There is a loft apartment for sale for over $2 million in an adaptively reused industrial building in the Mill District with a river view, near but not in, downtown Minneapolis (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/700-S-2nd-St-W70-Minneapolis-MN-55401/61624273_zpid/). Just try to wrap your mind around that, my elite, coastal friends. Let’s unpack this a bit. First, this means that some broker, who presumably knows the Minneapolis market thinks they can get over $2 million for an apartment, not a McMansion, not even a house – but an apartment in a dense-ish urban neighborhood in the mid-west. It also means that there are likely at least a couple of dozen people in the metro who have the capacity to come up with, let’s say $450,000 cash and the income to support a monthly mortgage payment (without taxes and operating costs) of roughly $13,000!!!!! And those are people want to live in a loft and not a single-family home. And, not in New York, or even Chicago. This is true, in a city where the conventional wisdom has given the downtown up for dead in the wake of the pandemic and the reaction to the murder of a Black citizen by a white police officer that became national news. At the same time, walking around the Nicolette Mall, once the 100% location in Minneapolis (and only a few hundred yards from that expensive loft), it is obvious that it is no longer the city’s commercial center.
What, my friends, is happening here?
The Mill District
It’s nuts. The forces of 21st century capitalism have arbitrarily abandoned the traditional downtown, while market preferences have moved slightly, and only slightly, elsewhere. This is the destruction of hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate value on what can only be described as a post-pandemic whim. The action has moved only blocks away – with a couple of adjacent neighborhoods booming with activity. Some of this is as a result of work from home – with bobos (bourgeois bohemians) not wanting to get out of their pajamas and go to work in proximity with other people. Some of it is racism, in the wake of the George Floyd reckoning – a modern incarnation of white flight. What’s particularly interesting about downtown Minneapolis is the havoc real estate capitalism has wreaked on the historic downtown. There aren’t many office buildings downtown that date to before the 80’s. Most of the office building stock is quite modern (glass and steel). There are very few early 20th century masonry commercial structures left in the downtown. I would imagine part of the current market rejection of downtown is the characterlessness and soullessness of the efficient international style of commercial architecture from the period of 1980-2000. That emptiness of the exterior envelope is also reflected in the working environment contained inside these buildings – with most people employed in cubicles or open spaces. You certainly can’t blame middle management for wanting to abandon those white-collar industrial working conditions. Continue reading →
Why does everyplace claim to be “world class?” And what does that even mean? In introducing Wynton Marsalis’ tuba concerto, Aubrey Foard, its principal tubist, asserted that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was one of best in the world. Why did he feel the need to point that out? Why isn’t it good enough to be just a very fine ensemble. Baltimore is a really nice place, with some great neighborhoods and important legacy institutions – and it has clearly spent billions and billions of dollars on big projects trying to be a “world class” something. There is a sense it which the city elders appear to be trying way too hard, and don’t have confidence in the city’s virtues.
My first trip to Baltimore was probably in 1968 for Super Bowl III, in which the favored Colts lost to the NY Jets 16-7 (I remember being at the game, the details I had to look up). The business my dad worked for had printed the game tickets, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad tickets we used to get back and forth to the game. I felt like a 12-year-old big macher. In the 90’s, the Downtown Baltimore Partnership was an early adopter of the Grand Central Partnership downtown management model, of which I was a part, and we visited then. Inner Harbor and Camden Yards were breakthrough urban revitalization projects at that time. The innovating commercial development urban revitalization firm, Rouse Companies was founded in Baltimore.
Baltimore is known for its neighborhoods of row houses and as the home of Johns Hopkins University, which is, among other things, a bio-medical behemoth, and the largest beneficiary of the largess of one Michael R. Bloomberg. Hopkins has annual revenues of around $7 billion. Baltimore was historically the major mid-Atlantic port, with access to the nation’s interior via the mighty Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, through the Harper’s Ferry gap in the Appalachians. The downtown has a fine collection of the majestic former homes of long-gone financial institutions. A couple of major finance firms continue to be headquartered there. Its population maxed out at about a million souls in 1950. The subsequent decades were not kind to the city, which, in additional to experiencing the same urban traumas as other eastern cities, became a satellite to the metastasizing center of the American empire, Washington, D.C. Continue reading →
Environmental and Community Activism, Politics and Greed
By: Tom Fox
Rutgers University Press 2024
The looming question about the Hudson River Park has long been obvious. Why isn’t it better? In his book, Creating the Hudson River Park, environmental activist, Tom Fox tells us why, in copious, gruesome detail. For those of us concerned about creating and maintaining great public spaces the issues are laid out clearly, fairly, and with specificity in this excellent volume. It is an absolutely essential contribution to the literature of public space-making in America. Tom has gone deeply into the archives to tell as much as possible of the now 70-year history of this highly visible project. Perhaps most remarkably, he fairly explains the subjects, giving the competing ideas of those over the years who have (fervently) not agreed with him their due. Most of those concerns are ones that face the development or restoration of any large and/or highly visible public space.
