Art Deco-ish

[hauntedheadnc]

It would appear that my city is going to soon watch a 23-story "neo deco" tower rise downtown. It's called The Ellington, and will house an upscale hotel and about 40 or so expensive condominiums. It's being wedged into an awkward L-shaped lot, and will curve around existing buildings that stand about two to three stories tall. It fills an empty lot, boasts some retail space on one of the three streets it fronts, and a long "art wall" displaying works by local artists along another street face.

On the one hand, I like it because it clashes with everything around it, and this is North Carolina's most architecturally diverse city, where we're used to that -- neo-Georgian across the street from Italianate gothic across the street from arte moderne, next to neo-classical. Art deco next to Romanesque, across the street from brutalist, and so on.

On the other hand, this building bothers me a little because it's not enough neo nor is it enough deco, and with only a minimum of effort it could have been a stellar example of either one. I fear that my dislike is beginning to win out, so I wanted some opinions about this baby.

What do you think of The Ellington?

www.theellington.info

[rockyi]

I like it. Around here, projects like that are few and far between.

[StethJeff]

I don't think it's bad at all - that building looks better than 80% of the other developments that I see springing up these days. In fact, I wouldn't mind having that building where I live.

[Muji]

The balconies on the top portion make it pretty awkward, since they don't seem to mesh with the deco elements at all, but overall it looks pretty great to me. It's certainly unique.

[hauntedheadnc]

I think the balconies are what bug me the most, to tell the truth. Too many harsh, sharp angles. Rounding them would have done worlds to improve this building.

Basically what we're looking at here is the first bona fide tower to rise in Asheville since the 1960's, and the NIMBY's are going absolutely batshit over it. It has, however, already passed its first hurdle toward approval, which was an endorsement by the Downtown Commission. Their word isn't law, but it carries a lot of weight when a project eventually makes it to the City Council for approval. On Monday the Ellington goes before the Technical Review Board, which will determine whether or not the existing infrastructure can physically accommodate the building. After that, assuming it meets their standards, I believe it has one more review to pass from someone or other before the city council approves it or disapproves it.

Meanwhile, there's a 15-story apartment building, a 10-story condo building, a 9-story condo building, a 12-story Indigo Hotel and condo project, two parking garages, and an office building going up or soon to go up downtown too. The Ellington, though, is by far the tallest project on the horizon, and as such it has to be nothing short of perfect if it's going to open the door to more true highrise growth downtown. If it falls short in any way, it's only going to add more cannonballs to the NIMBY arsenal. Already, one NIMBY (more of a BANANA, actually) is running for city council out of outrage at all this growth going on, and her toadies are swamping the paper with letters in support of her no growth nowhere no how no way stance.

I suppose that's my biggest worry. Sharp balconies might enrage the NIMBY's to the point that they stall future growth.

[LSyd]

i like it.

-

[Peanuthead]

i like it, its unique, its bold, its neo-deco

[Exodus]

That's a novel idea. Neodeco, I like it !:tup:

[Lecom]

Not bad at all. Congrats on getting the tower in your city.

[KevinFromTexas]

The tower portion looks very attractive. Awesome rendering anyway. Not sure about the base, though. It looks nice, though, I would so be into the idea of "neo-deco" catching on.

[Lecom]

^If anything, I think the base is one of its best features,unlike the general massing, which seems almost as complacent as any condo tower. I think the tower's shape is the one thing that needs improvement. Its graceful styling could really use a more inspired general form. I also hope the materials do justice to the design, and are not just some cheap Vegas-style beige plaster.

[Visiteur]

The building is very attractive. I'd love to see something like that be built in a city up my way.

The rendering's a little funny though, with that double-decker bus at the base.

[hauntedheadnc]

The rendering's a little funny though, with that double-decker bus at the base.

That's the Double Decker Coffee Company at the corner of Biltmore Avenue and Aston Street. I'm hoping that if this project really does go ahead that it will provide the impetus for that coffee shop to open back up. Its owner ran it more as a hobby than anything else until he fell ill, and now it's up for sale. It's a downtown landmark and I'd really hate to see it go.

Here's a picture I took of it back in May. If memory serves me, the destination placard in front says it's headed for Trafalgar Square.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb88/hauntedheadnc/Asheville051401.jpg

Those buildings depicted in the renderings are more elaborate than shown too, by the way. On another forum I frequent, we were discussing this project and for a while we were all in a terror that the developers were going to reclad those buildings as the plain brick boxes shown. After all, if they were going to go to the trouble of putting in a detailed double-decker bus, we thought the rest of the rendering would be as accurate. Thankfully, we found out that while they put the bus in very faithfully, they got lazy with the other buildings nearby. None of them are going to be touched, and the developers of the Ellington don't own any of them.

Thanks for your input, everyone.

[LMich]

Nice! The only criticism I have is what Kevin mentioned, and that's the base. It makes it look as if the tower were designed from the top, down. I like the massing of it all, though, and for the facade I hope they go with real stone as opposed to precast concrete.

