by | Sep 20, 2016 3:50 pm | Comments (33)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Greenberg in the soon-to-empty artifacts room.
The last of the old Ninth Square merchants, ACME Furniture, is in the process of closing to make way for new apartments — while a third-generation member of the family is scurrying to preserve much of the New Haven history inside the building.
by | Sep 1, 2016 8:17 am | Comments (2)
Courtesy Knights of Columbus Museum.
High Modern at its best. Or worst?
Fun fact: There may be more high modern buildings per capita in New Haven that in any city in the world.
That’s right. Any city in the whole wide world.
by | Aug 31, 2016 12:14 pm | Comments (6)
Courtesy Duo Dickinson
The Yale Building Project has a relatively new name: The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project. Don’t let the new branding fool you: not too much has changed about it, except a widening and progressively hyperlocal focus. And that’s a good thing.
by | Aug 26, 2016 8:15 am | Comments (0)
Duo Dickinson Photo
The library, before reopening.
Set to reopen to the public Sept. 6, Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, built not only to house books but to glory in their beauty and physical presence, is at a crossroads. Will the stacks, designed as a celebratory exhibit in a glass inner cube for all who enter, take on a different life in an increasingly digital age?
by | May 30, 2016 1:36 pm | Comments (5)
Newhallville substation at 596 Winchester.
William Rawn Associates
Rose Center at 101 Ashmun: Model for the future?
by | May 13, 2016 7:23 am | Comments (9)
Allan Appel Photo
The winner.
Whether you deem it an architectural modernist icon or a human-dwarfing iconosaurus, there’s no ignoring the Knights of Columbus Tower.
The New Haven Preservation Trust (NHPT) not only did not ignore it — it awarded the building and the team that restored its heating, cooling, and glazing systems the Landmark Plaque “for extraordinary devotion to preservation.”
by | Apr 26, 2016 8:22 am | Comments (2)
A plan of old New Haven.
Until recent history, bromances greatly shaped the architectural framework of New Haven. That’s right: Bromances.
by | Apr 18, 2016 12:27 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Pacacha & Ely ex-curator Anna Bresnick at hearing.
After being closed for almost a year while facing an uncertain future, the John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art is about to get some lovin’ from a new landlord and new/old tenants.
by | Apr 13, 2016 6:22 am | Comments (2)
Wikimedia Commons
A house designed by Dickinson.
Is there a future for the architectural profession?
by | Apr 4, 2016 2:53 pm | Comments (11)
Winters-Toussaint.
Regina Winters-Toussaint, a great New Havener, passed away yesterday at Connecticut Hospice after a tragic bout with cancer.
by | Mar 24, 2016 7:50 am | Comments (11)
Wikimedia Commons
The New Haven Green has received a million-dollar grant for “infrastructure upgrades” from the cash-strapped state (to which the city’s adding another $500,000).
First response: Yahoo!
The second response, after letting the news sink in a little: that’s a relatively small amount of money considering what could be done with the space.
by | Mar 14, 2016 2:27 pm | Comments (0)
Wikimedia Commons
The old Mishkan Israel building, now ECA.
There’s an architectural trend in secularization in New Haven, and it’s only gaining speed as we transition from the 20th century into the 21st.
The 1904 episcopal Church of the Epiphany, now below the Q-/Pearl Harbor Bridge, became a restaurant in 1944, then a plumbing supply house, then a strip club. The Calvary Baptist Church became the Yale Repertory Theater. The Trinity Home Church was taken over by the Salvation Army. The Henry Austin Design Chapel is soon to be turned into market-rate rental housing. The Orange Street location of Temple Mishkan Israel moved to Hamden, its building becoming the Educational Center for the Arts. It may be saving a building by adaptive reuse, but it means one bigger thing: churches today are in great danger.
by | Feb 4, 2016 3:13 pm | Comments (5)
Wikimedia Commons
The Temple Street parking garage.
I was recently asked what my favorite New Haven buildings are for a magazine piece. Here are a few of my responses.
Continue reading ‘New Haven’s Greatest (Architectural) Hits’
by | Feb 1, 2016 7:59 am | Comments (1)
Yale Facebook Photo
The Nave.
