not cognate

Kind of doomscrolling in Tumblr and came across this building with the caption: Konvikt Kantonschule, by Otto Glaus, Hans-Rudolf Lienhard and Sep Marti (1969), Chur, Switzerland, ©Roberto Conte (2025)

https://www.tumblr.com/architectureofdoom/829743111400046592?source=share

A provincial school for convicts?

Off to Google Translate where I find that "Konvikt" in German means "boarding school / residential college / seminary." What a surprise. It's the second time that someone talked about "seminary" in the last few days. The other night, Chris Romanchock was talking about "A history of justice in Alfred" at the inaugural WEAVE evening at the Union University Church. He noted that Alfred University wasn't a university until later than its normal claim of being established in 1836 and one of the first coed colleges in the United States, that it was a Seventh-day Baptist seminary for the first couple decades. (I'm paraphrasing.) As far as I know, it wasn't a seminary in the sense of what we think of now since the university was never sectarian. It did eventually have a theological school, from which my father graduated.

We stayed in Chur on our Swiss circuit in 2007. Our room was on the top floor of the Hotel Freieck (literally free corner) in the middle of town. It was plenty warm overnight and the window of our room was open. You could hear the cow bells clanging (gently) from the nearby hillsides the next morning.

sentence of the day: benevolent autocrat, with taste

"In a world of autocracies, may we have one benevolent autocrat with taste?" -- Reinier de Graaf, architect with OMA, in an open letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania, quoted in an article in the Guardian entitled "'Starchitects go home': what's the truth behind Albania's astonishing building boom?" by Oliver Wainwright. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/oct/02/starchitects-go-home-albania-building-boom-edi-rama 

By the way, I've read a few books by Reinier de Graaf, and recommend them.

brutalism to industrial

After several inspiring, friendly, and collegial days at the 54th annual ARLIS/NA conference, I took off this morning from the Hôtel Bonaventure in Montreal toward New York State. The Bonaventure is at the top (10th floor plus) of a brutalist masterwork built for Expo 67. I am fond of brutalism but the hotel is very much closed off from the outside world. There are courtyards (with ducks) as well as the swimming pool area. It was hard to know what was North or South when you were on the conference floor. Our hotel room looked out onto the city but other folks had courtyard views.

Since I drove to Montreal, it was possible to switch out the traveling a little bit. I went up to Montreal via Syracuse, crossing into Canada at Alexandria Bay. The flatness of the Ontario and Quebec landscape on the North side of the Saint Lawrence River was a surprise to me. I headed home straight South from Montreal, into the Adirondacks toward Albany in order to head over to Williamstown and North Adams, Massachusetts, for visits to the Clark Art Institute and MASS MoCA respectively.

MASS MoCA's shorter-term exhibitions for this year do not open until later in May but the spread out spaces of the industrial buildings with plenty of windows and a variety of things to view through them were an elixir for a tired brain. I had already seen the Jeffrey Gibson show but it was more compelling to just let it wash over me this time. Immersive, they say. I had seen the "New York State of Mind" show but the 1975 picture with Patti Smith at a political protest where the sign next to her says "Stop U.S. arming the shah's fascist regime" resounded quite differently than it did a year ago. One of the pieces in Zora J Murff's show was "Bully Pulpit" from which her recorded voice includes text inspired by Black radical activist and political prisoner George Jackson who was killed by guards in 1971. "When my people receive justice, I am sure I will receive it too." The text of Jimena Sarno's two-channel video installation "Las Tres Gracias" draws on creation legends and Third World literature. One of the days (ninth?) of creation "marked the nether world for those who have poison in their souls."

The picture is an aerial view of the industrial buildings that have been converted into the MASS MoCA campus in North Adams, Massachusetts, a few miles East of Williamstown.

more Gehry memories

Another (re)post on Frank Gehry after his recent death -- 2016 road trip report by Aaron Betsky -- reminded me about the Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratories in Iowa City from 1992.

Three cheers for road trips and for reports of road trips as well as for interesting buildings.

Frank Gehry, rest in peace

Frank Gehry died yesterday, just a week or so after Robert A.M. Stern. You would not generally mistake the work of one architect for the other but they both designed some really fine buildings. I may get to Bilbao and Arles someday to see probably the most famous of Gehry's museums but I have seen the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi ...

as well as the University of Toledo Center for Visual Arts which is attached to the Toledo Museum of Art.

I also remember seeing a couple of Gehry's projects in Los Angeles: the Loyola University School of Law which I walked over to see maybe forty years ago, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall where I was lucky enough to hear an organ concert with Steve Ong probably a dozen years ago.