[hauntedheadnc]

The base has already changed somewhat. There are three street faces here -- Biltmore Avenue, Lexington Avenue, and Aston Street. Biltmore and Aston are the tips of the upside-down "L", while Lexington is the long side of the L. The short side of the L runs alongside the backs of the buildings that face the next street up from Aston, and so that frontage will face an alley, if anything, and won't be of any importance.

However, the Biltmore frontage is taken up by a one-way entrance into the hotel. Cars can stop and let out their passengers, and then can either be driven through the building into the parking facility by the guest or resident, or by the valet. This, in addition to seating for the hotel restaurant, and windows that will look into the restaurant and lobby. There's a diagram in the project website gallery that shows the arrangement.

Now, originally, the frontage along Aston and Lexington was to have been completely taken up by decorated blank walls; Aston by a mural, and Lexington by an entrance and exit to the parking garage and by recessed show windows displaying artworks by local artists. The Downtown Commission didn't care for this plan and demanded some retail space, and so now the Aston Street facade will house that retail space. As far as I know, the Lexington frontage will still consist of the curb cut and pseudo display windows. I'm not wild about that idea, because no matter how you try to tart up a blank wall, it's still a blank wall. We'll just have to hope that future development across Lexington Avenue from the Ellington will be able to pick up the slack.

I keep bouncing back and forth between liking this project and not really caring for it. There are defnitely elements of the design that I don't like, but there are others that I think are wonderful. In the renderings the building looks best when viewed looking south down Biltmore Avenue. From that view, you're seeing the bottom of the L, and the building looks the most like art deco from that vantage point. Viewed from the south, looking north up Biltmore, the building appears to have a definite ass end, which is a mortal sin in architecture.

Then again, like I mentioned before, I love the fact that this building is so out of place. That's how we do things around here. It's extremely rare to find two buildings near one another that look like they should be next to one another. The way our architecture tends to clash is illustrated most graphically in the heart of town, where the big pink wedding cake of our art deco city hall sits next to the severe and stern neo-classical high-rise county courthouse.

Speaking of... Interestingly enough, there's another project similar to the Ellington under construction a few blocks away. It's a very modern 9-story condo building with retail on the first floor, wedged onto an L-shaped lot, wrapping around an 8-story neoclassical apartment building. It presents the short side of it's L to the 2-story Queen Anne boarding house where Thomas Wolfe grew up, and which is preserved as a state historic site. The Thomas Wolfe house, meanwhile, faces one side of the postmodern 12-story Renaissance Hotel across a narrow brick alley. Nothing matches here. It's kind of nice.

[Tony]

Looks nice!

Toronto has a 48 storey "art deco" building going up too, currently u/c: http://www.pembertongroup.com/content/uptown_home.htm
http://www.urbandb.com/canada/ontario/toronto/uptown_condo_rendering.jpg

[kznyc2k]

hauntedheadnc, what exactly do the NIMBYs and BANANAs have against this project?

The tower looks a bit confused.. the transition from base to top isn't smooth and there's too much going on with the shaft, and by that I mean it almost looks like the architect put those vertical art deco lines on it in order to compensate for all the horizontals created by the balconies, but it instead ends up making the project look real busy. And of course the "L"-shaped plan doesn't make things any easier to digest. It's needs to be simplified and refined a bit more.

But I do like the project overall. I love art deco, and usually this love extends over to modern "neo"-deco stuff too, and this one does look nice. A lot of newer buildings that go for a deco look tend to do it in a very vague, half-assed fashion that is not so much art deco as it just typical junk with maybe a couple of vertical lines indented into the precast panels, but with this one it's undeniable what style it wants to be, and I like that.

[kznyc2k]

And one last thing I just noticed -- I don't mind the balconies so much (think of how they make the moderne branch of art deco), but what bothers me is the columns that run at the corners of the building which create "frames" around the voids of the balconies (it reminds me of Richard Meier's work).

That is the opposite of art deco, which is all about the mass of the building forcefully thrusting itself out into the void, and in the process asserting its own form. What we have here is a void being framed by the mass (columns), where the lack of building becomes a part of the shape, and having this right next to the main body of the building, where there's art deco details galore, is a bit awkward.

[Terminus]

I'm not sold on the base. It looks like an afterthought, which it probably is. Unfortunatley most architects and developers design buildings basedon how they'll look for a half mile away, not hot they'll look from 10 feet away.

[hauntedheadnc]

hauntedheadnc, what exactly do the NIMBYs and BANANAs have against this project?

Everything. Our NIMBY's and BANANA's are California-quality. They make the NIMBY's of Berkely and San Francisco look tame by comparison. To the point of heaving bricks through developers' and realtors' office windows, gluing their door locks, and spraypainting "Fuck Sprawl" on the sidewalk outside those offices. Our NIMBY's have also been known to steal bulldozers and run them through the walls of a Wal-Mart under construction in East Asheville, set fire to the Starbucks in Biltmore Village, set forest fires in new subdivisions under construction in Swannanoa, and pour sand in the gas tanks of bulldozers at a subdivision under construction in Leicester. That last stunt put the developer about a month behind, and cost him several tens of thousands of dollars, as I recall. They also painted the fence around that construction site with statements such as "Don't buy here." and "Rapist."