The answer as to why the park isn’t better is because it is the product of decades of comprises that were the result of endless fighting over the shape of the park and the adjacent highway. The amount of conflict involved in the creation of the park is both heartbreaking and depressing. It may sound naïve, but “why can’t we all just get along?” The park’s origin was in the conflict over Westway – a highway cum real estate development plan concocted in the shadow of the era of Robert Moses that proposed to replace the southern portion of the West Side (Miller) Highway with an underground expressway, topped with new construction and public space adjacent to the Hudson River on Manhattan’s West Side. So, controversy is unfortunately in its DNA. The project was stopped as the result of the early use of Federal environmental legislation and regulation enforced by legal action brought by private citizens and non-profit organizations. Continue reading →
Detroit has received lots of positive attention in the urbanist community for a wide range of positive developments. On my first overnight trip to the city post-pandemic I found lots of evidence of good thinking — but at the same time not many people. Yes, it was Friday and the weather was cold and wet, but the streets were empty
Here are some photos I took on my walk.
Yes, Detroit remains car-centric.
Walking down Woodward Avenue, there was no easy way to get to the Riverwalk. You came to a hardscaped park, with few amenities.
It seemed great when the book “Tactical Urbanism” was published in in 2015. Here were a bunch of placemaking ideas that were easy to understand and implement. The first chapter was a promising summary of the principles of placemaking developed over the prior three decades. The rest of the book felt kind of skimpy – the case studies it described weren’t terribly impressive or interesting, but they were certainly a step in the right direction. And then tactical urbanism came to my block.
During COVID, New York City’s Open Streets program arrived on 103rd Street between Central Park and Riverside Park. Two metal barricades appeared at the end of each block each morning with signs noting that no through traffic was allowed, and that the speed limit was five miles an hour. 103rd came to a T intersection at each park – limiting its utility to through traffic. While no one was using the street bed to hang out in, and the street closing complicated bringing a Zipcar around from my local parking garage to my front door, I did enjoy the additional open space for walking the dog. I noticed over the years an occasional lame event advertised for the street being put on by “Park to Park 103/Open Streets.
Clyde Warren Park in Dallas works. A recent visit, more than ten years after its opening, showed it to be heavily used and reasonably well managed. On a weekday afternoon the park had quite a few visitors, including lots of children. The park has most of the elements that make public spaces successful:
Shade – essential in the southwest
Playgrounds. The one here is very cleverly designed and attractive – including fun water features
Lawns
Food kiosks and restaurants
Water features
Regular programming
Movable chairs
Adequate maintenance
As we have written ad nauseum, there are so many new public space projects, and so few of them are successful. Clyde Warren was built over a highway culvert – a category of assignment that has proved particularly challenging for public space planners over the last couple of decades. Building over a highway cut can be an essential move in re-knitting a downtown together. But doing it right is a tough assignment. The designers of Clyde Warren, The Office of James Burnett, got what animates a public space on a deep level that seems to elude almost all landscape architects and public officials. After ten years, Clyde Warren is still performing well – attracting a broad swath of users. On the day we visited a large portion of the park was closed for a private event – but there was still quite a bit of space available to the casual visitor.
A good contrast with Clyde Warren is another public space in the southwest, Santa Fe’s Railyard Park of about the same vintage – which remains virtually unused, despite quite a bit of interesting development around it. The arts district of downtown Dallas is not the most promising or hospitable of environments for a public space. Downtown Fort Worth is way more walkable, human scaled and attractive. The surrounding streetscape to Clyde Warren is towers and institutions set back from the street – essentially bleak, unwalkable and car oriented. Prominent among the high design structures of the arts district (Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster) are a large number of parking structures. But somehow, pedestrians find their way to the two large blocks that constitute Clyde Warren — most likely from the offices and residential towers that overlook the park.
The nonprofit that operates the park, The Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, has an operating budget of around $15 million. The biggest challenge for public spaces with water features is keeping them running. And the features at Clyde Warren are complicated and fun to watch. The Foundation seems to have the resources to keep things running. The water features are open for kids (and adults) to splash around in – which is just great, and unfortunately not standard practice. These water features are complex and they work. Kudos to the park’s managers.
That not-withstanding, the Foundation appears to contract out for the park’s maintenance, and it shows. Outsourced maintenance is never as detailed oriented and perfectionist or as highly motivated, well-compensated internally managed staff. The park demonstrates a lot of wear from high use and is not kept to the high standards of Bryant Park. The lawn panels are need aeration and reseeding. The horticultural elements are designed for low maintenance and aren’t well maintained even given that. They don’t have the kind of visual pop that a public space of this caliber really ought to have. Some of the arts institution facilities in the district have much more imaginative and appealing plantings nearby.
Big Belly trash receptacles are in use – which are a bête noire of mine. They are a mark of managerial laziness. The design is awful – they are a squat box. The labor they supposedly save, is labor that the park really needs. Staff dumping out the trash bid are a visible mark of social order. Visitors want to see people working in the park – maintaining the horticultural elements and emptying the trash bins. It contributes to the perception of public safety.
But those issues aside, Clyde Warren Park, is a clear model for others to follow as to what makes a park lively and attractive. The built environment in downtown Dallas makes creating lively public spaces a challenging task, and so the park’s success is even more a particular achievement.
The hostile environment of a highway overpass, makes the success of Clyde Warren even more of an achievement.
The fabulous water feature amidst the forbidding neighboring towers. One of them was once famous for hostile reflection of the Texas sun into the neighboring sculpture park.
A close up of the water feature.
Contract worker — looking disconsolate.
The lawn is beat. Needs aeration and reseeding.
Low maintenance shrubs. Boring.
The dreaded Big Bellies. Ugly and bad.
And…movable chairs.
A shade structure. Essential in the southwest — along with the trees.
Signs of consistent programming. Probably not enough though to really contribute to the space’s animation. In a space in a downtown of this size, daily programming is essential to energizing the park.
Fantastic playground, even though its play equipment is liability lawyer-proof in design.
Wonderful climbing structure.
An adjacent dog park. A great move!
Shade and movable chairs contribute to the attractiveness of the space.
Among American cities, Charleston and Santa Fe have unique characters – and not surprisingly are both important tourist destinations, as well as significant housing markets for second and retirement homes. They are in such high demand because they have maintained a remarkable sense of place, in a country with a limited number of great places urban places. As I have been maintaining, American needs more great places in order to attract people from more expensive locations to less expensive ones – lowering housing costs while at the same time promoting economic development and equity. What can be learned from these two attractive places?
I have been going to both cities annually for decades. Charleston, which had a population of 70,000 in 1980, now has 154,000 people. It hosted 2.2 million visitors in 1976 and 7.25 million visitors last year. Of course, Charleston had the benefit for more than two decades of one of America’s best mayors in Joe Riley, who skillfully leveraged the city’s substantial assets to make it both a desirable place to live and a favored destination. At the heart of those assets is a dazzling collection of well-preserved and restored 18th Century homes, a large number of which are available for tourists to visit. Those homes are physical evidence of Charleston’s place as a successful port and agricultural and religious center in Colonial America, one of the colonies’ largest cities. Charleston is also an important site for Black America, being a hub of the slave trade, a home for successful plantation and slave owners and the location of the opening salvos of the Civil War. It is also the location of the recent racially motivated mass shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church.
Joe Riley Waterfront Park
Charleston is the site of the Spoleto Festival USA, the largest arts event in the South, with dozens of performances of music, theater and dance, with the adjacent Piccolo Spoleto adding scores more of smaller performances and art displays for several weeks in June each year. Charleston is also, perhaps, the country’s fourth most interesting dining destination (after, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago), punching well above its weight in eating excellence. The dining scene was established by the late, great Louis Osteen, initially at the restaurant at the then new resort, Charleston Place, and later at his own establishment. That legacy was continued by Sean Brock at his Macready’s and Husk – who has recently decamped his principal operation to Nashville. Add to that the adjacency to wonderful beaches and historic plantations, and you have an unparalleled number of authentic attractions. This has generated a huge tourist draw, a luxury housing market (a house in downtown Charleston goes for around $1.4 million. Here is a typical “single” style house on the market for $4.5 million: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13-Church-St-Charleston-SC-29401/10904815_zpid/), and most recently a great deal of new multi-family housing development.
The Santa Fe Opera. Photo may justify the cost of upgrading to an iPhone 14
I spent the summer of 1977 living in Santa Fe. At the time it was a quiet, dusty town of old adobes, with a long history of artists and galleries of Western Art, a noted market for the arts and crafts of local indigenous people (particularly pottery, weaving and silverwork) – and the more recent establishment of a major opera company and chamber music festival. The city had a laid-back, counterculture, hippie-ish vibe, with a large highly visible white clad and turbaned group who called themselves “sikhs.” Ten Thousand Waves, a former marijuana farm, turned Japanese style spa was (and continues to be) a major attraction (with nighttime hot-tubbing a blissful experience). The opera performed during the summer in an unusual outdoor theater and was led by the remarkable John Crosby, one of our greatest cultural entrepreneurs. Santa Fe is also located in a region of incredible natural and cultural richness. Day trips can be taken to a number of notable pueblos of tribal nations, including Taos and Acoma – which provided the inspiration for the unique local adobe-based architectural style. The Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains provide a spectacular backdrop for both walking and driving adventures. Particularly unusual is the drive from Toas to the pilgrimage village of Chimayo, the famous High Road to Taos (actually, better driven from Taos, to get the best views as you drive downhill), with unparalleled vistas and fascinating small hamlets with a unusal religious observance, along the way. Distinctive about North New Mexico is a rich cultural history of native peoples going back centuries, with settlements like Bandelier and Puyé available for visits, over-layered with Spanish colonization dating to the late seventeenth century. There are few more interesting places in the US. The population of the city grew from 40,000 in 1980 was to 87,000 in 2020, with the number of tourists at 2.25 million in 2022.
As in Charleston, at the center of Santa Fe’s appeal is the preservation of historic structures – both commercial and residential. The Santa Fe style is an international phenomenon, with the construction and decoration of distinctive homes a major local economic generator. As in Charleston, standards for historic preservation are stringent. In addition, new development is required to conform to the prevailing architectural context. The downtown is chock-a-block with stores selling stuff to ornament an adobe home with appropriate accoutrements – as well as to adorn oneself with regulation western wear – boots, silver necklaces and belt buckles, along with the essential hats. When in 1977 I stood in the Plaza, which is the center of Santa Fe and looked out towards the deserts and mountains, I saw stars. Today one sees a myriad of lights from the thousands of homes built in the former quiet landscape and rising up rugged mountain slopes.
When I later became a regular visitor, our home base was Rancho Encantado, a kind of scruffy Ralph Lauren-esque ranch, with a horse corral and trail rides at its center – way outside of town. The rooms were in casitas (small houses), which were rustically decorated with locally made blankets and wooden crafts. The cuisine was that of New Mexico, for example enchiladas with either red or green chili – or both, washed down with a Margarita. The local New Mexican cooking is different than that in Mexico and Texas, and a treasured tradition. We were heartbroken when the Rancho was sold by the family who were it long-time owners. It was empty for a number of years, and then torn down a replaced with what is now an ultra-luxury Four Seasons resort.
Eldorado Hotel, Santa Fe
We’ve hopped around among hotels since then – including a long stretch at Bishop’s Lodge, also outside of town, but closer to the Plaza, and on the historic hacienda (also with a stable) of Archbishop Lamy, made famous by Willa Cather in “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” But it ultimately met a similar fate to Rancho Encatado – being substantially upscaled. This past summer we stayed at the Eldorado, once the premier luxury property in Santa Fe, built by the Zeckedorf family in the 1986, when the Bill Zeckendorf Jr., whose spouse, Nancy was closely associated with the opera, found that there was no modern, comfortable place to stay. The property is now owned by a local group called Heritage which advertises itself as being in the “cultural tourism” business. With the creation of a number of other higher end hotels in Santa Fe, Eldorado has been repositioned. But it has the best pool in the downtown (a major feature given New Mexico’s consistent hot, dry weather), and large comfortable rooms. The property features displays of local art – pottery and weaving— sourced directly from native people. Heritage’s business model for its ten New Mexico properties is to feature the art and food of the region. A magazine available to guests describes the chain’s local sourcing of pottery and weaving for display. The magazine had eye catching graphics and quality writing about some of the most worthwhile destinations in New Mexico. One fascinating article was about the importance of plazas as places in New Mexican towns. Heritage appears to have built its business on the distinctiveness of New Mexico places.
Both cities’ appeal is built on a foundation of historic preservation – and the creation of a sense of cultural authenticity. While the programs to preserve these assets is unusual in these places, many places across the country have the potential to make the most of their special cultures – if they were to choose to take that path. It seems to me that foregrounding the authentic distinctiveness of cities is a far more stable and cost-effective endeavor than building a convention center or sports stadium to attract visitors and new, economically valuable residents.
Building on the historic character of Charleston and Santa Fe, a local food culture was created, based in the one case on historic southern cooking and on the other on the wonderful Spanish colonial food culture. This isn’t necessarily about haute cuisine or Michelin starred restaurants, but more about high quality, unique local places. Although, fancy, expensive places can become the capstone of places with rich offerings based on local produce and traditions.
It’s also not about building grand hotels to attract visitors. Santa Fe has a number of mid-century modern motels (with matching neon signs) that attract both families and hipsters, as well as small, distinctive places without a lot of amenities in historic buildings. The grand dame of Santa Fe hotels is La Fonda, just off the plaza – which has lovely, atmospheric public spaces and small, simple charming rooms. Charleston did kick-start its status as a premier destination with Charleston Place, a large mid-rise property, with extensive ground floor retail. While originally developed as a mid-price hotel, with the popularity of Charleston as a destination, it has been repeatedly been repositioned and upscaled with changes in ownership.
Both cities have also promoted distinctive retail with a local flavor. The historic centers of both cities have small structures and small spaces – unattractive, for the most part, to national retailers. Lower King Street in Charleston, though, has both Ben Silver, a local haberdasher and probably the most high-quality retailer of traditional men’s wear in the country, and the recent influx of more of the usual national suspects – resulting in a dynamic mix of both well-known brands and local offerings. North King, long neglected, and long ago the area center for home furnishing and appliance retailers, attracted quirky restaurants in the 00’s, and has become something of a victim of its own success, with a rowdy night-life scene, that the City is now working to bring under control.
Santa Fe’s downtown has moved more and more upscale over the years, with local art galleries, jewelers, purveyors of native American art and jewelry, and western wear – driving out most sellers of tourist trinkets and similar shlock. Large format national retailers are relegated to shopping strips and centers outside of the historic downtown.
Theodora Park, Charleston, S.C.
Public spaces in both places are something of a mixed bag. Charleston sports the recent large and impressive Joseph Riley Waterfront Park as well as the small and near perfect Theodora Park. But generally, its Parks Department is underfunded, and places like the Battery & White Point Gardens are insufficiently well maintained and programmed. Santa Fe has one of the country’s most ill-conceived new public spaces, the Railroad Yard Park, which is lightly used. The Plaza, the city’s historic zocalo, right in the center of the old town, is extremely popular and hosts near continuous spontaneous programming (buskers, food vendors) – but appears over-used and shabby. One might conclude that these small cities have such strong identities and generally excellent built environments that high quality public spaces don’t need to be a part of their brand.
The character of Santa Fe and Charleston make them great places to visit. Because of its easy access to outdoor recreational activity, Santa Fe is particularly attractive to families. Both cities have brought historic preservation to the forefront, and have created formal and informal, public and private structures to maintain their characters and enhance their brands with significant results. Part of their success is no doubt due to the uniqueness of their historical appeal and the scarcity of other cities with similar strengths. But I have no doubt that the over-tourism of certain locations about which there is substantial and justifiable complaint (Venice being the prime example) is a result of there just not being enough great places to visit. Most other cities around the country, both large and small, have historical and/or cultural assets that they should be able to foreground. But getting there takes serious, comprehensive, thoughtful leadership. It is not just putting up a few signs or having a cute trolly running around town (and certainly not building a huge hotel or conference center). A historic district of character needs to be identified, preserved, maintained and expanded over time. The more authentic and unique, the more likely it is to become successful. The brand needs to be leveraged with appropriate cultural activities that create critical mass (not the occasional folk concert or once a year parade). But anyone visiting Santa Fe can see that the demand is there both among tourists and second/retirement home buyers for the kind of experience the city has carefully curated.
“characterized by the predominance of the curve over the straight line, by rich decoration and detail, by the frequent use of vegetal and other organic motifs, the taste for asymmetry, a refined aestheticism and dynamic shapes;”
rather than this:
“an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.”
The first describes “modernisma,” a design practice present in Barcelona from about 1890 to about 1920, very similar to Art Nouveau in France and Belgium, Jugendstil in Germany, Vienna Secession in Austria-Hungary, but deeply intertwined with Catalan nationalism. The most famous practitioner of moderisma was Antoni Gaudí, whose work from photographs prior to my traveling to Barcelona never spoke to me. In addition, the use of the term modernisma is confusing, as it has little to do what Americans call modernism.
