Sometimes neglect serves the purposes of those who want out of a piece of real estate.
It can be Yale waiting on Seeley Mudd Library to become an unused husk, softening its removal to create the new Residential Colleges. Maybe it’s Ikea making a Zombie Building-cum-Billboard of Marcel Breuer’s Pirelli headquarters. Or the neglect of the Slade Ely Gallery.
It does not have to be this way. Yale saved the Davies Mansion and gave it a rebirth as the Betts Center. The devotees of the Trinity Home site on Crown Street are saving its original chapel as a social center for its market-rate housing development. But will a developer step up to the plate and save the twin brick buildings on George Street kitty corner from the St. Raphael’s campus now that the hospital has responded to protests by delaying their demolition of their crumbling walls left unoccupied for almost 20 years?
Join me as I explore this issue on my first episode of “Design Czar” on WNHH Radio. To listen, click on the audio above or find it in iTunes or any podcast app under “WNHH Community Radio.”