Now they're turning their wrath on construction projects downtown. The basic idea here is that Asheville should not grow at all. Anywhere. Not downtown and not in the suburbs. If anyone wants to build anything taller than your average doghouse in Asheville, the cry goes out that "We're not Atlanta!!" and thus that the project is unsuited to the city. This is the main objection to the Ellington. There are serious calls for a moratorium to growth lately, too. You can tell who's in favor of the moratorium because they're the ones driving around with the "Welcome to Asheville. Now go home." and "Don't move here." bumper stickers on their cars.

Of course, the NIMBY's forget that Asheville stopped trying to be a sleepy little town 80 years ago, and was building mid-rises and high-rises left and right throughout the 1920's, up until the Depression hit and knocked our economy into a 50 year torpor. More than one building downtown was planned as a skyscraper, in fact, and was under construction when the stock market crashed and forced construction to come to a halt. This is why the Grove Arcade, a shopping mall that takes up an entire block, does not boast the 14-story tower originally planned for it, and why the S&W Cafeteria building, a 3-story art deco masterpiece, is not top-heavy with between ten and twenty floors of office space.

[seaskyfan]

I think the building looks pretty cool. If you ever saw "Radio Days" it looks like where Irene and Roger may have lived.

[jetsetter]

I like it. Many of the new towers being built seem to be devoid of any character, this new tower does have character. It is unique and draws upon a great style of architecture.

[Atlguy33]

I had not seen that website before. I now like the building even more than before. Sadly... I can't help but think it's too good to be true. Something will probably derail it.

[Upward]

Will that be the tallest building in town?

[hauntedheadnc]

I had not seen that website before. I now like the building even more than before. Sadly... I can't help but think it's too good to be true. Something will probably derail it.

Well, so far it's passing its reviews with flying colors. I think at this point the only thing that could derail it would be it just not being economically feasible. The argument that growth downtown provides an alternative to sprawl in the county really seems to be resonating with officials on all levels in Asheville and Buncombe County.

Will that be the tallest building in town?

By the numbers it may be, but it will appear to be level with what is now the tallest, because that building, the BB&T Building, stands at the top of a hill and this building will stand further down the slope.

As always, thanks for your input, everyone.

[JManc]

i really like this building and hopefully they'll incorporate that old routemaster bus in there somehow.

[hauntedheadnc]

When I was downtown last, I saw a sign announcing that it will be reopening soon. I hope the coffee is better this time around.

[borgo100]

Looks nice!

Toronto has a 48 storey "art deco" building going up too, currently u/c: http://www.pembertongroup.com/content/uptown_home.htm
http://www.urbandb.com/canada/ontario/toronto/uptown_condo_rendering.jpg

i love this building, but the site is a sad story

"The site was sold to developers who planned to replace it with a condo. On December 2003 Priestly Demolition was engaged in demolishing the structure, when a large section of the building collapsed. A large shovel had been excavating around the base of the structure, when the operator accidentally clipped a pair of steel support beams. No workers were hurt, but the piles of bricks fell on the neighbouring Yorkville English Academy. Fourteen people in the school were injured and one, Augusto Cesar Mejia Sous, a 27 year old Costa Rican, was killed. After a government investigation lasting almost a year, six charges were laid in the incident."

[elsonic]

http://www.downtownnorfolk.org/files/photos/e9b3f94d.jpg

empirestatish

[hauntedheadnc]

For anyone who might be following along, this building passed another review, this time unanimously. The last stop is City Council approval and then the cranes move in for the duration.

[hauntedheadnc]

In case anyone remembers this thread, this building was approved by the city council after a month of dithering, and asking the developers to shorten it by thirty feet. They did, brought back their renderings showing the shortened building, which caused the council to decide that shortening it didn't do anything noticeable for the effect. So, in the end, they approved the original design. It is expected to be completed by 2010.

Weirdly enough, despite the fact that this will be an extremely upscale luxury development, it will donate about $1.5 million toward the construction of affordable housing in and near downtown. This is in addition to a deal the county worked out with the developers that channels all the county taxes the building would pay, about $420,000, into a fund for affordable housing. This means that this building alone will put $1.5 million toward affordable housing when all of its condos are sold, $420,000 into affordable housing every year, and it will also contribute a slight amount again every time one of its condos is sold for the next 70 years.

[ltsmotorsport]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/25/91571517_9759540403.jpg
Courtesy hanneorla from flickr

http://www.turnerconstruction.com/sacramento/files_sacramento/US-Bank-Plaza-Tower.jpg
Courtesy Turner Construction


The Park Plaza Tower (formerly US Bank Building) in Sacramento is a neo deco design built in the early 90's. The design itself is pretty good, but the color is too orange, IMO.

[BUILDIT]

http://www.downtownnorfolk.org/files/photos/e9b3f94d.jpg

empirestatish

I hate when the parking deck gets extended outward to fill the block though, creates a lot of dead space on the block unless it is filled with retail

[DowntownDweller]

Hmm.. Any construction updates? I think its design is great in this day and age of modernism/abstract designs.