A recent trip to Barcelona, however exposed me to the work of Lluís Domènech i Montaner, something of a predecessor of Gaudí, whose work I found beautiful and engaging. His spectacular Palau de Musica, Barcelona’s concert hall, got me to thinking about the humanism invoked by the foregrounding of natural materials and high craftsmanship. The Palau wows you with its masterly use of highly worked stained glass, tile, woodwork and plasterwork. It radiates the sense that sophisticated culture happens in this place. It speaks of the labor and skills of the many masters who shaped that plaster and carved the wood.
Ornate plasterwork at the Casa Batilló
How different this is from what became the International Style, which eliminated craftsmanship from its vocabulary, and backgrounded materials to the big ideas of its designers. Glass, steel and concrete were reduced to their basic functions, and manual working of materials was made to disappear into the overall design. At the same time, the contemporary backlash to modernism has been a regressive promotion of a return classical orders – as evidenced by the controversy created by the Trump appointment of a retro-classicist to the position of Architect of the Capitol. That politization of design seemed political and degenerating on its face. But what about looking back to an architectural style that highlights the human elements in the details of the implementation of design.
The Palau isfilled with color, shape and elegant forms. It draws the interest of the viewer into its details. It creates a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere. It promotes a sense of calm, civility and ease. Also significant is that must have employed scores of highly trained and skilled crafts people who contributed to its success and could take pride in their work. It speaks of place, rooted in that Catalan nationalism.
What’s interesting is that while Gaudí gets all the attention, Domènech seemed to me the greater artist. Gaudí’s works are among the principal tourist attractions of Barcelona. Most famously his massive church of Sagrada Familia, but also his Güell Park, Casa Batilló and Casa Milà, among others. But while Casa Batilló includes many beautiful details of wood and plasterwork and Casa Milá has some fascinating structural elements (particularly catenary arches in the attic space), a funky roof space and an undulating façade, Gaudí appears to have fallen victim to his celebrity and created overwhelming, chaotic designs. The Sagrada Familia in particular is gigantic in its crazed ornaments and abundance of novel architectural details. The whole business is exhausting. It is far from a contemplative, spiritual space.
Domènech seems to have quietly stayed true to his craft and sense of place. While the Palau is a jewel box, his Hospital de Sant Pau, is a graceful campus that speaks deeply of healing. It is a collection of 12 pavilions, connected by underground galleries and surrounded by landscape. Not all of the buildings have been fully restored. Some are in use as offices. Others are open to the public. All are decorated by extensive tile work and are flooded with light and color. Both the interiors and exteriors display the kind of hand work that marks modernisma. Everywhere there are facets to delight and engage the eye.
The Hospital of St. Pau
Domènech’s work was a revelation. What if New York’s essentially new $500 million concert hall were more like the Palau de Musica, bathed in colored light and couched by curvilinear, floral wood and plasterwork and less like a modern Hilton? Yes, Carnegie Hall is a 19th Century plaster box – but it is a relatively simple, inornate auditorium, with cramped public spaces. But what a pleasure it would be to attend concerts in a space like the Palau that emanates human warmth, art and culture.
We did also go to the Liceu Opera while we were in town. The auditorium, located on La Rambla, is a conventional European 2,300 seat one from 1864, embedded in a 1999 renovation following a fire in 1994. I found the sound surprisingly hollow and unflattering (thought it should be noted that the show we saw featured a small on-stage orchestra, rather than one in the pit). The programming is comparable to opera houses at the highest international level (with respect to conductors, directors and casting). It does have a tony adjacent opera club, which we were delighted to be able to visit.
Barcelona itself is overwhelmed by tourists, who are drawn by Gaudí and a lively street and night life. It has very attractive mid-rise residential neighborhoods, some of the streets of which are being pedestrianized. Barcelonans live life outside, and as in the other cities in Spain which I have visited, there is eating and drinking on sidewalks and streets everywhere late into the evenings. Even the residential side streets have ground level retail. A good many of the stores in Barcelona (and not just the high-end ones) are elegantly presented. Barcelona was designed with broad avenues, some with wide pedestrians walkways down the middle (like the famous and tourist infested La Rambla). Many of the blocks were designed with shared green space at their center.
St. Pau interior
Barcelona is a seafront city, with broad Mediterranean beaches making up its entire Eastern edge. Those beaches as well were jam-packed (but with locals) on the weekend we visited. The city has an active cultural life, with a major orchestra and the opera company, as well as galleries and art museums. It is the home to two universities. It is famous for its public markets (which have also, unfortunately, turned a good deal of their attention to the tourist trade). It is clearly a desirable place to live – what with the attractive built environment (particular the many, many solid midrise buildings of substantial residential flats – the best of which are influenced by or the product of modernisma), the climate, the many places to eat and drink and the beach.
The attractive, oldest parts of town are particularly crowded with tourists – and the draw is clearly eating, drinking and partying – which is remarkable since Barcelona was regarded as a failing post-industrial city at the time of Franco’s death in 1975. Locals attribute the city’s rather recent turnaround to the hosting of the Olympics in 1992, which is unusual since Olympic programs have generally been regarded as economic development failures. Barcelona, though, has been a remarkable success, of which it is to a certain extent now a happy, overwhelmed victim. And there is much to be learned from its distinctive, high profile design history and its place-based, human scale successes.
The Hilbert Cycle Theatre on Monument Circle, home of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
While in town, I attended a concert of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra did a program of Beethoven, Bartok and Schumann, conducted by Markus Stenz, with Zoltán Fejérvári as soloist. Neither of those performers are box office draws, and only the Beethoven Leonora Overture No. 3, is a known crowd pleaser. It was ambitious of the symphony’s management to put on such a program and selling it to any audience would be challenge. But it was a splendid concert, and it was disappointing that it drew so small a crowd – filling less than half of the seats. Fejérvári was entirely new to me, and while I didn’t at first recognize Stenz’ name, upon reading the program biography, I realized I had heard him excellently conduct Kurtág’s “Fin de Partie” last year in Paris.
The orchestra plays twenty classical programs a year in a restored movie palace on Monument Circle – so right in the center of the downtown. The auditorium is very much like the one I recently visited in Pittsburgh –with classical allusions in its decoration. The room is large, and the sound is neutral – making it a fine place to hear a full orchestra. The concert appeared to be something of a love fest between the conductor and the players, and it may have been a try-out for the orchestra’s open music director position for Stenz, Krzysztof Urbański having left the orchestra during COVID. Stenz is a pro. He conducted from memory, without a baton and doesn’t feel the need to beat time, but instead indicates cues, tempo and volume changes, phrasing and articulation with gesture. While the playing of the orchestra was a little, shall we say, enthusiastic during the Overture, the remainder of the concert was compelling – particularly in quieter passages. The violin section work in the second movement of the Bartok was especially beautiful.
Fejérvári is tall and gangly. He was in full command of the technical challenges of the concerto. He coaxed a sweet sound from the Steinway in Bartok’s 3rd concerto. Bartok is conventionally thought of as a percussive, “modernist” composer, but in this performance the lyricism shone through. The orchestra listened carefully to the musical lead of Fejérvári and followed suit. It was a moving, handsome performance. His lovely and unusual encore was the third movement of Jancek’s In The Mists. The performance of Schumann’s 2nd Symphony was straightforward and engaging. The orchestra’s playing, while perhaps not the most nuanced or precise, was fresh and fervent. There was a lot of smiling going on the part of both Stenz and the players (many of them young), and that sense of pleasure was contagious. The audience was equally enthusiastic, occasionally applauding, apparently spontaneously, between movements, and with a standing ovation at the concert’s conclusion (which seemed genuine, as opposed the now routine standing response at Carnegies Hall at every performance). It was an altogether satisfying musical evening, particularly impressive from a part-time band, in a city without a major music conservatory from which to draw (although Indiana University, about an hour away, does have one of the country’s leading music schools).
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Gunnar Birkerts, 1988
Columbus. Indiana
Columbus, Indiana is not to be confused with Columbus, Ohio. It is a town with a population of 50,000 about an hour south of Indianapolis. The town is famous among architecture buffs for its collection of structures designed by leading architects of the last hundred years. Wikipedia provides a good summary of what Columbus is all about:
“Columbus is a city known for its modern architecture and public art. J. Irwin Miller, 2nd CEO and a nephew of a co-founder of Cummins Inc., the Columbus-headquartered diesel engine manufacturer, instituted a program in which the Cummins Foundation paid the architects’ fees, provided the client selected a firm from a list compiled by the foundation. The plan was initiated with public schools and was so successful that the foundation decided to offer such design support to other non-profit and civic organizations. The high number of notable public buildings and public art in the Columbus area, designed by such individuals as Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Robert Venturi, Cesar Pelli, and Richard Meier, led to Columbus earning the nickname “Athens on the Prairie.”
In a word, I was underwhelmed. A map sold at the visitors center lists 97 buildings and public art works located in this town of 50,000. The best work is mostly that which was commissioned by Cummins for its own use. The rest is generally not the most outstanding work of their designers. Often this appears to be the driven by limited funding resulting in inferior finishes and craftmanship. Some it seems like the starchitect didn’t take seriously a commission in the boonies. The projects are spread out around a large area – some a twenty-minute drive from the middle of town. All of the projects stand-alone – none are knitted into the small town’s fabric. They’re not urbanistic in any true sense of the word. The landscaping by the likes of Dan Kiley and Michael Van Val Valkenburgh was private, and mostly parking lots, or public, and not particularly well maintained.
