Tag Archives: Preservation

Own a free villa in Italy

Posted on May 26, 2017 by

Truly! Since not everyone is logged in to the roster of programmes gushing from Italy’s bureaucracy, such as it may be, check out this from the website Hyperallergic. Yes, Italy is giving away free castles, villas and other unused historic … Continue reading →

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Unwelcome Arnold House?

Posted on May 25, 2017 by

Is the Welcome Arnold House (circa 1785), on Planet Street in Fox Point, doomed to demolition by neglect? That’s the question posed by Catherine Zipf’s architecture column in today’s Providence Journal. She wonders whether its owner, Walter Bronhard, intends to … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation, Providence | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Huxtable versus Huxtable

Posted on April 10, 2017 by

Ada Louise Huxtable’s first collection of her New York Times criticism, Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?, is subtitled “A Primer on Urbicide.” The widely admired book, first published in 1970, is less than the sum of its parts. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Oops! Wrong shot of hotel

Posted on March 11, 2017 by

Thursday’s Providence Journal story, “Icon? Eyesore? Demolition to begin of Fogar- ty Building in downtown,” about the demise of the Fogarty Building and its replacement by a new hotel had the wrong picture of the hotel design. It shows the … Continue reading →

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Haussmann’s urban removal

Posted on February 2, 2017 by

Preservationists and architects should be enemies: the preservation of any old building postpones work designing a new building to replace it. Baron Haussmann’s demolition and rebuilding of much of old Paris in the third quarter of the 19th century created … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development, Preservation, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Elusive ‘why’ of preservation

Posted on January 29, 2017 by

The Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan, is said to be at risk of demolition again and of replacement by a building sympathetic to the current Penn Station. The old hotel, designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1919, is … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Videos of London, 1927/2014

Posted on January 12, 2017 by

Here are two videos side by side of the same scenes in London from 1927 and 2014, courtesy of Big Geek Daddy’s Video of the Day. A week ago I posted “London in 25 hard minutes,” one of Rick Steves’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

My explosive TB blog post

Posted on December 5, 2016 by

My November blog post written for Traditional Building magazine was explosive, to say the least. It is about two buildings that blew up and a third building that bodes well to beautify its neighborhood by not blowing up its context. … Continue reading →

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Save the Porto pavilions

Posted on November 1, 2016 by

A year ago plans emerged in Portugal to replace the old pavilions of the old market in Porto with new pavilions of a  high-tech appearance. The existing market stalls of the Bolhão should not be replaced but restored. A post, … Continue reading →

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A French city, razed, rebuilt

Posted on July 17, 2016 by

We are still angry and sad about Nice, but let me shift the spotlight to another ancient French resort city, St.-Malo, on the Brittany coast of the English Channel. As I say, an ancient city, but it was shelled and … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments