The Miriam Hospital: 1984

Posted on November 12, 2024 by David Brussat

The Miriam Hospital, now Brown University Health.

I was planning such a takedown of Miriam Hospital, known as The Miriam Hospital, or, now, Brown University Health. My hospital system was until recently called Lifespan. Lifespan is now out. It is now Brown University Health.

Well, this was going to be such a stitch, riffing on johnnies and all other things medical that have not been updated in two or three centuries.

But then I had second thoughts. The doctors and nurses Miriam, and, equally, those at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island, in North Smithfield (where I was sent next), are so great. Do they deserve this?

No, I decided, they do not.

So I downgraded this post to a notification to readers of this blog of its writer’s officially certified good health after three weeks in two hospitals, including the Miriam (where I was admitted after suffering a small stroke) and the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island, in North Smithfield, where I was sent after that. Both seemed like a maximum security prisons, with beds alarmed to go off – sirens blaring, klieg lights flashing –  should a patient seek to visit the in-suite bathroom or any other place. Rooms at the Rehabilitation Hospital, or the Fogarty Memorial Hospital, as it was once known, were likewise alarmed, but toned down a notch or two. (“For your own good,” of course, in case you trip and fall on the way.)

In addition to letting readers know I am  now at home and doing fine, I’d like to let my roommate at Miriam Room 351 East know he should email me at dbrussat@gmail.com if he wants to read my manifesto.

Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island, in North Smithfield

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The mush slated for Parcel 5

Posted on September 29, 2024 by David Brussat

The Route 195 District Development Commission has just released a set of nine proposals submitted at its request for Parcel 5, the largest remaining unbuilt, unsold or not yet “under agreement” bit of I-195 land east of the Providence River, created more than a decade ago by the relocation half a mile south of Route 195. The proposals are all bad. My friendly rival Will Morgan has critiqued them for the website GoLocalProv.com.

Will and I are in agreement on most development proposals for new buildings in old neighborhoods in Providence. They, too, are mostly bad and Will agrees, thinking as I do that developers should do a better job fitting such buildings into the local character.

But on new development generally, we are diametrically opposed. He favors snazzy new buildings and I favor buildings that fit into the surrounding historical character. Even if the historical character has already been destroyed by previous development, it always makes sense to rebuild it, and you gotta start somewhere. If that sounds relatively boring – it involves copying the past, a no-no for the mods – it produces neighborhoods and districts that are healthy and humane in a way that snazzy new buildings never do.

Curiously, the preference for the snazzy new over the healthy, humane old styles has been the establishment view of the stodgy architectural profession for seventy or eighty years now – even though the public prefers the graceful old styles by dramatically large margins, according to every study ever done. People are most confortable with what they are familiar with and understand – and why shouldn’t they be?

Will is an unusually articulate proponent of the snazzy “modernist” styles. Today’s modernism is watered down and might well be called “plasticky,” to judge by what has been built in the 195 District and elsewhere in town. Will normally does not favor this “plasticky” style, and keeps hoping architects will come up with something that’s both snazzy and good, but he is doomed to be disappointed.

Of the nine proposals submitted for Parcel 5, Will seems to like the one by local firm ZDS best. He describes it as “wickedly audacious,” a description that by itself would cause me to assume I will dislike it. It is pictured in the lower left frame of the images up above. It is not the least bit audacious, but is instead a typical layering of flat, glassy elements with no apparent atypical features, other than that ZDS is local. It is not just another Boston firm that farms out its least senior architects to handle commissions in Providence. Will says ZDS is “taking a chance, daring to be bold.” Huh? He then admits that ZDS is a “successful but unimaginative firm that has given the city so many architectural duds.” Its hotel on Parcel 12 at the northeast corner of Kennedy Plaza is its best (and its first) work in Providence, It seems as if it is trying to be historic, but fails to avoid the dread “plasticky.”

Will also likes the proposal by Wade/Keating, which works mostly around Boston. Its proposal for an art and design center at Parcel 5’s corner of South Main and Wickenden is the most unusual of the nine designs, and is at the center of the images up above. It actually has gables, which I thought had been banned half a century ago! Alas, it has all the hallmarks of succumbing to “plasticky” once its slick pallet of materials is revealed at some later meeting.

