Author Archives: David Brussat

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About David Brussat

This blog was begun in 2009 as a feature of the Providence Journal, where I was on the editorial board and wrote a weekly column of architecture criticism for three decades. Architecture Here and There fights the style wars for classical architecture and against modern architecture, no holds barred. History Press asked me to write and in August 2017 published my first book, "Lost Providence." I am now writing my second book. My freelance writing on architecture and other topics addresses issues of design and culture locally and globally. I am a member of the board of the New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which bestowed an Arthur Ross Award on me in 2002. I work from Providence, R.I., where I live with my wife Victoria, my son Billy and our cat Gato. If you would like to employ my writing and editing to improve your work, please email me at my consultancy, dbrussat@gmail.com, or call 401.351.0457. Testimonial: "Your work is so wonderful - you now enter my mind and write what I would have written." - Nikos Salingaros, mathematician at the University of Texas, architectural theorist and author of many books.

Lord Jim’s “Skeffonomics”

Last Friday, when the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission bowed to pressure and let new PawSox owners James Skeffington and Larry Lucchino address the commissioners in public, the wheels of cynicism started spinning furiously. On Monday, when I arrived at the … Continue reading

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Bless the landscape architect

Julie Iovine, the Wall Street Journal’s post-Huxtable architecture critic, has written “The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley.” Her piece on an exhibition of the work of the late Kiley, who died in 2004, earns a place in my collection … Continue reading

Posted in Architects, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Landscape Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

In the Union Trust we trust

To celebrate the newly announced plan by Vince Geoffroy, the developer of the ProvidenceG project, to install 60 luxury apartments in the Union Trust Bank Building, here is a column I wrote about it back in 1996.  Restaurant owner Bob … Continue reading

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Long city planning grind

James Fallows has written “Nice Downtowns: How Did They Get that Way?” for the Atlantic, about how active city downtowns arise not naturally or organically but are planned. He takes the example of Seattle, which was a hollowed-out reject 50 … Continue reading

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Join my Jane’s Walk again!

I will be giving my second annual Jane’s Walk waterfront tour of downtown Providence on Saturday, May 2, at 1:00 p.m. We will meet at the Crawford Street Bridge – the new and beautiful bridge, not the late, unlamented Guinness … Continue reading

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Kimmelman swoops Whitney

It took Theodore Dalrymple, an essayist for the Manhattan Institute’s splendid quarterly, City Journal, to pull back the curtain on the operatic vapidity of New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. The latter has written his architectural review of the … Continue reading

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‘So let’s build 500 Shards’

I’ve posted about Create Streets before. The London urbanist organization’s Paul Murrain, who once worked with Andrés Duany on downtown Providence, has written a thoughtful and passionate “J’Accuse!” – called “London Deserves Better Than This” on PDF at the website … Continue reading

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More new crap at Brown

Brown apparently regrets its beauty and wants to be among the ugliest schools in the Ivy League. This is the only conclusion that comports with the fact of what it builds on campus. The latest is the Applied Math Building … Continue reading

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In Boston on Boylston

I was up in Boston yesterday to attend the chapter board meeting of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Design. I went by train, MBTA, and emerged at Dartmouth Street, lingered to capture the Richardsonian beauty, and headed on down … Continue reading

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An evocative balustrade

My favorite type of classical ornament has long been the baluster. I have a very small collection of balusters, including one from the Rhode Island State House, designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim Mead & White and finished in … Continue reading

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