Talk:American Bank Note Company Printing Plant

Photos needed

• Tower of building
• Details of windows
• Landmark plaque
• Wildcat sign
• BAAD! sign
• Sunshine sign
• Sunnyslope Mansion
• Printer's Park
• South Bronx Greenway

GA suggestions

As discussed at my talk page, I will leave some detailed comments about Good Article status soon. First thing I noticed, though, is that this lacks a centralized description of the building design (given that this is an article about the plant, I would expect at least a paragraph or two). I see a bit of this description in "Pre-construction planning" and "Post construction", but these should be centralized.

I also see a few single-sentence paragraphs. While not technically against GA guidelines, these are not considered optimal and should probably be combined with longer paragraphs. Regarding coverage, some of these paragraphs may be expanded a bit, namely the "Relocation" section which doesn't explain too much about why the relocation took place.

The "history" section reads more like a pre-history or a context section, so it can probably be renamed as such.

In the references section, we should try to avoid all caps. Also, since the LPC reports are multi-page reports, page numbers should be used, whether through Template:Rp or WP:SFN. epicgenius (talk) 02:15, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Epicgenius, OK, I'm done with the major hacking. I pared down the fluffy stuff that wasn't really about the building, and mostly duplicated from other articles. It all reads a lot tighter now.

Tomorrow, I'll start looking in detail at the references. There's one that I know of that's 404's now, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. And there's a bunch that aren't WP:RS; they were good enough for the original DYK review, but will need to be fixed up for GA. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:15, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Epicgenius, Oh, and yeah, this really annoys me. I'm so tempted to replace it with the censored version.

Not sure how the GA reviewer would like that, though. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:19, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, if we removed the censorship comment then it should be OK. I find it funny, but it's not really encyclopedic. A similar comparison would be the Eiffel Tower at night being replaced with "blacked out because of France's stupid freedom of panorama laws" because, believe it or not, freedom of panorama doesn't exist there. But I digress...

Anyway, here are some more suggestions. You may want to standardize the references, such as the NY Times sources. I agree that better sources need to be found, preferably more secondary sources. If you are citing the LPC ref, I recommend adding page numbers. However, reviewers are not consistent on this issue, and some of my earliest good articles received that status even though the multi-page documents didn't have page numbers.

Also, have you considered the suggestions about the "history" and "design" sections that I mentioned above? I don't see this as a big deal but a reviewer might. epicgenius (talk) 19:39, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Epicgenius, what makes the plaque thing so annoying is I had a back and forth with somebody from the landmarks commission, who consulted with their legal folks, and came with, essentially, "Of course it's OK, we want people to take pictures of our plaques, that's what they're there for". But, I couldn't get them to generate the right wording to satisfy the OTRS people, and eventually I gave up. No, I'm not seriously suggesting we use that version.

I haven't figured out where I am on the "history" section title yet. There's no rush.

Unclear what you mean by, "standardize the references"? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:56, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

• @RoySmith: Not sure what to say about the plaques. Since the text is copyrighted, the organization itself should give explicit permission to the OTRS team to make exemptions for plaques.
• Take your time with the History section title. All my comments are just suggestions.
• By "standardize the references", each reference should have a consistent style of publisher/work attributes. E.g. refs 6 and 7 have different "work" attributes:

Bellafante, Ginia (January 30, 2015). "Programs and Promises Haven't Banished Poverty in a Bronx Neighborhood". nytimes.com. Retrieved February 3, 2018.

Forero, Juan (2000-08-23). "No Longer A War Zone, Hunts Point Gains Status; New Services Arrive As City Improvements Lift Bronx Community". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-02-18.

In these examples, you should either include ISSN's on all NY Times refs or don't include them at all, and you should spell the {{{work}}} out as The New York Times. There are other examples as well, such as the LPC references. epicgenius (talk) 20:06, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Yup. These days I let citoid worry about that stuff, but most of this was before I was using it. I'll attack all that in my next pass. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 21:26, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Review, phase 2

@Epicgenius: I've done a bunch more work on this. I did a bunch of shuffling material around to get it in a more coherent order and eliminate duplicated material, and also trimmed down a lot of material that was only vaguely related to the main topic. Could I impose on you to take another quick look, and then I think it's ready to ship off for GA review. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:38, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, no problem. I can take a look shortly. If I find any minor issues I'll make some changes, but I'll list any major issues on this talk page. epicgenius (talk) 16:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I made a few changes for flow and style. Here are some of the issues that jumped out at me, on a first read:

• By 1908, the estate had passed into the hands of a George F. Johnson (possibly the businessman George F. Johnson). - needs citation
• Although incandescent lighting had been available for 30 years, modern tungsten lamps were a new invention at the time. - also needs citation
• The placement and wording of the sentence All of the above described structures are part of the landmark designation can be improved. I think it may be mentioned earlier on in the section.
• In some places, the plant is referred to as a single building. In others, multiple buildings are mentioned.

I'll go over it again soon. epicgenius (talk) 18:59, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

These are what jumped out at me at first.

