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  #61  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 3:54 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yankee View Post
^^^

All very beautiful, thank you for posting. Let me guess what's in their place now - parking lots? Darn you post-WWII development, for destroying America...
Well, the old Jewish Temple is now a Hardee's surrouded by asphalt.

I'm almost positive the Cawthon Hotel is a parking lot.

I think the old Boys Industrial School was absorbed by a high school (and demolished).

I don't know about the Empire Theatre, most likely parking, empty, or nasty one story 1950s "infill".

The County Courthouse (even in this photo below missing much of its former ornamentation due to hurricanes- compare the rooftops of each photo) is currently being re-replaced (yes re-replaced) with a fairly blah-ok-nothing special-could have been in the suburbs brick courthouse and a new downtown park.


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...ouse_1900s.jpg
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  #62  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 3:24 PM
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kinda tacky but kinda cool...the fontainebleau in south beach, which spent a billion dollars on renovations destroyed some 1950s mural to makeway for more rooms...

photo: Carol M. Highsmith
now...the newer ones are on the left i believe. Th mural used to be on collins avenue, on the opposite side of the curved building.

apparently is was a miami beach landmark...
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  #63  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 4:08 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yankee View Post
Correct! Thanks. The whole debate over the old federal building here has been just that - a different in taste.

But I shouldn't have called it abominable, sorry about that.

I'm glad the thread is back on topic.
OK, so let's balance the two different 'tastes' presented:

Taste 1:
-The old Federal Building was pedestrian unfriendly
-The old Federal Building was inefficiently organized
-The old Federal Building featured dated and clumsy architectural styles that clashed with the city it was meant to serve
-The old Federal Building required massive amounts of capital to maintain
-The new Federal Buildings are some of the most important buildings in architectural history
-The new Federal Buildings work in engaging the public and opening a block of inner Chicago to light and air
-The new Federal Buildings' plaza offered a canvas for one of the most celebrated sculptors in history to created a sculpture recognized and celebrated throughout Chicago
-The new Federal Building creates beauty through simplicity and resolution of programmatic, structural, urban and public aspects as well as presenting compelling notions about use of space relative to the concepts of Modernism in Chicago and how it should react with a complex designed for the Federal Government


Taste 2:
The old Federal Building was pretty!
The new one is ugly!
Also Alexander Calder's sculpture is dumb!
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  #64  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 4:09 PM
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Also I think the posters in this thread need to be reminded that this thread is about buildings razed by GOVERNMENTS and not private entities.
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  #65  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 4:20 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yankee View Post
Correct! Thanks. The whole debate over the old federal building here has been just that - a different in taste.
Not completely, this whole time I've been arguing that not only is the Mies complex much more visually appealing, but that it is factually more important. As CGII posted, the Mies buildings are historically significant in a big way while the Old Federal building was just another half-assed knockoff of old European Domed palaces. As far as the non-aesthetic value of these two buildings goes, the Mies buildings win in a big big way...
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  #66  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 6:12 PM
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A few from London. Soane's Bank of England was considered one of the best buildings in London, but in the 1930s most of its guts were ripped out to make it taller in what the critic Nikolaus Pevsner called 'the greatest architectural crime, in the City of London, of the twentieth century'

The old bank...


http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/educa...buildings3.htm Bank of England

...and the new


http://credo.typepad.co.uk/credo_/london/ Mark Oliver

Over on the other side of town, most of the Imperial College in Kensington was torn down, with only its tower remaining as a sop to the preservationists, to make way for a new campus. It's a shame, because there is no longer a continuous stream of impressive Victorian architecture between the masterpieces of the Royal Albert Hall to the north and the Natural History Museum to the south.

Before...


http://www.london-architecture.info/..._Institute.jpg
Essential Architecture


http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/vmgallery/gen...ler=&cpg=&tpg=
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

.... after


http://www.imperial.ac.uk/centenary/memories/QT.jpg
Imperial College


http://flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3740424004/
Arenamontanus, Flickr

Finally, some people get bent out of shape about this arch at Euston Station getting demolished. I don't see much in it myself.


http://www.bdonline.co.uk/feature.asp?featurecode=11888
Building Design.

I think a bigger shame is the loss of the old ticket hall

before...


RIBA, architecture.com http://www.architecture.com/HowWeBui...onStation.aspx

...after


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._concourse.jpg Wiki, Voyager


All in all, I don't get too upset about the old buildings that have disappeared, though. There are still hundreds of gems left, conservation is now better than ever before and London's whole shtick is its violently contrasting styles.
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  #67  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 6:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bedhead View Post
A few from London. Soane's Bank of England was considered one of the best buildings in London, but in the 1930s most of its guts were ripped out to make it taller in what the critic Nikolaus Pevsner called 'the greatest architectural crime, in the City of London, of the twentieth century'

The old bank...


http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/educa...buildings3.htm Bank of England
The interiors of this one need to mentioned: this was perhaps the greatest and most ecclectic piece of Neoclassical architecture in existence:


upload.wikimedia.org


usc.edu


upload.wikimedia.org
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  #68  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2009, 7:52 PM
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Good ones - I wasn't aware of those pics, thanks CGII
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  #69  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2009, 12:55 AM
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yeah im not really a fan of the new federal building...kinda boring but the old one was pretty ugly and not very proportional. Somehow the whole building just didnt work, like the areas where there was the flat roof...
Penn station was a huge loss though

historic photo.
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  #70  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2009, 8:23 PM
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See the building with the tower at the end of the road? That was the old Naugatuck town hall, and was knocked down in the glorious decade of the sixties for something more modern.
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  #71  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2009, 11:41 PM
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Frank Lloyd Wrights larkin Building, Buffalo, NY.

