Fabulous Ruins

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library's Cataloger Bruce Smith recently directed me to this fantastic website, devoted to documenting the Architectural Ruins of Detroit, Michigan. Above, an old theater-cum-parking garage.

Image above: Sean Hemmerle, photographer. Michigan Theatre, Detroit, MI. Built 1926. Converted to parking garage, 1976. As seen in "The Remains of Detroit" Time On-Line. URL: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1864272_1810106,00.html

Preservation of Architectural Drawings

The Fabrica
The New York Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers presents:

The Fabrication and Preservation of Architectural Drawings
An afternoon lecture with Lois Olcott Price
March 16th, 2010, 1-5 pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, Columbia University

Co-Sponsored by the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University

Because architectural drawings are not created as an end in themselves, but as graphic documents to construct a building, sell a project or explore a design concept, the materials and techniques chosen by the drafter are particular to the function of the drawing as well as the period in which it was created. The interpretation and preservation of architectural drawings depends upon an understanding of their functions in architectural practice and on a working knowledge of drafting materials and techniques. This lecture will include tracing the use of supports, media and photo-reproductive processes used to create architectural drawings in the 18th to 20th centuries, accompanied by examples. The emphasis will be on identification and understanding of materials and processes, and participants will have the opportunity to examine samples and ask questions. Building from this understanding of materials and using the available examples, we will also discuss housing and treatment options for these collections.

Lois Olcott Price is Director of Conservation at the Winterthur Museum, Gardens and Library near Wilmington, DE and assistant Winterthur Professor of Art Conservation in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. In 1994, she was senior conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia, PA. As increasing numbers of architectural drawings arrived at CCAHA for treatment, unanswered questions about the materials and techniques used to fabricate them piqued her interest and resulted in research that has now spanned almost two decades. Lois has published, lectured and consulted widely about architectural drawings. She has received several grants to support her research resulting in a monograph, “Line Shade and Shadow, The Fabrication and Preservation of Architectural Drawings,” to be published by Oak Knoll in the spring of 2010.

To register for the lecture or for more information, please contact Clare Manias at newyork@guildofbookworkers.org The fee for the lecture is $20 for Guild of Book Workers members, $30 for non-members. Special admission for Columbia students, faculty and staff with ID.

Wood Auditorium is located on the lower level of Avery Hall at Columbia University. Columbia University is located at 116th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. For directions to Avery Hall, please see http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/avery.html.

Mardi Gras Architect Charles Briton (1841-1884)

On 3 July 1884, The New York Times and The Daily Picayune both reported the death of a noted New Orleans architect, artist and civil engineer:

"The remains of Charles Briton, the artist, were laid away in Greenwood Cemetery on Wednesday morning. The deceased was forty-three years of age, a native of Gothenberg Sweden, and a resident of this city for twenty years. No person of his kindred was nigh, but neither in life nor death was he neglected."

* * *

"There was a strange history connected with Briton's life, and as he was very reticent few fathomed his secret. Among his effects was a uniform which he wore in Mexico as one of Prince Salm-Salm's regiment, under the ill-fated Maximilian. After the death of his chief he came to New York and then to New Orleans. His genius was immediately recognized. Ever since the various mystic organizations have been in existence Mr. Briton has drawn the designs from which the wagons were decorated and the designs ordered. Not alone to New Orleans was his work confined, but Cincinnati, Baltimore and other cities owe the success of their Carnival representations to Briton. . . By his death a master pencil is lost."

The Daily Picayune 03.07.1884. Via America's Historical Newspapers, an electronic database available through Tulane University Libraries. Henri Schindler has surveyed Briton's pageant designs as the first chapter in his Mardi Gras Treasures: Costume Designs of the Golden Age. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002 and his Mardi Gras Treasures: Float Designs of the Golden Age. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2001.

Reconciling the Old & New Orleans

As reported by Harry V. Forgeron for the New York Times 18 February 1968:

"When the tourists come marching in for Mardi Gras this month, they will see a city that has jazzed up its 250th anniversary year with gleaming new buildings and meticulous restorations of its old French Quarter.

The melding of new and old would seem incongruous, but each type of architecture has its place and need in an expanding port city on the Mississippi that is rich in historical background.

In the downtown area, the sweeping, airy lines of the $13.5 million Rivergate exhibition facility nearing completion bear the unmistakable stamp of Curtis & Davis, architects who are spokesmen for modernity in the Crescent City.

But not far away at 1132 Rue Royal in the Vieux Carre (old square), is the home of Richard W. Freeman, Jr., secretary of the Louisiana Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Its wrought-iron "lace," tall black columns and classic white door frame speak just as eloquently for the restoration work of Koch & Wilson.

The 33-story International Trade Mart, designed by Edward Durell Stone, stands at the foot of Canal Street. Its president, Lloyd J. Cobb, a lawyer and breeder of Angus cattle and race horses, will happily admit that the building is 99 per cent occupied."

To read more of this article, consult the New York Times (1851-2005), the electronic database available through Tulane University Libraries.

New Orleans Architect, Dorothy Hebert

Dorothy Hebert (later Mrs. George W. Pigman) was the inaugural Tulane architectural engineering graduate (1917). As the first woman to be enrolled in drafting courses, she spent her initial year relegated to a drafting table sequestered at the back of the classroom.

Hebert's mother was the granddaughter of John Andrews, who owned Belle Grove Plantation, which the family sold after the Civil War (1868). The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains historic photographs of the structure in a number of its collections: the Boatner Collection, the Hertzberg Collection, and the Walter Cook Keenan Collection.

Image above: "Dorothy Hebert" Yearbook 1917. New Orleans: 1917. Courtesy Tulane University Archives, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Geography & Building Types

In 1908, Tulane University School of Technology Professor William Woodward (1859-1939) articulated his fervent belief that New Orleans was especially suited to provide the ideal environment for a School of Architecture:

"The geographical location of the city of New Orleans, its cosmopolitan character, and the age and variety of its types of buildings, make it a fitting place in which to develop a school of architecture which shall be suited to its environment, and shall maintain a reasonableness of planning and construction as appropriate to climatic conditions."

The university offered its first architecture courses as early as 1894, but it was not until 1907 that Woodward's dream of a Department of Architecture was realized. Five years later, Nathaniel Cortlandt Curtis, Sr. (1881-1953) was hired as the first full-time architecture faculty. By 1916, he was also serving as the department's librarian.

Tulane University Bulletins and other institutional publications are available through the Tulane University Archives, 202 Jones Hall.

Place over Action

Film stills with EUR Tower from Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse (1962).

This weekend I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, which is largely set in Rome's EUR District, named for the thwarted Exposicione Universale di Roma. The mushroom-shaped water tower shown above still stands, but now that it has been crowned with advertising signage, it doesn't seem quite so menacing. Film credits include a nod to EUR/Rome Master Plan Architect Marcello Piacentini.

If you are interested to read related articles in JSTOR, one of Tulane University Library's electronic databases:

Paul Baxa, "Piacentini's Window: the Modernism of the Fascist Master Plan of Rome." Contemporary European History 13:1 (February 2004): 1-20.

Clara Orban, "Antonioni's Women, Lost in the City." Modern Language Studies 31:2 (Autumn 2001): 11-27.

Gilberto Perez, "The Point of View of a Stranger: An Essay on Antonioni's Eclipse." The Hudson Review 44:2 (Summer 1991): 234-262.