THE GREEK WAY

The Parthenon is the world’s most iconic building, so it’s sad to see its current condition. Its stonework has suffered from centuries of war, weather, pillaging, and neglect; it’s a relic. What one sees of the current restoration work doesn’t inspire much confidence.

The temple’s front facade is embedded in a web of fine steel scaffolding, as if undergoing acupuncture. At the inner sanctum, where the gilded statue of Athena once presided, there is a construction crane whose massive boom could topple the remaining structure with one false move. Workmen, without boots or hardhats, crawl over the podium like ants. Behind the building loose masonry pieces, unmarked and presumably uncatalogued, lie in open piles. The grounds are unpaved and uregulated; there are no walkways and signage, with only thin cords to hold back visitors from construction zones.

When visiting Olympia, an ancient site with similar conditions, a visitor asked our guide, a native Athenian, why the Greeks didn’t rebuild the Temple of Zeus there, where only one original column stands but scores of stone blocks lay scattered around it. Our guide swept her hand over the scene and explained, “You don’t understand the Greeks; we’re OK with all of this.”

But at other sites in the country there has been strong, sensible reconstruction and preservation work. At Delphi there are paved paths and steps, wayfinding signage, and explanatory texts. The buildings have been discretely fortified; no rubble remains. And the new Acropolis Museum, a state-of-the-art facility, just below the ancient site, was built while preserving the archaeological ruins below its foundations. Now the Parthenon’s marbles have a fine home, while the building itself seems especially vulnerable.

Photograph © Nalina Moses.

August 14, 2018 by Nalina Moses

BLOCK PARTI

On a recent visit to New Orleans I drove through parts of neighborhoods that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, including the Lower Ninth Ward. Twelve years after the flooding, its residential suburban blocks have a surreal character. About one third of the lots hold old houses, mostly wood “shotguns,” that have been restored, raised above grade on stilt-ilke footings, with water lines and stains on their facades. About one third of the lots hold new houses, bright mini-mansions in newfangled styles and finishes. And about one third of the lots are empty, grown over with a lush, flat lawn.

The texture of these blocks is remarkable. Together they make for a more open, irregular, picturesque kind of suburb. The houses are seen from all angles, like individual objects, chess pieces, rather than chunks of a monotonous suburban fabric. While residents are still struggling for amenities – including jobs and affordable housing – recent growth hints at a new kind of development. Could what has already happened be a viable model, allowing random lots to be developed organically, accommodating natural population shifts, until the Lower Ninth achieves its old density? Or, should planners intervene strategically, focusing new construction in fixed areas that can be strengthened with new amenities, giving rise to denser micro-communities? Or, should planners freeze development as it is, and turn the lawns into pocket gardens and parks, carving an immense, irregular green space through the whole neighborhood? Each possibility offers great hope.

Photo courtesy of PBS.

May 15, 2017 by Nalina Moses

ACT II

I wrote earlier this year about a project to turn the Richardson Olmsted Complex (ROC), a former asylum in Buffalo designed by the legendary nineteenth-century architect Henry Hobson Richardson, into a hotel and convention center. The project’s developers and designers are talented and inspired, and working hard to do what’s best for the city. But as I researched and wrote the piece I understood that the whole endeavor was, in one sense, a typical gentrification project. The ROC is taking a historic property, obscuring its original purpose, retaining what’s notable about its architecture (in this case: rough stone facades, super-wide hallways, high gable roofs), and increasing its value. And the transformation in program – from mental hospital to boutique hotel – invites satire.

But after visiting the ROC this summer, seeing the grounds, and walking through some of the buildings, I feel differently. The hospital complex was abandoned after the 1960’s, as more and more mental patients were treated as out-patients, and its wards fell into disuse. Since then its buildings have been weather-sealed and structurally stabilized, but they remain dramatically dishevelled: emptied of furnishings, with paint peeling in tendrils from the ceilings, rubble piled in corners, and, in some rooms, fire-scarred walls. The rooms carry incredible sadness. That’s not only in remembering the lives that passed sequestered inside, but in seeing how the facilities remain unused.

The ORC is an immense property, with nine individual structures and a property about the size of four city blocks. Its buildings have magnificent (i.e. Richardsonian) proportions, generous daylight, and stunning landscaping, and they’re literally turning to dust. It’s something of a miracle that they weren’t destroyed earlier, and that the property wasn’t redeveloped as a subdivision or a mall. Making these buildings habitable once again is a monstrous undertaking, not for the faint-hearted, or the cynical. It’s an act of gentrification, and an act of hope.

Photograph by Christopher Payne.

November 03, 2014 by Nalina Moses