Tag Archives: Paul Philippe Cret

The Capital Center Plan

Here this series of chapters from Lost Providence skips back to Chapter 18, “Capital Center Plan” to describe the origins of the plan, announced in 1978, to revitalize downtown by providing a new business district to rival the old downtown. … Continue reading

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A preview of the E.O. era?

At the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which oversees the aesthetic evolution of the federal district in Washington, D.C., a battle over renovations to the Federal Reserve Building, 1937, designed by Paul Philippe Cret in a stripped classical style, hints … Continue reading

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Cret’s wandering WWI shaft

Warren Lutzel has kindly sent me a portrait of architect Paul Philippe Cret’s monument originally erected in 1929 at Providence’s Memorial Square to commemorate World War I. The square looks almost bucolic in the painting above but in time grew … Continue reading

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Column: Architecture critic, heal thyself!

Witold Rybczynski’s 18th book, “How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit,” opens with a quarrel in its title. By any definition of humanism, architecture has been broken for at least seven decades. The book, published in October by Farrar, Straus and … Continue reading

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