All the other seven proposals are type-cast refugees from the commission’s 195 playbook, where its yen for bad architecture is laid out for all to see. Will writes that the commission has a “track record in attracting quality architectural design.” No, the commission has a track record of shooing away quality architectural design. This is shocking – because there is so much beauty in Providence for the commission to copy – but it is no surprise.

Map of most of the central I-195 District. Parcel 5, far right. (195 Commission)

Posted in Architecture, Development, I-195 Redevelopment District | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Rubik’s Cube of life sciences

Posted on September 14, 2024 by David Brussat

Proposed life sciences center in Brown’s Jewelry District campus in Providence. (TenBerke)

Brown has released the design of its umpteenth medical research center in Providence’s Jewelry District. It looks just like every other building of its sort, a bland, inoffensive glass and steel nonentity designed by TenBerke, with interiors by Ballinger, encumbered with a bulky name comprising the chief donor and his wife.

The William A. and Ami Kuan Danoff Life Sciences Laboratories building with its seven stories and 300,000 square feet may be nothing to write home about from an aesthetic perspective, but Brown has assembled an announcement that informs readers of the design’s interlocking multiplicity of research purposes and capacities. The announcement is a veritable Rubik’s Cube of medical/administrative rhetoric.

Brian E. Clark, of Brown’s media relations department (the writer, it may be assumed, though it does not say), may be congratulated for the fecundity of his creativity. His first paragraph reveals its flavor. It reads as follows:

Grounded in the concepts of innovation, connection and flexibility, Brown University’s planned facility for integrated life sciences research is designed to convene scientists across multiple fields of study to solve complex, interconnected health and medical challenges.

But Mr. Clark has omitted a few words! No matter, there they are leading off the second paragraph: “state-of-the-art”:

State-of-the-art laboratory spaces illuminated by natural light, a street-level education lab accessible to the public, and plentiful interior and exterior gathering spaces are among its signature elements, as illustrated in architectural renderings released on Thursday, Sept. 12.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? But wait! There are still 26 more paragraphs to be read!

It is a sad commentary on a building’s design that an architecture critic can find nothing at all to say about it. Maybe the critic is to blame. I presume that my friendly rival Will Morgan will produce a more informative piece shortly for GoLocalProv, which stands in these days for my former employer, the Providence Journal.

Increasingly, the Jewelry District is refashioning itself to look more and more like the Danoff building, and in the not too distant future every building in the Jewelry District will be indistinguishable from the Danoff Building. Kiss the Jewelry District’s historical character goodbye. Is there a process for undesignating a historic district once it has been so designated?

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Read-Ott House, RIP

Posted on August 28, 2024 by David Brussat

Remains of Read-Ott House after partial demolition on Monday. (Photo from Valley Breeze)

After years of effort by those who wished to save it, the Read-Ott House succumbed to demolition on Monday by its owner, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church next door to it on Walcott Street, in Pawtucket’s Quality Hill historic district. It may seem a bit much to point the finger of blame at the church and its fathers, but there it is.

Nobody seems to know what will become of the patch of earth on which Read-Ott stood so proudly since its construction in 1842. In all likelihood: parking.

Designed in the Italianate style, Read-Ott was built for hardware shop owner John B. Read and then remodeled for Joseph Ott, founder of the Royal Weaving Co. A third story, an expanded portico, and classicizing details were added early in the 20th century by architect W.G. Sheldon after the house was sold to Ott by Read’s widow, Jane Thatcher Ingraham.

The church’s efforts to be rid of the house apparently began in 2012. It was occupied for a period by a church official. The city of Pawtucket offered the church $500,000 to restore the house, but was turned down. A six-month period was officially dedicated by the city to consider options for saving the house, or whatever, and it elapsed in 2023.

The church claims it would have cost $10,000 every five years just to keep the house painted. To renovate it would have cost millions on top of that, which the church arguably does not have. But the city was remiss in failing to do more to save the Read-Ott House. Pawtucket does not recognize that in saving Read-Ott, it would have been saving itself. Instead, Pawtucket throws its scant resources away on a soccer stadium, and on a pointless new and gargantuan high school, supposedly to replace Tolman and Shea.

Unlike Pawtucket’s neighbor to the south, Providence, it is difficult to recall how rich and powerful it used to be before it was sliced by Route 95 (Providence suffered that indignity as well) and shredded (much more so than Providence) by modern architecture. Without the insult of modern architecture, Pawtucket might still rival Providence in prosperity – or at least might have measured its decline step by step with that of its southern neighbor.

The quality of historic houses in Quality Hill and elsewhere in the Bucket testify to the city’s long lost prosperity. Its downtown once closely rivaled that of Providence. Both northern cities have failed to keep up with Newport in its laudable dedication to its own preservation. Newport is an 18th century city; Providence and Pawtucket are 19th century cities. Modern architecture tells the tale. In ten years, Providence, which has rededicated itself to modernism in recent years, may catch up to Pawtucket in its decline, which is already well under way.

Pawtucket and its leading institutions have shown their lack of seriousness as a city by letting the Read-Ott House go. So, no, let’s not blame the church alone. There is enough blame to go around. For shame!

Read-Ott House’s after rnovation in 1915 or thereabouts, with two-story portico.

Read-Ott House after renovation in early 20th century by its new owner, Joseph Ott.

Rear of the Read-Ott House prior to demolition in August 2024. Greek Orthodox church at right.

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My guess on Penn Station

Posted on August 6, 2024 by David Brussat

Rebuilt waiting room at the proposed new Penn Station. (By Jeff Stikeman for Rebuild Penn Station)

Not much news lately on the idea of rebuilding Pennsylvania Station as it was originally designed by architects McKim Mead & White in 1910. The station was torn down in 1963 and replaced by the existing mess of a rail hub, underneath a hulking sports arena.

An excellent and eminently feasible proposal to rebuild the old Penn Station is being pecked to death by ducks.

Surveys suggest that rebuilding Penn Station would be popular – more so than several rival proposals, some better than others, but none with the advantages of rebuilding the old station, updated to adapt to today’s market realities. Restoring its vaulting beauty would bring economic benefits unlike those of any other major development project imaginable today.

Instead, New York’s city and state leaders want to surround a half-assed renovation of the station with ten supertall office buildings – doomed to remain empty as long as the work-from-home phenomenon prevails, undermining the real-estate market possibly for decades.

At a forum yesterday sponsored by the Regional Plan Association and the Municipal Art Society, the convoluted and probably corrupt railroad interests (Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) argued weakly against “through-running,” the concept of treating Penn Station as one stop in a series of stops, as opposed to treating it as it is now: a terminus. Through-running, which many cities in Europe and Asia have embraced, would connect Penn Station and its regional railroads together with far greater efficiency than the current tangled “system.”

The train interests have been coy and secretive about the details or lack of details in their plan, if they even have one. The public deserves to know much more about their plan.

My own interest, and I suspect that of most readers here, is to rebuild Penn Station as it was originally designed. That would boost the regional economy even more than through-running, which – don’t get me wrong! – is a damned good idea. But it seems to me that the idea of rebuilding Penn suffers when the concept of through-running is emphasized by those who back rebuilding the station. Through-running is a worthy, transformative idea, but it lacks pizzazz. Once rebuilding Penn has been settled upon as the main goal, once the idiotic idea of demolishing a whole block of Manhattan south of the station and surrounding it with ten more towers has been jettisoned, and once Madison Square Garden has been relocated, the project of rebuilding Penn would pave the way for New York to adopt through-running quite easily and naturally. But first there’s a lot of work to be done: focus on the big picture, please.

A simple and great idea would run interference for a great but complex idea better than the other way around.

It grieves me to say this, as I am a great fan of ReThinkNYC, whose chairman, Sam Turvey, has been pushing both ideas. He wrote about the forum here. Lately, he seems to emphasize (and overemphasize) through-running at the expense of rebuilding Penn. The railroad interests are finding it easier to kill through-running than to kill the grander idea, in my opinion, because it lacks the glitz that rebuilding Penn would provide. Rebuilding Penn Station would ensure that through-running goes through – and ensure that ramming more towers down the city’s throat will not happen.

