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Tag Archives: Streets
Lovely town main streets
Architectural Digest has posted “The 30 Most Beautiful Main Streets Across America,” and they are beautiful. I examined each photo and saw no buildings identifiable as modern architecture. For while civic beauty is primarily the presence of lovely old buildings; … Continue reading
Riding by versus looking at
Yesterday I posted a couple of quotes from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Of a taxi ride down the Boulevard Raspail, the author has his protagonist muse: “It is a street I do not mind walking down at all. But … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Alistair Horne, Haussmann, Hemingway, Le Corbusier, Paris, Streets
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Love at Providence Place
The evening of New Year’s Day, after seeing The Force Awakens at Providence Place with Victoria, Billy and friend Maria, all the shops were closed as we descended the escalator to the third level and strolled down the concourse, at … Continue reading
Paris strong, Paris beautiful
Very little suggests itself to me in reply to last night’s evil events in Paris except to assert, a year after the Charlie Hebdo attack, that America still has France’s back. America is next. It becomes deadly clear that the … Continue reading
Des “passages” de Paris
In the late 1800s, long after Baron Haussmann supposedly transformed the Paris of rabbit warrens into a Paris of bowling alleys for cannoneers, the protagonist (if you can call him that) of Umberto Eco’s novel The Prague Cemetery (2010) – … Continue reading
NYT cartoon speaks for itself
Hats off to Charleston architect Christopher Liberatos for posting this to TradArch!
Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Development, Humor, Urbanism and planning
Tagged architecture, Cartoon, New York Times, Peter Gamlen, Streets
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Human scale in Providence
Tonight I saw the documentary The Human Scale, about the work of Jan Gehl, a Dane who has sought, as I put it in last night’s post, to undo some of the damage done by modernism to the space between … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Blast from past, Providence, Urbanism and planning
Tagged CNU, Jan Gehl, Kennedy Plaza, Providence, Streets, Urbanism
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Blast past: Evolution on Thayer Street
Here is a column I wrote more than 20 years ago about Thayer Street and the denizens thereof. I don’t even want to begin to start reflecting on the nature of its changes since then. Many readers will have their … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Blast from past, Providence, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Brown University, Providence, Streets, Thayer Street, Urbanism
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Column: Dr. Downtown’s stroll with Dr. Street
Dear Dr. Downtown: Please tell us about your “walkabout” last weekend with the author of Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns — Strolling in Stratford. Well, the doctor thought that Dr. Street (aka John Massengale, New York … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Humor, Preservation, Providence, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Bill de Blasio, Dr. Downtown, John Massengale, Nantucket, New Urbanism, New York, Pedestrians, Planning, Providence, RISD, Street Design, Streets, Victor Dover, Vision Zero
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Heritage thought experiment
Alan Davies, a columnist in Melbourne, Australia, who often writes about architecture and planning issues, recently devoted an interesting column to a thought experiment: What if all the old buildings along Melbourne’s main streets – heritage buildings as they are … Continue reading
