Talk:B. Altman and Company Building

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 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:17, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

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B. Altman and Company Building

• ... that the B. Altman and Company Building (pictured) was the first major New York City store to move from Ladies Mile to Fifth Avenue? Source: White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot & Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 267
  • ALT1:... that the facade of the B. Altman and Company Building (pictured), erected in the 1900s, was designed to harmonize with the mansions that lined Fifth Avenue at the time? Source: White, Willensky, and Leadon p. 267
  • ALT2:... that the B. Altman and Company Building (pictured) was later used by the New York Public Library, a graduate school, and Oxford University Press? Source: White, Willensky, and Leadon p. 266

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Calvin Royal III

Created by Epicgenius (talk). Self-nominated at 15:08, 14 September 2020 (UTC).

• Long enough. New enough (Created 2020-09-12, modulo a pre-existing redirect). Earwig flags a bunch of things, but they're all either proper noun phrases which would be impractical to rephrase, or a direct quote which is properly cited. Never been on the front page. Every paragraph after the lede is referenced. All of the proposed hooks seem fine, but ALT0 is the hookiest of the three. I'll add, however, the even hookier:

• ALT3:... from the 1990s to the 2010s, you could browse for books where fashionable New York ladies used to browse for clothes? Source: Vulcan pays $93M for NYPL’s commercial condo at 188 Madison.

The image is CC-SA-3.0, appears in the article, but it's marginal at 100 x 100 px, especially since it's meant to illustrate the facade, which is barely visible at that size. It needs an alt-text in addition to the caption, which is just "(2007)". That's true whether or not it runs on DYK.

only because of the alt-text issue (and whether you want to consider ALT3). Everything else is good to go. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:58, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Thank you for the review. I've added alt text to that image, which I'd completely forgotten about. I think ALT3 could be all right, but I'm having trouble tracking down the precise date that the SIBL closed - it was probably this March due to COVID-19, but that's true of the whole network. Also, the sources don't mention ladies (or even fashionability) in particular, it's just that the store moved from the Ladies' Mile on 6th Avenue. How about this?

• ALT4:... from the 1990s to the 2010s, you could browse for books where fashionable New Yorkers used to browse for clothes? Source: Vulcan pays $93M for NYPL’s commercial condo at 188 Madison; White, Willensky and Leadon

In case that doesn't work, I would prefer ALT0, because like you said, it's the most interesting of the bunch. epicgenius (talk) 23:17, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

• In https://therealdeal.com/2016/12/28/vulcan-pays-93m-for-nypls-commercial-condo-at-188-madison/, it says, "The New York Public Library sold off a commercial condominium at its Midtown branch at 188 Madison Avenue to Seattle-based Vulcan Real Estate for $93 million, property records show", and that's dated "December 28, 2016". Isn't that good enough for the date? And, you could use https://charlestonmag.com/features/glamour_girl, "I remember hearing tales of horse-drawn carriages and fashionable ladies being escorted to the store by liveried doorman", but you'd have to work that into the article text somewhere. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:30, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
• Regarding the alt-text, my understanding is that screen readers will read both the alt-text and the caption, so they shouldn't duplicate each other. Maybe:

image_alt = The B. Altman & Company Building

caption = Seen in 2007 from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street

@Graham87 and RexxS: who know a lot more about this than I do, for confirmation. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:41, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Yep, sounds good to me. Graham87 04:25, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: yes, Roy, you have that exactly right. It doesn't matter if there is an overlap with the odd word or two, but too much duplication is simply annoyance for anyone using assistive technology. --RexxS (talk) 16:11, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

• I've updated the image_alt. We still haven't settled on the hook wording, but we've got a bunch of reasonable alternatives, so no reason to hold up the tick over that. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:23, 15 September 2020 (UTC)