• Wow, I'm glad I asked. I know I had read the bit about the incandescent lighting somewhere, but in my searching to find which reference that was in, I found The Edison Monthly, which I had previously not known about. It's an awesome new source, with some PD photos. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:19, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Another editor (off-wiki) has suggested that the gallery might need a little bit of context. They also said that the lead is a little off. Otherwise, it looks good. epicgenius (talk) 23:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Broken references

• https://www.nycommunitytrust.org/

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:American Bank Note Company Printing Plant/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vami IV (talk · contribs) 16:48, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Opening statement

In reviews I conduct, I may make small copyedits. These will only be limited to spelling and punctuation (removal of double spaces and such). I will only make substantive edits that change the flow and structure of the prose if I previously suggested and it is necessary. For replying to Reviewer comment, please use  Done,  Fixed,  Added,  Not done,  Doing..., or  Removed, followed by any comment you'd like to make. I will be crossing out my comments as they are redressed, and only mine. A detailed, section-by-section review will follow. —♠Vami_IV†♠ 16:48, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

As this the first of the reviewee's articles that I have reviewed, they should note that I am a grammar pendant and will nitpick in the interest of prose quality. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 16:48, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Vami IV, I believe you meant pedant? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:00, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Oh, balls. I really kissed the donkey there. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 17:24, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Prose

• American Bank Note had a capitalization of $10,000,000 The link to capitalization goes to capitalization when it looks like it ought to go to Market capitalization.  Done
• Move It was expected that the Trinity Place plant would be sold. into the first paragraph and combined Paragraphs 2 and 3.  Done
• driven, a century later, by Delete these commas.  Done
• No discussion of the plan is had until the plans get changed in "Design changes".  Fixed
• Combine "Plant description" and "Landmarked buildings" into the former section. They do the same thing, which is discuss the plant's grounds and contents.

I've deleted the "Landmarked buildings" sub-section heading, to let the two sections flow together. I'm not sure if that's what you had in mind, or some more major reorganization of the text. I'll hold off marking this done until I hear from you on that. One of the things I've struggled with over the many iterations of this article is getting a clean separation between, "This is what is here now" vs "This is the history of how the plant evolved over time".

Take a tour-guide approach, describing the grounds and brief histories of the buildings as you come to and describe them, if you have it. With the article's construction, though, I'd keep history in this section to a minimum; have it be purely architectural, like refits and such. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 19:10, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

OK, I've made some progress here. I've rearranged this to be a sub-section for each building. There's still room for improvement, but this is working better than what I had earlier. Your tour-guide suggestion was a good one.  Done -- RoySmith (talk) 00:47, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

• The last two citations in "Lafayette wing" can be combined, since they're from the same source and both reference page 7.  Done
• Citation [21]:4 is repeated without cause in "North building"  Done
• Same for "Other buildings" with [21]:5.  Done
• Again with [24]:304 in the last two sentences of "Engraving and counterfeiting departments".  Done

Some of the above may have been caused by how text got re-arranged over time, but more likely its just that I've tended to the style of having a citation for every sentence. I would appreciate your general comments on that; what's the right balance between too few citations and too many? I see I've got the same thing in Barretto wing; I used 21:4 in two places, but with an uncited sentence between them. Would it be better to delete the first one there as well? -- RoySmith (talk) 12:55, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

• Citations follow passages of text derived from a certain reference; they should not be interrupted unless there is a direct quotation made in the text from the source. Another exception is if one sentence is just from one reference, but the next is from that one and another one, stick another of the first citation on the end of that along with the new one, too. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 18:28, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

• Another question; somewhere I remember reading that the lead section is supposed to be no longer than 3 or 4 paragraphs. In the latest round of editing, I moved some material from the "Site description" section up into the lead, growing that to 5 paragraphs. I think the lead reads well at this point, so I'm assuming this is an WP:IAR kind of thing? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
  • The moved material is a bit detailed for the lead IMO but otherwise it's fine. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 18:28, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
• Yet another question. I'm unhappy with the placement of images. I think they're all useful images and don't want to lose any, but there's so many it's difficult to get them properly tied to the sections they pertain to. In some cases, I solved this by combining two related images with {{multiple images}}, but I'm still not satisfied. Suggestions? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Not much that can be done, unfortunately, but adding more text to pad out the length. Though, some sections are so short that you could move some of the larger images to the left, between sections in the source code, to push them around. Be careful about that, though. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 18:28, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
• @Vami IV: not sure if you're waiting for me to do something? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
• @Vami IV: sorry to be a pest here, but are you waiting for me to do something, or is there some response I owe you that I've missed? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:06, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Post-Bank Note

• Title should be sentence-case.

You're suggesting "Post bank note"? But, isn't Bank Note a proper noun, and thus capitalized regardless of where it appears?

• Could you combine the last sentence of the first paragraph with the first and second of the second paragraph?

I'm not following this. The first paragraph is about what happened in 1984, when ABN still owned the building. The second paragraph is all about what happened during the time Cahn and Blauner owned the building. I don't see how it makes sense to combine these.

• This caused a number of controversies with community organizations. Can you expand on this?

Not trying to be difficult here, but I don't understand this either. The next two paragraphs go into detail about two controversies. I've changed the period into a colon to indicate there's more following, but not sure that's what you were looking for.

Nevermind. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 09:53, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

• The Real Deal describes The Real Deal should be italicized, since it's a magazine.  Done

GA progress

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Genericusername57, Sailing moose, and Epicgenius for helpful reviews and assistance prior to officially submitting this for GA. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:59, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, you're welcome. Even though this hasn't been promoted yet, congratulations on your great work on this page. epicgenius (talk) 01:01, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Haha, of course you were involved here, Epic. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 04:16, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Some additional links

• Heinz, W. C. (April 8, 1961). "The Mysterious Money Factory". The Saturday Evening Post. Vol. 234, no. 14. pp. 33, 70–72. ISSN 0048-9239. Retrieved November 28, 2023 – via The Wikipedia Library.
• "American Bank Note Building, Hunt's Point – Forgotten New York". Forgotten New York. November 23, 2015. Archived from the original on 8 February 2018. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
• Ruby, Gred D. (November 27, 2018). "Sherlock Holmes and the American Bank Note Company Mystery". The Fourth Garrideb - Numismatics of Sherlock Holmes. Archived from the original on 22 February 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
• "The Story of American Bank Note Company". Banknote World. 2020-12-23. Retrieved 2023-09-25.

RoySmith (talk) 01:01, 6 January 2024 (UTC)