Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Wednesday, June 30. 2010

Architectural Juxtaposition: Newport Edition


No photo dump today; just this one pic from the Cliff Walk of what is now part of the campus of Salve Regina College in Newport. The family of the owner donated the grand if gloomy cottage overlooking the ocean to the college which now owns some good hunks of priceless Newport real estate.


Naturally, they needed more space and had to build that thing on the left in a style I refer to as Jesuit-Stalinist. Note absence of any windows facing the sea - and the flat roof which always is a genius idea on the rainy, snowy, and stormy Northeast coast.


Relevant, from Driscoll: Corbu: The Meshugeneh Man Who Built ‘The Machine for Living In’

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 05:06 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Bird Dog - a pox on those architects and building committees that came up wth and perpetuated the Jesuit-Stalinist model. What happened to our nation's common sense after World War Two when it came to such architecture?

Glad to see the Olyympic Peninsula isn't the only place in the country under gloomy gray skies seemingly forever, though I do enjoy the 55 degree temperatures.
#1 Old Salt on 2010-06-30 06:58 (Reply)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture

Gramsci and the Franklin School are said to've held in high esteem the demoralization value of ugly public-space art.
#2 buddy larsen on 2010-06-30 10:39 (Reply)
My Mom's brother, Uncle Mike (a Jesuit and an architect - no kidding) would be appalled at that building.

As am I. What were they thinking?
#3 Tom Francis on 2010-06-30 10:56 (Reply)
As a grad of Salve, I have to agree. We all wondered what the thinking was around those buildings. The freshman woman's dorm is worse. As to no windows facing the sea, the side windows give great views although when I was an undergrad the ratio of women to men was 5-1. Most of my staring was directed indoors.
#4 Greg on 2010-06-30 13:18 (Reply)
Never did understand the Fuehrer-Bunkers. Has the ability to fit a building to its site been completely lost?

You should see the monstrosities my church's proposed architects are coming up with to replace a perfectly charming small, 19th-C clapboard building. The proposals look like bad shopping malls. One of them had a grand (though ugly) entrance facing a high-speed road, from which side no one ever would be approaching on foot. On the back side, an entrance from the porte-cochere led the visitor first through a fire stair landing, then past restrooms and a janitor's closet via a poky little hall, before dumping him into the grand two-level atrium that faced the highway in front. It's as if they took second-rate bank-lobby ideas and plunked them down on a piece of church property, then added a nave on one end.

Are there actually architecture schools churning these people out?
#5 Texan99 (Link) on 2010-06-30 14:02 (Reply)
Jesuit-Stalinist? Growing up, I thought that someone from the Archdiocese of Hartford invented that style . . .

I have two neighbor children at Salve, BTW. They're both doing well, and love the experience. Both are young capitalists, er, business majors.

They tried to drive me away in the 50's and 60's with the architecture, and then thought "guitar Masses" (in English, no less) would finish me off. However, I've managed to hang in there . . .

If some parish ever makes the mistake of appointing me music director, the first service after I install the Hammond B-3 organ, with a few Leslie speaker systems oughta tear the roof off the sucka. Maybe I can get Sippican to tune up the building afterward!
#6 Steve in CT on 2010-06-30 19:17 (Reply)

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