The view up Washington Street.
The downtown reminded me a bit of Corning, New York, another company town with a philanthropic, design-oriented family in charge – but the main commercial street was not as well curated as in Corning. I had a tough time finding a place that was open for lunch on a Saturday afternoon. None of the work by renowned architects is on the main drag, Washington Street. The Miller family has been much celebrated for its patronage of high-end architecture (presumably using the money of Cummins shareholders to fund the Foundation). But the commissions seemed performative and attention seeking, despite all the blather in promotional materials about inspiring creativity and making Columbus a great place to live. The whole business felt like something of a stage set and not baked into the town’s planning and social fabric.
Actually, there seemed to be a lot of disinvested housing in the center of the town, and the adjacent areas were populated by tract house development and McMansions. Notably, just outside of downtown were the usual mid-western strip malls and regional malls featuring the standard national brands. As in Indianapolis, there just didn’t seem to me to be a deep commitment to making Columbus a vibrant place. As much as I love the work of William Rawn, a Bill Rawn boxy, conventional brick recreation center, is still a boxy, brick recreation center – even if his name is attached to. A Deborah Berke bank in a shopping mall – was just a drive-in bank branch. And I went hunting for the Hugh Hardy designed health center and found a grassy lot. Was it torn down? Was Hardy not famous enough to have his work preserved (his elementary school project for Columbus was far from the town’s center and I didn’t get there). A gigantic Robert Stern designed hospital complex was just plain odd – and was likely over-built for local needs – the extensive parking lots were empty on a Saturday afternoon. There was altogether too much banal Kevin Roche work done for Cummins facilities for my taste, the conventional modernism of which is not holding well up over time.
The interior of St. Peters
Was there anything I liked? The most impressive spaces I saw were actually interiors – in the stunning, elegant Sanctuary of Gunnar Birkerts St. Peter’s Lutheran Church and the light filled reading room of the Hope library branch, some distance from downtown Columbus. But interior designs do not directly impact public spaces. There is a Charles Gwathmey multifamily affordable senior project that struck me as quite elegant, and an effective use of a narrow site. The Dan Kiley Irwin Conference Center Landscape somewhat anachronistically makes use of the Bryant Park FERMOB tables and chairs – but how could I not like that? However, on the day I was there they were effectively props – no one was sitting in them, like in the Cummins commissioned public space in Indianapolis.
Indianapolis and Columbus place in high relief the difficulty in making great places – even with the most favorable local conditions. They both seem to have had progressive-minded civic leaders who wanted to ensure the future of their towns, and who commanded the resources to implement their plans. But plans and capital projects don’t make great places. To oversimplify, placemaking requires operating rather than capital funds (generally, much more difficult for government to come by). Activating public spaces is the result of the aggregation of many small interventions over a moderate period of time.
The Dan Kiley landscape adjacent to the Eero Saarinen Cummins Conference Center, added to by Kevin Roche
Indianapolis certainly has a lot of the right elements to create a vibrant downtown – by supporting a critical mass of street level activity – through outdoor eating and drinking, markets (the downtown City Market is just a rather forlorn food court needing substantial attention), pedestrianizing a few streets, presenting a consistent schedule of public events, foregrounding its historic structures (toning down signs for national retail) and encouraging modestly scaled mixed-use projects – all the usual moves.
There is a serious question as to why the city might want to do that. It is the state capitol, with all the activity that generates. It is a regional office center. It in an in-demand convention venue. Very few people live downtown. The creative class certainly has the option of living in a number of close in neighborhoods – if those are the people employers need to attract. Who would benefit from a walkable downtown with actual walkers? Living in such a place, is certainly my preference. There is something to be said philosophically for places with unique identities, that is that have soul. I’m of the view that in our polarized culture, drawing people together in attractive public places engages them in civic life and can provide an important unifying social force. Americans across the country need to be less atomized, drawn away from their screens and more engaged with each other. Quality public spaces (including elevating cultural events), with distinctive interesting programming (broadly defined) can provide that kind of collective experience.
But are there enough Hoosiers interested in that (or in attending the symphony) to make it a viable policy (or a sustainable orchestra)? A lot of people like, P.F. Chang’s – but that is not to be confused with the benefits of visiting a vibrant Chinese-American community.
Interior of the Deborah Berke Hope, IN library 1998