Was sold by the city in 1950 to a developer for demolition.





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  #72  
Old Posted Nov 2, 2009, 3:28 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edmontonenthusiast View Post
It's a little unimaginable that Edmonton had this architecture at one time but...

Edmonton's original Central Library


https://archivesphotos.edmonton.ca/P...f=&ph=VHJ1ZQ==

And was replaced by in the late 60s...

TELUS Plaza

http://www.emporis.com/application/?...ding&id=112767

And our current central library is the Stanley A Milner


http://www.flickr.com/photos/conniecrosby/141061724/
Speaking of ugly Telus buildings:

Southam/Herald building


www.glenbow.org

replaced with


www.emporis.com
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  #73  
Old Posted Nov 2, 2009, 8:00 AM
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Los Angeles has torn down a lot of gems (for a relatively young city, it has changed its appearance numerous times over a century and a half)

These two are long gone:


via Imageshack

LA's superior court on the left, and hall of records on the right.

Their replacements pale in comparison.

Ambassador Hotel:


via lagenealogy

Probably more important for its history. Demolished recently and and a new school is replacing it. The school is oddly in the same general shape of the hotel, only with a glass facade.

Thats what I can think of right now...as far as government tear downs go.
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  #74  
Old Posted Nov 3, 2009, 1:40 PM
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^^^

Sad story... A lot of buildings in LA's historic core I hear are not doing too well and are endangered...


I have a question about NYC - there are a lot of housing projects built on the lower east side of Manhattan along the East River waterfront from about 23rd down to the Brooklyn Bridge, which are obviously pretty disgusting, but does anyone know what used to be there before those projects were built? Just regular blocks looking like the ones that are still there to the west? Anyone got areals or street level pictures of the area from before the projects were built? And why did they build those projects there anyway, they're adjacent to very elite neighborhoods today, I don't imagine those blocks were doing so poorly in the 60s and 70s they had to completely tear them down?

Also, just in general, midtown and downtown Manhattan were already very dense and tall in the 40s even, and today they have so so many towers, I imagine a lot of good looking historic buildings must have been torn down (not judging at all here, just pointing out). Does anyone have good before and after, preferably areal shots? Or just good examples of midrise buildings in midtown or downtown that were razed to make room for new skyscrapers?
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Last edited by Yankee; Nov 3, 2009 at 2:03 PM.
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  #75  
Old Posted Nov 3, 2009, 2:33 PM
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Not a building but a bridge:

From this


to this

(Source for second: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DG)
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  #76  
Old Posted Nov 3, 2009, 6:39 PM
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^ What a beautiful bridge that was.
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  #77  
Old Posted Nov 3, 2009, 7:27 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yankee View Post
^^^

Sad story... A lot of buildings in LA's historic core I hear are not doing too well and are endangered...


I have a question about NYC - there are a lot of housing projects built on the lower east side of Manhattan along the East River waterfront from about 23rd down to the Brooklyn Bridge, which are obviously pretty disgusting, but does anyone know what used to be there before those projects were built? Just regular blocks looking like the ones that are still there to the west? Anyone got areals or street level pictures of the area from before the projects were built? And why did they build those projects there anyway, they're adjacent to very elite neighborhoods today, I don't imagine those blocks were doing so poorly in the 60s and 70s they had to completely tear them down?
23rd St to the Brooklyn Bridge is an incredibly long distance, and it isn't all housing... But I suspect that you're referring to Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village. That actually isn't project housing, but is instead the property involved in the most expensive residential real estate deal in history.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C...tuyvesant_Town)

But I have no idea what was there before.
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  #78  
Old Posted Nov 3, 2009, 8:13 PM
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  #79  
Old Posted Nov 4, 2009, 8:48 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
23rd St to the Brooklyn Bridge is an incredibly long distance, and it isn't all housing... But I suspect that you're referring to Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village. That actually isn't project housing, but is instead the property involved in the most expensive residential real estate deal in history.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C...tuyvesant_Town)

But I have no idea what was there before.
Yes, Peter Cooper village is one of them - well it turns out it's not, I didn't know it was privately owned, so thanks for that info. I think I was mainly referring to the square one directly to the south of it, but anyways. Man, Peter Cooper really looks like public housing though, it's got the typical tower in the park, + shaped and aligned at odd angles brown brick apartment buildings.

That's just my personal opinion, but I hate those kinds public housing buildings. I don't mind public housing at all, like modern public housing is great here in SF for example, and it looks as good if not better than "regular" housing and it fits right in. What they did several decades ago, however - bulldoze entire blocks and erect those odd shaped towers "in the park" - waste of space, ugly and isolated things. I think eventually, maybe in a few decades, maybe more, they will begin to get torn down across the rust belt and replaced with properly aligned densely built aesthetically pleasing developments. Sorry, I don't know what that was all about, just felt like sharing

Again, thanks for the info.

Um, does anyone know besides the original Penn station building, what other buildings are considered among the biggest architectural losses for NY?
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  #80  
Old Posted Nov 4, 2009, 4:02 PM
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Originally Posted by Yankee View Post
I think eventually, maybe in a few decades, maybe more, they will begin to get torn down across the rust belt and replaced with properly aligned densely built aesthetically pleasing developments.
NY style housing projects didn't really happen 'across the rust belt' like they did along the Eastern Seaboard. The only places close to it, Chicago and St. Louis, have been demolishing the larger complexes for some time now, most notably Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green and Pruit-Igoe.
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