Category Archives: Architecture

Best trad buildings of 2021

Posted on December 30, 2021 by David Brussat

This year’s meagre selection of new buildings designed in traditional styles came close to cancellation, not the first event to suffer that fate lately. It is depressing this year, as it was last year, to contemplate the listlessness of the … Continue reading →

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Presto! Windows and doors!

Posted on December 23, 2021 by David Brussat

On Monday, Dec. 20, the Providence Historic District Commission met for a second time on the proposal for a new house at 67 Williams St. They were to consider conceptual approval that was delayed on Nov. 22, after the developer, … Continue reading →

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Garden of House of Mirth

Posted on December 17, 2021 by David Brussat

My last quotation from Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth offered one minor character’s thoughts on several fancy row houses of Fifth Avenue, including one or two owned by families friendly to Mr. Van Alstyne and his partner … Continue reading →

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Albany-on-Hudson again?

Posted on December 13, 2021 by David Brussat

The capital of the Empire State hopes to do what many cities have done: rip up urban highways inflicted upon them in the 1960s and ’70s. Albany expects soon to remove its elevated eyesore, Interstate 787, which squats between the … Continue reading →

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The hegemony of architecture

Posted on December 7, 2021 by David Brussat

Architecture may be suffering from a hegemonic conundrum that afflicts the major institutions of the whole world. It is not just hegemon vs. hegemon anymore, according to analyst Richard Fernandez in his recent essay “There Is Something Wrong with our … Continue reading →

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Wharton’s “House of Mirth”

Posted on December 2, 2021 by David Brussat

Being about two-thirds through Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, I am still not quite sure I’ve actually encountered the “house of mirth” she gives as its title. What follows is a passage in which a secondary character, Van Alstyne, in Wharton’s … Continue reading →

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Notre-Dame falls to Disney?

Posted on November 27, 2021 by David Brussat

Officials overseeing reconstruction of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame announced, on Sept. 18, that the landmark would open in time for the Paris Olympics in 2024. Good! However, the UK Telegraph has just run an article based on leaked plans to … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Why no windows or doors?

Posted on November 24, 2021 by David Brussat

Not long after neighborhood opposition prevailed over insensitive development proposals for historic Fox Point and College Hill in Providence, a new developer and a different architect have arisen to propose a new house on the vacant land just east of … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development, Preservation | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

“Dystopia” three years on

Posted on November 21, 2021 by David Brussat

Three years have passed since British architectural historian James Stevens Curl’s masterful Making Dystopia was published by Oxford University Press. Subtitled “The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism,” the book can only have been about modern architecture, perhaps the … Continue reading →

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Presto chango bus hub idea!

Posted on November 16, 2021 by David Brussat

Seemingly out of the clear blue sky a completely new bus hub idea has suddenly emerged in Providence. The Innovation District Transit Center, it’s called. The reigning notion of shifting most buses from Kennedy Plaza to a pair of new … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development, Providence | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments