tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post3992691801646059467..comments2024-03-14T16:57:29.045-04:00Comments on Whisky Prajer: The Dineen Building, at Adelaide and Yonge Streetdpreimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09905531259256800022noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post-52229421826164200302016-05-16T20:23:10.465-04:002016-05-16T20:23:10.465-04:00Wups -- getting sloppy.Wups -- <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/architecture/the-brutalist-truth-1960s-concrete-is-part-of-history/article29570488/" rel="nofollow">getting sloppy</a>.dpreimerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09905531259256800022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post-63175652751166266142016-05-16T20:20:54.137-04:002016-05-16T20:20:54.137-04:00Well, you are momentarily off the hook re: Wall St...Well, you are momentarily off the hook re: Wall Street and environs -- but only for the moment.<br /><br />As for the Lumsden -- not enough slab in the concrete to qualify for "Brutalism" I'll grant you. But I daresay he paved (ha!) the way. Funny how preservationists are keen on the style these days. Winnipeg has a "<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/architecture/the-brutalist-truth-1960s-concrete-is-part-of-history/article29570488/>public safety building</a>," where folks paid their parking tickets and bailed out miscreant loved ones, that some have tried to qualify as a heritage site. I'm rather fond of the place myself, but bringing it into the current century will require significant expenditure. I can understand why some are fond of the wrecking ball -- so long as they don't propose replacing the structure with something glassy.dpreimerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09905531259256800022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post-73695024929280889962016-05-16T06:27:02.227-04:002016-05-16T06:27:02.227-04:00Been meaning to come back to this for a while. It ...Been meaning to come back to this for a while. It provokes me to think how little I know the cities I’ve known best, Baltimore and D.C., and how much less still I know the one — city of cities — I live in now.<br /><br />I should be able to hazard a rough answer whether there are discount shoe stores and sports nutrition franchises flanking Wall St., since it hasn’t been long since I was down there. But my powers of observation never feel adequate to lower Manhattan. Always a bit bewildered (in finest anti-literal use of the word) walking around there. Over here in central Queens, I’m very much a foreigner, but I don’t feel like I’m from another planet.<br /><br />On the fascinating Lumsden Bldg., briefly: definitely can’t be called brutalist, as brutalism refers not just to exposed concrete but, most directly, to a quality of finish (‘unfinished’ finish, you could say) of exposed concrete, and to a larger reaction in modernism that represents among other things a specific rejection of just what the Lumsden does, which is to be masonry-like on the surface even though it’s a form of steel rather than masonry construction. But that’s not to say that there might not be interesting historical lines to be traced between the peculiar instances of exposed-concrete skin in a skyscraper like the Lumsden, designed at beginning of the twentieth century on the cusp of modernism’s flowering, and the turn to a raw-er raw-ness in use of concrete among some second-generation modernists later (post-WW2, perhaps significantly) in the century. Started looking into it just a bit after first reading this post, but haven’t really had opportunity to dig. Might try to get a Baltimore architect I’m acquainted with, a guy who takes a good deal of interest in the loss of brutalist landmarks proceeding apace these days, to suggest where to go with that if I can come back to it.paul bowmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17409615610994443652noreply@blogger.com