Drawing illustrates through-running proposal at Penn Station and its region. (ReThinkNYC)

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Olympic start was a bit off

Posted on July 27, 2024 by David Brussat

The River Seine in Paris all decked out for the Summer Olympiad. (Paris 2024)

Many around the globe had hoped to be thrilled by this year’s opening ceremonies at the XXXIII Olympiad. The beauty of Paris offered splendid opportunity, if organizers had only let Paris be Paris. But sadly, it was not to be.

The ceremony, with the famous bateaux mouches cruising down the River Seine with the Olympic teams of 205 nations aboard. It was the first Olympic ceremony not held at an Olympic stadium. And it was, I believe, the first to feature the host city as the centerpiece of the ceremony. It was an opportunity not to be lost … but lost it was.

Opening day began with a coordinated arson attack on the French TGV, or trains à grandes vitesse, stranding thousands of Olympic opening ceremony goers at stations throughout France. Its origin, presumably Islamic terror in support of Hamas, is being investigated.

The ceremony mixed the Parade of Athletes along the river in boats big and small with various artistic presentations on the Seine embankments. Some were more successful than others, but the choreography was abysmal and the costuming was worse. It might be an overstatement to say that the overall character was represented by a portrayal of the biblical Last Supper enacted by drag queens.

It is easy but perfectly accurate to blame much of the worst of the opening ceremony on the NBC team broadcasting the event for the American viewing public. The “Good Morning America” duo gushed and drooled throughout the festivities, and it was painful to hear their ridiculous gabbling with the endless string of tedious celebrities throughout the evening or their comments on the countries as their national teams floated by, getting soaked in the steady rain, often amounting to a downpour. They gamely danced and waved their nations’ flags, but you could tell they were not happy troupers.

The NBC duo seemed to be addicted to one of the “artistic” flourishes of the ceremony – a costumed sprite running along the roofscapes and through buildings en route, the symbolic meaning of whose costume we did not catch and was not clear. Again and again all evening the duo returned to his jaunt, and one almost wished he would trip on one of the raised ridges of the Parisian roofscape.

Cricket presenter Alan Wilkins wondered, “Is this the worst-ever opening ceremony of an Olympic Games? Absolute garbage to deliver to a global audience.”

“Garish, ghastly, and vulgar in the extreme. European culture down the plughole with the chain pulled. You don’t have to look far to see the Game is Over, with every bloody fool pandering to the lowest common denominator.” Such was the view of Professor James Stevens Curl, author of Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism (2018).

Oh how we missed the usual parade of athletes from past Olympics as the nations’ teams flowed (or trickled) in semi-orderly fashion into the Olympic arenas, around the running tracks and up to their places in the stands. This ritual every four summers and every four winters always fascinates, with viewers at home anticipating their favorite nations’ teams going by. In these displays the characters of the various nations and the antics of the teams were on full display, while the inanities of the broadcast booth were given minimal outlet. May this parade be resumed at the next Summer Olympics in Los Angeles!

The embankments of and bridges over the Seine featured applied decoration, some of it quite artful and other bits hopefully quite temporary. Some of it, new and overpolished, may eventually attain the grace of weather and time.

Views of Paris and its roofscapes and streetscapes delightfully charmed the television audience. Occasionally, modernist buildings loomed in the background over the Haussmannesque architecture of the latter half of the 19th cntury, but they did not succeed at killing the overall sense of beauty.

All in all, the evening was a disappointment, but it is likely that had it not been Paris but some other city, it would have been as garish and commercialized as you would expect, since national cultures around the world are in a race to the bottom, and no city likely to host an Olympics is likely to escape its fate, hastened by each nation’s version of “Good Morning America!” But at least we can hope that the Angelenoes will not botch their turn at the Parade of Athletes, even if it is broadcast from the Entertainment Capital of the World.

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Fourth of July in Providence

Posted on July 4, 2024 by David Brussat

“Declaration of Independence” (1819), by John Trumbull.

As a blogger, I am remiss in not having posted for a month and a half, nor have I explained that what I cannot attribute to laziness I may attribute to writing a book, my first since Lost Providence (2017). This second book is now 98 percent written.