There are not many architectural expressions of the triumph of the mind — of the religion of the intellect — around New Haven. But there’s one announcing itself on Yale’s campus, and it’s just gotten a facelift. Its name: Sterling Memorial Library.
by | Jan 27, 2016 5:00 pm | Comments (0)
Duo Dickinson Photo
With its zipline, climbing wall, and almost overwhelming selection of goods for sale, Jordan’s Furniture has created a big buzz in New Haven. It may also serve as a sign of Connecticut’s failed urban renewal, and inability to keep manufacturing in the state.
by | Jan 5, 2016 1:18 pm | Comments (0)
Winnie Au, courtesy Deborah Berke Partners
Yale’s School of Architecture may just be the best graduate program in its field, and it’s getting a new dean.
by | Dec 23, 2015 2:00 pm | Comments (0)
Yale University Art Gallery Photos
There is an interesting conversation going on at the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) this month, and it’s going to last through the spring.
by | Dec 6, 2015 2:40 pm | Comments (2)
The 20th century modern master architect Le Corbusier once said: “a house is a machine for living.” His Heidi Weber Pavilion was intended to convey a kit of parts ingeniously linked in creative use of technologically precise building bits and parts. 40 years ago, the job captain of that project blew the whistle on its lack of techno-bona fides: The Heidi Weber Pavilion had each piece wrought by Swiss craftsmen — no machine-age mass-production, more Swiss watch maker hand-made perfection.
by | Nov 26, 2015 9:02 am | Comments (2)
Markeshia Ricks File Photo
It is often presumed that a scorched-earth strategy of clear-cutting sites is cheaper for developers. That is often true, unless there is perfect fit with the old site’s structures and the new use and regulations.
by | Nov 19, 2015 9:00 am | Comments (15)
New Haven is a company town … well, a two company town: Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital. Their building permit fees have balanced the City of New Haven’s budget. Their incredible allure and endowment create an arts climate here that is extraordinary. The architecture school has meant dozens of modern masterpieces by the worlds Great 20th Century (and maybe 21st century) Architects to be built: Ingalls Rink, British Art Center, Rudolph Hall. The list goes on.
by | Nov 11, 2015 4:08 pm | Comments (0)
Tyler.
Paul Bass Photo
Nemerson and Schiavone at WNHH.
Today’s programs aired on WNHH radio tackled cultural and institutional racism on Yale University’s campus, what it means to be in a “millionaire mindset,” and the next stage in development throughout New Haven. It’s Veterans Day; we reflected on that too.
by | Nov 6, 2015 12:00 pm | Comments (1)
The dozen or so new market-rate housing developments in New Haven almost universally use “Stick Frame over Podium” building systems to create a good return on investment. Everything above the parking, public and commercial ground floor is built like a raised ranch. That very inexpensive framing technique has collateral impact: the nature of its skin. It has to resist fire, so in New Haven we have seen cement board on some, fake veneer brick on others, some synthetic stucco and, at “Crown & College,” some distracting art.
by | Oct 30, 2015 2:45 pm | Comments (1)
The Yale Bowl is one of 61 National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. Its grass football field, also known as the “Class of 1954 Field,” is set 20 or 30 feet lower than the surrounding grade; the bowl is a manmade crater where scooped out dirt firms a reverse mount of dirt upon which bleachers are set and through which access tunnels are dug, using the super-cool 1914 winder material of raw concrete. In the last 20 years Yale has stabilized the ancient concrete battlements and tunnels, replaced a burned-down press box and built, for the first time, locker rooms.
Continue reading ‘Astrotuf Plan Kicks Up A Fuss At Yale Bowl’
by | Oct 30, 2015 2:28 pm | Comments (32)
Scene of a May 2010 homicide investigation at Church Street South (left), frozen drainage pipes (top right), illegal dirt bike riding in a publicly-accessible courtyard (center right), and broken apartment furnace (bottom right).
When a Boston not-for-profit this week suggested buying and perhaps preserving the troubled Church Street South apartment complex, critics from many corners called tearing it all down instead. It turns out that a third, hybrid option may make the most sense.
by | Oct 21, 2015 12:08 pm | Comments (3)
Lucy Gellman Photos
In the front room of a brand new home on Winthrop Avenue, Ivan Tirado was working intently, applying his last careful coat of paint of the early afternoon.
Upstairs, in a room that still smelled piney new and unlived in, José Oyola was explaining to a handful of New Haveners that his best ideas came to him in the shower.
Outside, Project Storefronts’ Elinor Slomba introduced photographer Mark Monk to curious visitors.