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  #44881  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 12:08 AM
wwmiv wwmiv is online now
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Originally Posted by JK47 View Post
The problem was that the techniques and knowledge was lost, along with most written records, when most of Rome burned between the 4th and 8th centuries. Not to mention the general reduction in literacy.

It wasn't until recently that we were able to determine the chemical composition. That said we still lack information on the ratios used to create the mixtures that comprise concrete...which is all the more difficult since...as said above...they tended to vary it as they went.
Decline in literacy between then and now?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/295333?...n_tab_contents

Literacy in the Roman provinces varied between five to ten percent, with some areas achieving up to twenty percent.

https://www1.umassd.edu/ir/resources...n/literacy.pdf

Literacy in the Middle Ages was not appreciably below that of the Roman era (using England as an example), even if there was a slight drop, and we've since risen far above that of the Roman era.

https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp#3

Literacy in the United States is around an order of magnitude above that.

Ergo, I doubt literacy really played into this loss of knowledge. Rather, nobody had access to the knowledge at all because it was burned and lost. And even if literacy declined, some people were still literate. If the records still existed, somebody literate would have been around to perpetuate the knowledge.
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  #44882  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 3:29 AM
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Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
Fly ash from coal power plants has many of the same chemical properties as the volcanic ash the Romans used, and it's used in quite a few concrete pours these days.

But there are always trade-offs; in our cold climate, concrete actually needs air pockets inside to absorb the expansion of ice crystals from moisture in cold weather. It's a bad thing for it to be too dense. Pozzolanic concrete mixes (like Roman concrete or concrete with fly ash) are denser than traditional Portland cement mixes, and they could have bad spalling problems if exposed to freeze/thaw cycles. That's obviously not a problem in Italy...
Very interesting.
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  #44883  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 5:20 AM
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Former bank building at 1965 N Milwaukee Ave (former Cole bank) has a permit to make part of it into a restaurant with bar and "interactive game rooms." Owner on the permit is one of the founders of Cards Against Humanity. Anybody have any idea of what he's planning with that one?
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  #44884  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 10:48 AM
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Originally Posted by Busy Bee View Post
Very interesting.
No doubt. Thanks gents.
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  #44885  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 1:13 PM
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Over the months I pass by this site hoping that construction has started. Yesterday it’s still being used for Cubs parking.

Really would be a bummer if this project has hit some sort of snag....East Lakeview is already getting pummeled with demolitions for the Belmont flyover project...
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  #44886  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 2:11 PM
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Originally Posted by the urban politician View Post
Over the months I pass by this site hoping that construction has started. Yesterday it’s still being used for Cubs parking.

Really would be a bummer if this project has hit some sort of snag....East Lakeview is already getting pummeled with demolitions for the Belmont flyover project...
This... and in general it may take a decade for the Wrigley/East Lakeview area to recover from the scars of the flyover.
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  #44887  
Old Posted May 11, 2019, 4:35 PM
west-town-brad west-town-brad is offline
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Originally Posted by marothisu View Post
Former bank building at 1965 N Milwaukee Ave (former Cole bank) has a permit to make part of it into a restaurant with bar and "interactive game rooms." Owner on the permit is one of the founders of Cards Against Humanity. Anybody have any idea of what he's planning with that one?
this is the margie's candies building - will have 20 apartments plus various retail on the first floor. brewery and a coffee shop have been mentioned in the press. the whole thing has been "under construction" on and off for at least 2 years.
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  #44888  
Old Posted May 12, 2019, 2:14 AM
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  #44889  
Old Posted May 12, 2019, 3:48 AM
LouisVanDerWright LouisVanDerWright is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu View Post
Former bank building at 1965 N Milwaukee Ave (former Cole bank) has a permit to make part of it into a restaurant with bar and "interactive game rooms." Owner on the permit is one of the founders of Cards Against Humanity. Anybody have any idea of what he's planning with that one?
Yes Marz brewing is opening a tap room there.
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  #44890  
Old Posted May 12, 2019, 11:13 AM
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  #44891  
Old Posted May 12, 2019, 12:20 PM
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  #44892  
Old Posted May 12, 2019, 1:37 PM
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  #44893  
Old Posted May 12, 2019, 1:58 PM
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  #44894  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 1:52 AM
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  #44895  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 2:12 PM
Baronvonellis Baronvonellis is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
Fly ash from coal power plants has many of the same chemical properties as the volcanic ash the Romans used, and it's used in quite a few concrete pours these days.

But there are always trade-offs; in our cold climate, concrete actually needs air pockets inside to absorb the expansion of ice crystals from moisture in cold weather. It's a bad thing for it to be too dense. Pozzolanic concrete mixes (like Roman concrete or concrete with fly ash) are denser than traditional Portland cement mixes, and they could have bad spalling problems if exposed to freeze/thaw cycles. That's obviously not a problem in Italy...
Freezing wasn't a problem in Southern Italy, but the Roman empire extended into northern Europe where it freezes and thaws.

Also, the eastern half of the Roman Empire continued uninterrupted till 1453, so it wasn't like the knowledge would have been lost when Rome was sacked in 476. The empire continued in the east the same as it had been with the same knowledge until the Renaissance, and had frequent trade and contact with Venice for example.
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  #44896  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 3:33 PM
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Originally Posted by Baronvonellis View Post
Freezing wasn't a problem in Southern Italy, but the Roman empire extended into northern Europe where it freezes and thaws.