Okay, having got that over with, I think it appropriate on Independence Day to refer to the meaning of the name of the city of Providence. Although we Rhode Islanders are more familiar with the name’s derivation from founder Roger Williams words “having a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress” (he had been banished from Massachusetts), I like to think of it in the sense of providential, either opportune or divinely inspired. The two are not contradictory.

Rhode Islanders take more pride from being the first colony to declare independence from England than from being the last of the 13 former colonies to ratify the constitution of 1789.

My sense of the meaning of Providence relates to the fact that Rhode Island is one of only two American states, so far as I know, that were independent countries before they became states. The other was Texas. I’m not sure how one would classify pre-statehood Hawaii, and I do not include the insurrectionists of 1861. I wonder how Rhode Island thought of itself during that period, after twelve of the rebel colonies had ratified the United States Constitution by 1789, but not Rhode Island.

In 2018, Rhode Island History Journal ran an essay by historian Robert W. Smith called “Algiers or St. Eustatius: Foreign Affairs and the Ratification of the Constitution in Rhode Island.” He writes:

Two paths seemed to lie before Rhode Island if it did not ratify the Constitution of the United States. A Federalist writer in the Newport Herald claimed that “the paper money leaders flatter themselves that their unfederal conduct in not sending Delegates to [the Constitutional] Convention and not permitting the people to meet to consider the new Constitution, may cause them to be thrown out of the Union, and then they will become the Algiers of America.” The Federalists made the idea of independent Rhode Island as a pirates’ den a recurring theme in their literature. [Of course, Rhode Island was already widely known as Rogue’s Island for accepting those banished from Massachusetts, from other colonies, and both religious and nonconformists generally.]

The writer went on to claim that, if necessary, Rhode Island’s leaders would seek British protection against the United States. Rhode Island’s fate would be sealed, as the United States would not permit that outcome. “Sooner than such an event should take place, we should see our country wasted with destruction, our fields drenched with blood, and our little territory parceled out among the adjacent states.”

In the limited amount of Anti-federalist literature, Rhode Island independence was more of an opportunity than a danger. An Anti-federalist under the name “Charlestoniensis,” who may have been Jonathan J. Hazard of the Country Party, responded to Federalist criticism. “I will observe that, in that case [that Rhode Island does not ratify], this state will not become an Algiers, as some malevolent scribblers in Massachusetts have impudently asserted, but a St. Eustatius.” St. Eustatius was a Dutch-owned island in the Caribbean that functioned as a free port – an “entrepôt for the trade between Europe and the United States.”

That is the argument for the sense of “Providence” as opportune. The other sense of divinely inspired we are all familiar with, so I will end here, not having finished this very long essay by Smith, and not certain where it leads.

Whether in the context of an “opportune” port such as Providence or in its sense of “divinely inspired,” the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are worth celebrating today, and struggling, as ever, to protect.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among mean, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Happy Independence Day.

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Andreas restaurant: RIP?

Posted on May 15, 2024 by David Brussat

Andreas, which closed temporarily in 2022, now closed permanently?

Andreas Restaurant has reigned for decades as the favorite dining establishment on the East Side of Providence, R.I. Maybe not the best restaurant east of the Providence River, but surely the best on Thayer Street, often considered the Main Street of Brown University, and the first place most people turn to for a fine meal they needn’t cook for themselves.

We all have our favorite Andreas stories. I met my first wife, Tracey, there in 1990 (she was reading The Sheltering Sky [1949] by Paul Bowles.) I dined there often with my second (and last) wife, Victoria, whom I met at the IGA in 2003. I got behind her in the checkout line and asked her if I could help her eat the pile of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream she was buying. With an ex-boyfriend nearby, she politely declined, but I met her again and over the next year or so woo’d her and won her. That’s the very short version of a fine origin story, which I’ve probably told more than three dozen times over meals at Andreas with or without Victoria, whose family ate there whenever they wanted to eat out.

Andreas was famous for its comely waitresses. Now we’re not allowed to say that, but it was okay for many years until the owner, or one of the managers, or so I heard, got in trouble for favoring attractive waitresses. For shame! Lookism is, I believe, the name that the woke have given to my crime. But I got away with fondling Andreas’s waitresses with my eyes for at least three decades before I began to feel any guilt for my thoughtcrime. Never managed to ask any of them for a date. No touchee!

