Drawing by Leon Krier. Below is the foreward to Léon Krier’s book The Architecture of Community (2009), which I posted on my blog in 2020. Born in Luxembourg, Krier, is, of course, among the foremost thinkers about architecture and city planning. Above his foreward I posted my favorite from his collection of drawings that illustrate principles via the conundrums faced by architects and city planners. Here is the foreward to Krier’s masterful volume: *** Recently, a delegation of developers and planners from Shanghai and Singapore visited Poundbury, the new town I have been master-planning f ..read more

Court of Honor at center of World’s Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, 1893. Henry Hope Reed, who wrote The Golden City in 1959 and led the opposition to modern architecture in the mid-20th century and helped to found the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art in 1968 (originally called Classical America), was not totally infallable. In his exaltation of Greco-Roman classical styles, he fell into an ill-fated opposition to Gothic and other styles that were opposed by architects in the previous two or three centuries. This was a mistake, and it somewhat undermined his strength in arguin ..read more

Key Bridge before it was struck by a huge freighter in March 2024. (William Sherman:Getty Images) President Biden has said he will rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, over the Papatsco River leading into the Port of Baltimore, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The bridge, completed in 1977, was hit by a freighter that lost its steering on Monday night. As of this writing, six men filling potholes on the bridge are still missing and, sadly, presumed dead. The Key was a queen of the art of infrastructure, a demonstration that utility can be beautiful. And so the president should ..read more

Providence Place glimpsed between buildings in downtown Providence. (Photo by author) I don’t have any deep inside knowledge (or shallow inside knowledge) of whether the downtown mall in my town, Providence Place, is going down the tubes soon. Still, my friend Will Morgan, who is also a local architecture critic, a rival of sorts, thinks it is, or thinks it might be. So, since I have a sentimental attachment to the thing, I wrote a reply to his piece on the GoLocalProv website. Here it is, with some minor changes: *** Overall a very nice piece, Will. I agree that the mall has been throu ..read more

Adeline Slicer House (1887) still looks about the same as in 2003. (Photo by David Brussat.) Little Compton’s town council will soon receive advice from this corner that was good when originally delivered in 2003, in my Journal column of Aug. 28 of that year as part of my “Outside Providence” series. The series looked at efforts in the other 38 cities and towns to maintain their historical character. Dr. Ara Sadaniantz asked me to offer the council advice on whether to adopt a proposed historic district for the Commons, along with a regime for rewarding good stewardship with plaques. I have ..read more

The Read-Ott Mansion, 97 Walcott St., Quality Hill, Pawtucket, R.I. The headline of this post is the same as when I wrote it as my weekly column for the Providence Journal in 2008. The Read-Ott Mansion was at a most dire risk of demolition then, and remains so now. Its owner, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church of Pawtucket, is about to tear it down. True, it has had another 16 years of grace. In the name of the Virgin Mary, the church should cease and desist. Here is the conclusion of critic Will Morgan’s recent GoLocalProv piece, with more illustrations: Sadly, this is ..read more

Destruction in Gaza, a place Palestinians cannot enjoy and cannot escape. (Reuters) I occasionally devote a blog to cities devastated by war or natural disaster, showing how beautiful the place used to be (and to some extent may still be) as disaster consumes its ancient buildings. In most cases, the allure of places such as Beirut and Lviv, in Ukraine, is often well known by Western publics. Not so with Gaza, controlled by the terror group Hamas. Our mind’s eye – myself included – is taught to believe that Gaza is a hellhole and has been since the Israelis pulled out in 2005 (which is conve ..read more

Top levels, including roof terrace, of Windsor Tower, one of 13 in Tudor City. (Wikipedia) I had lunch today (by now, yesterday) at Maven’s, a newly opened Jewish delicatessen in that plaza just off Hope Street as it becomes East Avenue, in Pawtucket. I’ve eaten there once before with my wife, Victoria – delicious, though not without some small kinks to be worked out – and this time I was by myself and talked with my table neighbor. We spoke of Manhattan, and he told me he’d once lived in Tudor City, near the United Nations complex. I said I was familiar with the name but not with its appear ..read more

Three houses on Angell Street, in Providence, whose proposed demolition is considered mysterious. Recent photograph of the three vacant houses whose demolition may be imminent. Someone has it in for a row of decent old houses on Angell Street. Specifically, they are Nos. 209, 211 and 217. They should be preserved. Their preservation should be second nature at every level of policy in Providence. Yet demolition permits are, according to the Providence Journal, in the works for all three – no one seems to know who applied for them, or for what purpose – and so the houses are sitting ducks aw ..read more

Brick and cobblestone medallion on Westminster Street, in Providence. (GoLocalProv.com) Providence Mayor Smiley has smudged a frown on the beauty of downtown. He has demolished the decorative brick and stonework at the intersection of Westminster and Dorrance streets. This is the intersection, part of former Mayor Paolino’s excellent redesign of the old “Westminster Mall” as a street in the 1980s, and popularized by network television coverage of the city’s “dancing cop,” Tony Lepore, who used to mix traffic control with dance to entertain pedestrians (and frustrate drivers) at that intersec ..read more