Philadelphia City Hall

I came upon some old photos from a 2007 trip to Philadelphia that were never posted. Dumping them for interested parties here, in the following categories:

• Center City
• City Hall, Observation Towers
• Chinatown
• Italian Market
• Old City
• South Center City neighborhoods
• South Street
• Rittenhouse Square
• Transit

The Tysons Central 123 station, under construction as part of the Silver Line:

Photo courtesy the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority
via email update of the Silver Line project.
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For years the world of architecture has been split between two opposing camps, one camp favoring traditional buildings and the other favoring modernist ones. While traditionalists prefer ornamented buildings with human-scale details, facade diversity, and proportionate bases and caps, the modernist crowd favors more sculptural buildings and claims that we should look forward rather than back, build “of our time”, and that the historicism favored by traditionalists is inappropriate in a 21st Century world. This battle between supporters of traditionalism and modernism has provoked fronts all across the blogosphere, from Jim Kunstler’s famous Eyesore of the Month to repeated threads on BeyondDC and Greater Greater Washington.

But I wonder, do the two positions have to conflict? The recent condo boom produced some interesting buildings that used clearly contemporary materials and styles, but followed essentially traditional principles. I’m curious what people think of such buildings. Pictured below are six buildings from the recent boom. All have facade detailing (if not exactly beaux arts level ornament) and a base-middle-top layout, but none of them are straight revivals of old styles; except for including brick as a material (often in a decidedly contemporary color), none of them appears historicist. These hybrid buildings are both “of our time” and traditionally-inspired.

What do people think of them? Thumbs up or thumbs down? Is this a middle ground we can all support, or a worst-case concession that satisfies nobody? Putting aside any lingering feelings about gentrification or the housing bubble and focusing just on the architecture, are these good buildings?

Click each picture to enlarge. Unless otherwise noted all photos come from Google Street View.

Source DC kaleidoscope

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.

Not worth saving

GGW reports that Federal Judge James Robertson has made it clear that the congregation of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist at 16th and I Streets does have the right to tear down their hideous building, despite protests from the city’s historic preservation group. The decision makes demolition likely, which means one of downtown’s most important streets will no longer be tarnished by a massive hulk of brutalist ugly.

I agree with GGW commenter Cavan who says “I hope this case smacks some sense back into the preservationist community”. Preservation in America picked up steam when buildings like the Third Church were originally being built. One of the core values of the movement was stopping such buildings. Now that those buildings are old, the preservation movement can’t bring itself to admit that it was never about saving the *old*, so much as it was about saving the *good*.

Let’s get back to saving the good and let the mistakes of the past be erased.

Michigan Central Depot

Train stations are my favorite kind of building, especially old ones. I love monumental civic architecture, and association with transit makes it all the better. Wherever I go I’m sure to check out the train station.

What a loss, then, that Detroit will soon tear down its once-magnificent main station. In virtually any other city in America this sort of thing stopped happening decades ago.

GM’s new thing. Definitely better than another SUV.

One of the most sage proverbs from the 20th Century goes something like this:

In the early days of the space program NASA was faced with the dilemma of providing astronauts with a pen that could write in the zero-gravity environment of space. To solve the problem, the agency spent millions of dollars developing a fancy space pen capable of writing in zero-g. The Soviets, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.

Now, I am 100% supportive of smaller-scale more energy efficient transport such as the ultra-minicar being produced by GM and Segway and pictured at right. I think it’s great that GM is experimenting with new types of vehicles more suited to the realities of the 21st Century. And granted, there is probably a legitimate market out there that would benefit tremendously from such a vehicle. For the vast majority of able-bodied Americans though, I have to ask the question: Why not just a ride a bike? We’ve even got motorized bikes these days for those who need a little help.

It guess the minicar offers a little more protection from the weather and keeps its driver from getting sweaty pedaling, but given that it remains open to the elements those improvements are marginal at best. Is this really a wheel that needs to be reinvented?

Virginia is slated to receive about $700 million in transportation funding through the federal stimulus package. According to a story in the Examiner, so far the Virginia Department of Transportation has allocated about $176 million of that money to various road and bridge projects around the Commonwealth. Of that $176 million however, only a little over $11 million is slated to go to projects in Northern Virginia, and of those projects, exactly zero are in the economic engine localities of Fairfax, Arlington or Alexandria.

Granted $176 million is only a fraction of the total VDOT will be spending as part of the stimulus, so NoVa could still get its fair share, but given Richmond’s history of ignoring what Northern Virginia wants, it seems worth pointing out that starving your economic engine is NOT a good way to stimulate the economy

Gehry’s shtick works best on non-buildings, like his concert pavilion in Chicago

The commission charged with building a plaza to honor President Dwight Eisenhower announced yesterday that it has selected Frank Gehry as architect, according to the Post. BeyondDC is on record for being no fan of starchitecture, but for two reasons in this case I’m willing to give Gehry a chance.

1. The memorial is supposed to be a plaza rather than a building, which (hopefully) guarantees we won’t be getting a 100-foot-tall wavy titanium carbon copy of every other recent Gehry building.
2. The location south of Independence Ave between 6th and 4th Streets SW is close to the Mall, but not directly on it. Actually it’s sort of the back-side. Unlike the location for the African American History and Culture Museum, even a disastrous design for the Eisenhower plaza won’t disrupt the Mall as a whole.

Given the program for this specific project, I’m curious to see what he will come up with.

The Anacostia streetcar will be delayed until 2012. According to the Post, the delay is due to planning associated with the modified route championed by DC Councilman Jim Graham.

As BeyondDC has noted before, Graham’s new route is legitimately better than the old one, but why did it take Mr. Graham so long to get involved in the project? If he’d brought forward his objections in 2005 when DDOT was going through its planning process and initially decided on a route, rather than in 2008 when it was preparing for final construction, we’d most likely still be on schedule now. If there’s any reason why Graham waited until the 11th hour, it hasn’t been made public.

PS: To be fair, Graham also championed the new 14th Street Circulator, which I heaped praise upon the other day.

Maryland is launching a new clean energy agency to help foster development of green technologies statewide. Woo hoo!

The headquarters for the agency will be a low-density auto-oriented office park. :facepalm: