Tag Archives: New York City

Whoa! Driving in N.Y., 1928

This video is a riot, even though I’m sure “Driving Around NYC – 1928” was mostly if not all staged. Still wild and crazy stuff, including Harold Lloyd taking Babe Ruth to Yankee Stadium. Anybody know who, just before that, … Continue reading

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Best skyscrapers 2016: Yawn

No surprise here, but Dezeen has published a list of the ten best skyscrapers of 2016. I’ve chosen to spotlight the pyramidal monstrosity in New York City by Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect and founder of the firm BIG. The … Continue reading

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Stairway to nowhere in N.Y.

Above is “The Vessel,” so-called. Jim Kunstler has selected it for October’s Eyesore of the Month, on his website. “The Vessel” is designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the British architect who specializes in the ridiculous. It is apparently an attempt to mimic … Continue reading

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Gaudi’s Manhattan tower

That Gaudi had considered erecting a New York skyscraper is not widely known. William O’Connor writes of it in “Gaudi’s Lost Manhattan Tower” for the Daily Beast. O’Connor prates absurdly of Gaudi’s modernism – more than any other major architect, … Continue reading

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Techno-narcissist Kunstler’d

James Howard Kunstler’s latest Eyesore of the Month, which I reprint from his blog Clusterfuck Nation, had to be the winner of this year’s ridiculous eVolo Magazine architecture contest. And so it was. Only the ugliest and the stupidest entries … Continue reading

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Gird Penn Station’s rebuild

Connecticut architect Duo Dickinson, who writes regularly on architecture, often critical of modernism, has just written “Sprinting to the Past” in Common/Edge. He rails against Brooklyn architect Richard Cameron’s proposal to rebuild Penn Station as Charles Follen McKim designed it in … Continue reading

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Froma Harrop: Don’t bury our cities in megatowers

An excellent rattling of sabres at megatowers was published in Sunday’s Providence Journal by Froma Harrop, my former colleague on the paper’s editorial board. Froma writes a twice-weekly syndicated column for Creators Syndicate on the full panoply of issues in … Continue reading

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Calatrava’s dinosaur

Next week, starchitect Santiago Calatrava’s dinosaur of a transportation hub will open at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. The cost, mostly in federal dollars, was $4 billion for the station and its Oculus, a sculptural – or, really, sepulchral – … Continue reading

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Who’ll stop Branson hotel?

David Rau sent this nice photograph to the TradArch list in an email titled “Paris in New York.” He writes: A string of Second Empire buildings along Broadway in the 20s. At center is the Ace Hotel (interiors by Roman … Continue reading

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Why Angry Birds are angry

You think the three television networks are the same? Not so! Last year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was broadcast by NBC and this year CBS got the job. What a difference a network makes! So yes, the Angry Birds have … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Development, Humor, Urbanism and planning, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments