Contrast the heavy-duty rooftop crane of the new 43-storey 5th & Columbia building to our west
and when tucked away, ready to pop up:
to what sufficed for Two Union Square to our northwest when it was built thirty years ago:
This is not a small boost. Why the order-of-magnitude increase in size? Architects?
Perhaps the company wanted a heavy-duty multipurpose crane. Since the ground-based luffing crane came down we’ve seen the crane lowering very large non-window-washing objects. The window-washing scaffold is also very large. It is L-shaped and appears to be of a sturdy construction, fitting around the northeast corner of the building, and possibly designed (I don’t know how) to hug the inward slope of the wall at that point.