In the 1980s, I once dined outdoors at Andreas with the famous Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky along with several student conservatives from the Brown Conservative Union, or some such title. For that matter, I think it was Bukovsky. Time fogs all rear view mirrors. Mine has been foggy for, I believe, seven decades.

Long ago, also in the 1980s, I began an evening of drinking with Sheldon Whitehouse, then Rhode Island’s junior U.S. senator, at Andreas. He had been introduced to me by my colleague at the Journal, Irving (“Shel”) Sheldon (no relation). We bumped into each other on the sidewalk outside of Andreas. Whitehouse and I started there and went on to The Hot Club, or some such place, where we met a tipsy young lady, name forgotten. Every other word she uttered started with the letter f. She and I left Whitehouse to his own devices and went to a downtown nightclub called One Step Down, where we planned to play a game of pool (this was, thank God, long before I had my own pool table overlooking the Plunder Dome at Loft 501 in the Smith Building, or who knows where we would have ended up and what the f I might have contracted). On our way into One Step Down, she met a gang of motorcyclists of her acquaintance parked outside. She began a-smooching them one after another to beat the band. I never saw her again, or at least not knowingly. I never saw Whitehouse again, either, I don’t think. No big loss. Shel and I are still friends.

Andreas closed down for seven months to remodel back in 2021, and reopened that November. Andreas first opened up in 1966 and has served authentic Greek fare ever since, along with tasty cuisine from elsewhere. It has long featured outdoor seating along Thayer and Meeting streets. In the warmer months the parade of pulchritude is no less than astonishing. All night long. Thayer is narrow so the parade redoubles on the other side, beyond an always annoying twin string of parked SUVs – always SUVs, it seemed – which always blocked the view. Were I king of Providence, I would enact legislation to ban SUVs from parking parallel to an outdoor scene on Thayer, or any other street with a sidewalk dining scene. That goes against my political instincts. In a foul mood, I would extend this ban to parking spots outside of window seating indoors. Go ahead, try me!

Well, Andreas’s phone is disconnected, and you can find a smattering of stories online that attest to its closure. I hope it’s not shut for good – though why remodel twice in four years? If it reopens, I’ll be back!

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True: Andreas Restaurant, RIP?

Posted on May 15, 2024 by David Brussat

Andreas Restaurant, offering Greek fare since 1966, though  closed (again) for remodeling. (facebook)

Andreas Restaurant has reigned for decades as the favorite dining establishment on the East Side of Providence, R.I. Maybe not the best restaurant east of the Providence River, but surely the best on Thayer Street, often considered the Main Street of Brown University, and the first place most people turn to for a fine meal they needn’t cook for themselves.

We all have our favorite Andreas stories. I met my first wife, Tracey, there in 1980 (she was reading The Sheltering Sky [1949] by Paul Bowles.) I dined there often with my second (and last) wife, Victoria, whom I met at the IGA in 2003. I asked her if I could help her eat the pile of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. With an ex-boyfriend nearby, she politely declined, but I met her again and over the next year or so woo’d her and wed her. That’s the very short version of a fine origin story, which I’ve probably told more than a dozen times over dinner with or without Victoria, whose family ate there whenever they wanted to eat out.

Andreas was famous for its comely waitresses. Now we’re not allowed to say that, but it was okay for many years until the owner, or one of the managers, or so I heard, got in trouble for favoring attractive waitresses. For shame! Lookism is, I believe, the name that the woke have given to my crime. But I got away with fondling Andreas’s waitresses with my eyes for at least three decades before I began to feel any guilt for my thoughtcrime. Never managed to ask any of them for a date. No touchee!

In the 1980s, I once dined outdoors at Andreas with the famous Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky along with several student conservatives from the Brown Conservative Union, or some such title. For that matter, I think it was Bukovsky. Time fogs all rear view mirrors. Mine has been foggy for, I believe, seven decades.

