Midwest Cities Eviscerated By Expressways & "Urban Renewal": 1950 vs. Today sliders

[Dr Nevergold]

I already said what I wanted to say. LOL Nothing new to add.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease

I hate to say it, but the architectural illiteracy on this forum is astonishing. And on a thread devoted specifically to the pitfalls of historic destruction of our built environment. Talk about irony.

Thanks for catching us up on self-designated superiority.

Next you'll lecture us on preservation of freeways and roadside googie architecture.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Dr Nevergold

Why is modern or international architecture so hated? There isn't any new construction of it, and the building designs are ones I actually have come to like. It represents an era where lines and simplified shapes became more important than the fine detail. It signified a major change.

There's value in that type of architecture, and I rather enjoy the Boston City Hall. If you destroy it, it'll destroy that history just like other history that has been lost in the more distant past. Wishing for Boston City Hall to come down is no more different of a mistake than the modernists who wanted to hull out older city buildings to build this modernist architecture.

I say keep it, preserve it, and build around it elsewhere.

Preserving the "distant past" is only partly about history. It's more about preserving quality. Or the honest kind is...some others use it as a convenient excuse for nimbyism.

[DenseCityPlease]

Originally Posted by mhays

Next you'll lecture us on preservation of freeways and roadside googie architecture.

Actually it's funny you should bring that up mhays. I know you were joking and trying to be absurd, but in Southern California - the spiritual home of roadside googie architecure - the last 10 years or so have seen a seismic shift in the way these signs and graphics are regarded.

Recently there have been some high profile and well received retrospective art exhibitions as LACMA, MOCA, and other museums pairing midcentury modern homes, furniture, and roadside googie architecture together. 60 years on, the stuff is less and less considered shameful and increasingly coming to be taken VERY seriously within the spectrum of 20th century design.

Hell, the city of Palm Springs has built an entire branding juggernaut around the culture, architecture, and art of midcentury modernism and is now, as a result, one of the most high profile gay and artist enclaves in the entire country.

[The_Architect]

Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease

But, setting that issue aside, Boston City Hall is a late midcentury architectural masterpiece and surely one of the two or three best examples of brutalism on the North American continent.

I can think of 3 better examples of Brutalism in Toronto alone.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yes. with some notable exceptions like new orleans, southeast city cores were generally not as intensely developed as their midwest counterparts in the pre-war era. so when the post-war wrecking ball came swinging around, their was simply less to lose.

On the other hand, having so little to begin with makes losing what they did even more tragic. In Miami's case the bombing out of the W and especially NW sides of the downtown core for I-95 was just nuts. Look at the NW corner of the 2nd pic in this link. Overtown was once as thriving and dense or even denser than Little Havana (W of Downtown in the current pic) but after I-95's construction it became a bombed out ghetto. And the damage was actually much worse about a half mile north of that pic.
http://iqc.ou.edu/2014/12/18/60yrssoutheast/

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by The_Architect

I can think of 3 better examples of Brutalism in Toronto alone.

Yeah, Montreal as well:

reddit


unusual-architecture.com

[Centropolis]

i think brutalism would have been regarded as so much more successful had it incorporated more organic/green contrasts like the montreal example. sort of brutalism as a geologic construction. instead, its regarded as being dehumanizing, or something.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i think brutalism would have been regarded as so much more successful had it incorporated more organic/green contrasts like the montreal example. sort of brutalism as a geologic construction. instead, its regarded as being dehumanizing, or something.

I think brutalism is terrible.

The only people that like it are architecture snobs, like art snobs or music snobs.

They like it because it is bad. There is nothing wrong with traditional architecture it looks and works much better than modern desings.

[dc_denizen]

Brutalism (yes, I've seen My Architect):



link



link



link

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by mhays

Next you'll lecture us on preservation of... roadside googie architecture.

...aaaaand you just proved his point. Well done.

[mhays]

If a limb is a point, you're both welcome to it!

[DenseCityPlease]

Look. The only point here is that it's a shame to be so militantly anti-automobile that you refuse to acknowledge anything of any lasting value was built between the years 1945 and 2000.

