:29, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]