Also, the eastern half of the Roman Empire continued uninterrupted till 1453, so it wasn't like the knowledge would have been lost when Rome was sacked in 476. The empire continued in the east the same as it had been with the same knowledge until the Renaissance, and had frequent trade and contact with Venice for example.
Not to get too far off-topic but the Roman Empire was pretty cosmopolitan and readily adapted to local building traditions in most cases. Also, the concrete recipe relied on volcanic ash, which was plentiful in Italy but not so much in the northern reaches of the Empire. Even today it's cost-prohibitive to transport raw building materials over long distances, I can't imagine the Romans had an easier time of it. They could transport ash by ship, so you would see Roman concrete in the Mediterranean basin but not in Germany.
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  #44897  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 3:34 PM
LouisVanDerWright LouisVanDerWright is offline
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Originally Posted by wwmiv View Post
Ergo, I doubt literacy really played into this loss of knowledge. Rather, nobody had access to the knowledge at all because it was burned and lost. And even if literacy declined, some people were still literate. If the records still existed, somebody literate would have been around to perpetuate the knowledge.
It's much more likely that this information was lost because the skilled trades that supported it evaporated. A ton of human culture (i.e. knowledge) is passed down by imitation. It's not like the Romans had a ton of literate slaves who were reading an IKEA instruction manual on how to build a concrete aquaduct. There may have been some degree of written knowledge of the process, but the Romans didn't document things in quite the same way as we do in the post-enlightenment era of scientific theory which is probably why their fairly advanced civilization never progressed into an industrial revolution.

Most of what the Romans did write was chronicling of things. It was "This is what I, Julius Ceasar did on this glorious campaign against Gaul" or "on the fourteenth day of July Antonius the merchant delivered 5,000 amphorae of olive oil to my warehouses in exchange for 2000 Denari". Not so much "I performed an experiment of 10 mixtures of cement and here are my findings".

Much of what they knew about construction was learned from imitating the Greeks and improving on it. Europe also forgot how to build arches for a few hundred years and that's despite the Romans leaving standing examples of them all over the place. The real loss of knowledge wasn't the burning of texts, it was the disruption of the skilled trade base that made the construction and supervision of such things possible. If you stop building with cement for even 50 years, you now have a huge knowledge gap. The best example of this is our own era. We built with ancient masonry techniques right up until (and to limited extent after) WWII. Now a days that knowledge is almost extinct save for a few extreme specialists. The systems we build with today are designed to imitate the aesthetics of the old ways, but functionally modern reenforced masonry is nothing like hand hewn brick and stone masonry.

To further that, given the less restrictive nature of today's methods, there's a whole range of knowledge and skill that are already gone. The old designs of historic masonry aren't entirely aesthetic, they were functional too. If you look closely at an old 2 flat or masonry building, you will see the repeating rows of stone sills or projections aren't just there to be pretty, they are placed in a very careful manner to repel water from the facade. Every little notch or finial or dowel or bracket or sill collects and kicks water in a specific way. There's probably a handful of humans on earth that still understand how to actually design and construct (let alone do it with their own hands) such things, let alone enough of them to truly revive that knowledge should modern society degrade to the point where factories are no longer turning out rebar and extruded brick to build modern style buildings.

The same thing happened with Rome, everyone was happily doing their job as a cog in the machine. Then someone threw a monkey wrench in the gears and enough cogs broke or were thrown from the wreckage of the machine that trying to put even a small portion of it (like say the exact cement mix) back together again was nearly impossible.
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  #44898  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 7:03 PM
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Looking at the new RPM on the River I am wondering how much those floating island/walkways the city put in to the connect the south Riverwalk sections cost.

I wonder if there has been any thought by the private owners along the north side of the main branch to buy them and connect them to make their own continuous sections.
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  #44899  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 7:39 PM
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Originally Posted by nomarandlee View Post
Looking at the new RPM on the River I am wondering how much those floating island/walkways the city put in to the connect the south Riverwalk sections cost.

I wonder if there has been any thought by the private owners along the north side of the main branch to buy them and connect them to make their own continuous sections.

The issue with the north bank is that building out into the waterway to create floating walkways, as was done on the south bank, will further narrow the shipping channel. The build-out of the south bank required input, review, and approval from federal agencies. It also required an Act of Congress to modify the River and Harbors Act of 1899.
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  #44900  
Old Posted May 13, 2019, 8:16 PM
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Originally Posted by nomarandlee View Post
Looking at the new RPM on the River I am wondering how much those floating island/walkways the city put in to the connect the south Riverwalk sections cost.

I wonder if there has been any thought by the private owners along the north side of the main branch to buy them and connect them to make their own continuous sections.
They don't float, they are on very significant pilings (that replace the old wooden bumper piles).

RPM is a text book case of F you, I want mine. The new plan cuts the pathway, heavily used path, along the north bank of the river. It is going to kill the foot traffic that helped make 320 bar (next door) a hit.

They cold have done like the restaurant at Marina City, which co-exists nicely with the river path, but instead ripped out the stairs and put up a railing to block pedestrian traffic.
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