I'm certainly not going to change anyone's mind who feels this way, so with that I'll bow out of this thread before it gets derailed any more. Different strokes for different folks. Just keep your hands off Boston City Hall!

[mhays]

Where did you get that? There's a TON of lasting value built during that period. I deeply love much of it. But it's stuff that ties into the city around it. It's not ugly dysfunctional stuff saved only because it's an example of something and a few intellectuals like it.

[Dr Nevergold]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Yeah, Montreal as well:

reddit


unusual-architecture.com

Great example of a structure I rather like.

[chris08876]

Urban warfare must be a nightmare in a town that's full of brutalist structures. Everything looks like a bunker. That Montreal structure, o my, a nightmare.

[Sun]

Regarding specific structures preservation is tricky, particularly when there is a driving force of "new" and potentially 'better'/newer/more profitable uses for the site. You can't preserve everything so what do you preserve?

I think it's character.
I think it's relevance.
I think it's the ones that exemplify a design style or societal/cultural manifestation of the time.

I don't think it's beauty.

This hideous structure has recently been added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and I am extremely thankful for it:

Cedar Riverside Plaza Minneapolis

Though absolutely fugly (in my opinion), it has so much character it hurts! It's inescapably relevant (the amount of people living in/using the space is significant), and it embodies Brutalism and an era in which this style of architecture and planning seemed to be a good idea to some.

[Dr Nevergold]

The colour is what makes the building in Minneapolis a little, how shall we say, tacky. I'd prefer it to be concrete.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

DC, I might be misunderstanding your comment, and I can't speak for other places, but I think you're not giving St. Louis' pre-renewal fabric the credit it deserves. Before it was cleared for the Arch, the St. Louis riverfront, for example, held the largest collection of cast-iron facades in the US outside of NYC. And with the exception of the earliest creole cottages that were quickly replaced by masonry structures as the city grew, wood-frame cottages were all but nonexistent in St. Louis, particularly after the great fire in 1849. We've lost our share of beautiful stone- and marble-faced row houses, in addition to quite a few significant and monumental downtown buildings. Not saying NYC hasn't lost more in terms of shear numbers—obviously it has. But in terms of materials (brick, stone, terra cotta, etc.) St. Louis' losses are absolutely not easily recreated today.

Ok good point, but I still don't think it compares to NYC's losses (or Paris's). Would you say it would have been equivalent to the loss of Over the Rhine in Cincinnati? This is indeed sad.

In NYC, Penn Station could have been the US' Pantheon, 1000-2000 years from now it should have been standing for tourists to look at. Same for many of the park avenue mansions. Instead, gone in a short 60 years. These buildings would be almost impossible to recreate now, the sheer volume of stone alone.

We could easily recreate the urban experience these pics show in most US cities, if not the architecture. 2-3 story rowhouses and small apartments are very easy to build. Sure they would lack the cast-iron, but from a functionally urbanist standpoint, they would be identical. Stapleton in Denver, Playa Vista in LA, Mission bay district in SF, show the way forward.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Ok good point, but I still don't think it compares to NYC's losses (or Paris's). Would you say it would have been equivalent to the loss of Over the Rhine in Cincinnati? This is indeed sad.

In NYC, Penn Station could have been the US' Pantheon, 1000-2000 years from now it should have been standing for tourists to look at. Same for many of the park avenue mansions. Instead, gone in a short 60 years. These buildings would be almost impossible to recreate now, the sheer volume of stone alone.

We could easily recreate the urban experience these pics show in most US cities, if not the architecture. 2-3 story rowhouses and small apartments are very easy to build. Sure they would lack the cast-iron, but from a functionally urbanist standpoint, they would be identical. Stapleton in Denver, Playa Vista in LA, Mission bay district in SF, show the way forward.

All the money those damn robber baron's made and what is left to show for it? A crumbling society in many cases.

One of the Mellon's mansions in Pittsburgh; 65 rooms, estimated at 20,000+ sq ft. It was torn down after 30 years. Not for any reason. They probably just got bored with it.


So much has been torn down; What good is all that wealth?