Long ago, also in the 1980s, I began an evening of drinking with Sheldon Whitehouse, then Rhode Island’s junior U.S. senator, at Andreas. He had been introduced to me by my colleague at the Journal, Irving (“Shel”) Sheldon (no relation). We bumped into each other on the sidewalk outside of Andreas. Whitehouse and I started there and went on to The Hot Club, where we met a tipsy young lady, name forgotten. Every other word she uttered started with the letter f. She and I left Whitehouse to his own devices and went to a downtown nightclub called One Step Down, where we planned to play a game of pool (this was, thank God, long before I had my own pool table overlooking the Plunder Dome at Loft 501 in the Smith Building, or who knows where we would have ended up and what the f. I might have contracted). On our way into One Step Down, she met a gang of motorcyclists of her acquaintance parked outside. She began a-smooching them one after another to beat the band. I never saw her again, or at least not knowingly. I never saw Whitehouse again, either, I don’t think. Shel and I are still friends.

Andreas closed down for seven months to remodel back in 2021, and reopened that November. Andreas first opened up in 1966 and has served authentic Greek fare since, along with tasty cuisine from elsewhere. It has long featured outdoor seating along Thayer and Meeting streets. In the warmer months the parade of pulchritude is no less than astonishing. All night long. Thayer is narrow so the parade redoubles on the other side, beyond an always annoying twin string of parked SUVs – always SUVs, it seemed, which always blocked the view. Were I king of Providence, I would enact legislation to ban SUVs from parking on Thayer, or any other street with a sidewalk dining scene. That goes against my political instincts. In a foul mood, I would extend this ban to parking spots outside of window seating indoors. Go ahead, try me!

Well, Andreas’s phone is disconnected, and you can find a smattering of stories online that attest to its remodeling. I hope so – though why remodel twice in four years? If so, I’ll be back!

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Christopher Gray’s legacy

Posted on April 25, 2024 by David Brussat

This building is reprinted on the promotional material for next Thursday’s lecture. (OMH)

Christopher Gray was my favorite Timesman, which is news speak for reporter at the New York Times. (I’ll admit, that’s a low bar, these days at least.) I didn’t read him often because I don’t get the Times, but when I did come across his work, he always covered a building like white on rice – a simile I don’t quite understand, but let it go. Gray would dig into the history of a building such as the one illustrated above and tell us its history of ownership, when and for what purposes it was built, who had purchased it over the years, and what its current status was – newly renovated or newly demolished. These sound like relatively boring tidbits for all but the most die-hard buildingologist, but Gray would always manage to infuse them with meaning and delight.

Alas, Gray passed away on March 10, 2017, and has been sorely missed ever since.

The organization concerned with preserving Manhattan’s Upper West Side, LandmarkWest!, will host, next Thursday at 6 p.m., a Zoom lecture by Sam Hightower, current director of Gray’s library of building history, the Office for Metropolitan History. (Click on link to reserve your $6 ticket.) OMH sounds a little bit too much, for my taste, like OMA – the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, founded by the übermodernist architect Rem Koolhaas – but let that pass as well.

Andra Moss, who wrote the press material for the upcoming lecture, reveals that Gray has been replaced in writing Gray’s column at the Times by John Freeman Gill. I will have to check that out. Online. (Any relation to The New Yorker’s famous writer Brendan Gill?)

Hightower plans to take attendees through the OMH collection compiled by Gray during his 28 years writing the “Streetscapes” column in the real-estate section of the Times. He will “shed light on the research methods undergirding [Gray’s] work, highlight gems in the OMH’s private archive, and discuss the never-ending evolution of New York City’s built environment.” It seems that Gray was let go by the Gray Lady (no relation, and it would not apply anymore, anyway) in December 2014, about three months after I was let go by the Providence Journal. But let that go, so to speak, as well.

I wonder whether Hightower plans to refer to the “never-ending evolution” of the city as a devolution, indeed as a degeneration. A tedious gray box by OMA would fit in well on the streetscapes of today’s Manhattan. It is important to keep in mind that today’s city retains more, many more, than a handful of beautiful buildings of great historical significance. Too bad so many have been lost, and that those that remain are so regrettably swamped by stuff of much poorer quality.

So: 6 p.m. next Thursday evening (Office for Metropolitan History). Be there or be a glass box.

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