I love cities, I love the daytime hustle and bustle and the ease of access of everything. I also love the myriad of things to do at night. Yet, my interactions with cities have been largely shaped by the New York City of my Childhood and the New Orleans I knew as an adult. In the 1980s and early 1990s when we used to drive into New York from Long Island it was always a place of mixed emotions. It was tall and grand with countless places to see and visit, but danger seemed to lurk around the corner. We didn’t take the subways, we took busses, and we never walked down dark alleys or empty streets. When someone asked you something on the street you kept your head down and kept on moving, you never knew if they were really in need or pulling some sort of grift. In addition, you never went into Central Park at night, nature was not to be trusted — it provided wonderful places for people to hide and attack you. When I moved to New Orleans for college my conception of a city changed. The fear and danger were still there, but I [...]
The New York Times has a brief article about a church that could not afford to expand on their historic structure, and so instead worked a deal with a developer to get space under a new highrise. In addition, neighborhood improvements were also carried out. The article poses the most poignant question that preservationists must face: is the historic architectural fabric more important than the quality of life of those who inhabit the spaces? This question is really the crux of modern preservation. With modern laws and sensibilities homes and structures relating to famous people will be saved and preserved, it is the fabric and architectural experiments of the nameless faceless crowd that really make up our architecturally history and too often they are pushed aside for progress. In the case of this article it IS sad to see such an interesting structure fade into the past, but then again is it worse to see a community die around a building like this? The issue here comes down to a matter of means, if it was possible the church should have found a developed willing to build a building that would create architectural interest and install a plaque/display about the [...]