November 9, 2011 – 4:23 pm
The original Yale Bulldog, Handsome Dan I (1889-1897), was the first live collegiate mascot, and this month he is reborn and then some. Larger than life and bronzed, he stands guard at Jensen Plaza outside the Yale Bowl – installed just in time for The Game against Harvard on November 19. The Bulldogs have lost to [...]
October 13, 2011 – 4:03 pm
I touched on New York City’s High Line in my last post; now I am landing on it with both feet. Set atop an abandoned, elevated rail line, it is the planet’s longest green roof, stretching nearly a mile and a half. It is a remarkable, idiosyncratic pathway that commences in lower Manhattan’s West Side, [...]
October 3, 2011 – 9:31 am
Examples of compelling architecture and exquisite craftsmanship are all around us. I have always admired the Deep River Town Hall, just one town north of the home office here in Centerbrook, Connecticut. The building was completed in 1893 on what was then the region’s major artery leading north from the beaches of Long Island Sound. [...]
September 22, 2011 – 11:38 am
Like many architects of a certain age, I am sitting on a slide collection of innumerable images gleaned from many trips to architectural shrines and lesser destinations. I recently began to digitize some of these so I could more easily share them with colleagues and remind myself of old lessons. In the process I also [...]
“Getting there is half the fun” was Cunard Line’s famous advertising slogan in the 1950s, intended to lure Americans away from flying across the Atlantic. At the time, its fleet could boast two of the finest examples of ocean liner transport, the RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, which regularly traveled between Europe and [...]
January 10, 2011 – 4:07 pm
I had admired it from afar for a long time, from still images in collegiate art history texts, and I have always had a thing for flying buttresses and ribbed vaults. So with a Centerbrook Travel Grant in hand, I headed straight for the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, which is surrounded by the meanders [...]
October 7, 2010 – 11:53 am
Sitting down to discuss architecture with Beverly Willis is akin to talking baseball with Willie Mays. Like Mays, her contemporary, she made her mark in San Francisco and did it all in an illustrious career. She was an accomplished and precocious artist whose talent enabled her to pay her way through college. Upon graduation, she [...]
I traveled to Prague and Vienna in 2008 to study the work of Jose Plecnik (1872-1957), a trip made possible by a Centerbrook Travel Grant. This was my second opportunity to study far-flung architecture through this unique program: My first, in 1996, allowed me to experience the work of C. R. Mackintosh in Scotland. Most [...]