I was particularly reminded of these buildings as I indexed a house in Ocean Springs, just up the coast from Biloxi. But that was more Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown than Gehry or Stern.

yellow stairs and brutalist buildings

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London

Monte Amiata housing, Gallaratese, Milan

(Carlo Aymonino, archt.)

Endeavor and Voyager

NVIDIA's new campus, designed by Gensler, consists of a triangular and a hexagonal building. It is featured in an article in Metropolis that I'm indexing for Avery. The names of the buildings are Endeavor and Voyager. Call out to the library vendor Endeavor and its Voyager system?

funnels

For thirty years and a bit more, I have been involved with the Art NACO funnel of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging. It enables us art catalogers to participate in authority control more fully than we might be able to do individually. I coordinate the efforts of a dozen or so art libraries that create or revise name records that are included in the LC/NAF international authority file. There's also an Art SACO funnel that allows us to propose subject headings to add to the Library of Congress Subject Headings file. So "funnels" has been a (good) trigger word for me for a long time.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email announcement from the SS United States Conservancy today that announced that the "second SS United States funnel [was] to be preserved." They use the word "funnel" to describe the smokestacks that were so prominent on the ship.

This illustration is a rendering of the proposed SS United States Museum and Visitor Experience designed by Thinc, LMN Architects, and Buro Happold. More information here.

Milan: changing skyline

When we were in Milan in spring 2018 and stayed near the Bosco Verticale, this was the view toward the Porta Nuova development.

Last week when I was indexing the May 2025 issue of Architectural Record with its Building Type Study of tall buildings, one of the featured buildings was the new Unipol Tower designed by Mario Cucinella Architects.

the country house life moderne

This is the new home of Margot Beste-Chetwynde in the 2017 production of "Decline and Fall" based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. We never get much closer than this but the interiors are extraordinary moderne. I naturally do not know if the interiors were actually filmed in the house shown here. Googling has not yet revealed the buildings used in the three-episode series from Acorn TV and BBC, streaming on Amazon Prime.

But who cares about the real house? There's plenty of good scenery and architecture jokes. If you are wondering how to say "Beste-Chetwynde," the actors say it something like "beastie cheating." The role is delightfully played by Eva Longorio.

anybody got $170 million?

When I lived in New York City from 1995 until 2009, there was a significant coalescing of art galleries in West Chelsea. Primarily in the blocks east and west of Tenth Avenue, from West 17th to West 29th. Galleries that had been in SoHo were pushed out by rising rents. It was massive fun to go galleryhopping in those days and one of my favorite buildings was 526 West 26th Street.

(James Estrin / New York Times)

I sometimes would walk up and down the stairs as well as back and forth on several of the floors. Other times, I might take the elevator up to the top floor with galleries and walk down. The elevator was operated by a person and had one of those gate doors.

By the time I moved upstate in 2009, the smaller galleries were being pushed out of West Chelsea as gentrification in general and specifically development around the High Line forced up rents and sale prices. Crowds and monster tall buildings proliferated. Even the Whitney Museum of American Art built its new building in the southern reaches of the arts district.

Now, Deb has sent me an article from the NY Times about the listing of 526 West 26th for sale and how the sale could displace many artists and art spaces. (The picture above is from the article.) The building is being sold by the estate of Gloria Naftali, one of the early galleriests that opened in the building in 1995. Her husband had originally bought the building as a warehouse for his garment business. The Greene Naftali Gallery is still operating and has spaces on the eighth floor and now also on the ground floor. I remember how the upper floor space was significantly renovated and enlarged several times. In the picture, I see "LEVENBETTS" on a window. They are one of the smaller architectural firms that I encounter in my Avery indexing.

The building is included in the West Chelsea Historic District so there's probably little danger of it being demolished. Still, it has played, and continues to play, a significant role in the art life and life of artists in New York City.

separated at birth: celadon shards and green tiles

 

Li Hongwei

The Origin, 2022

(exhibition on view currently at the

Alfred Ceramic Art Museum)

detail of façade

Chao Center for Asian Art

The Ringling

Sarasota, Florida

Machado Silvetti, architects

no more uppity teachers ... or students?

We were supposed to go on a field trip to the Cuba Block Barn today but Hurricane Debby is working her way up the eastern coast. Rain date in September. When I got to the Alfred Station SDB Church parking lot where we were supposed to combine for shared rides to Cuba, Sharon Burdick arrived and she had copies of a fact sheet on the Bedford Corners School House. The schoolhouse was the added bonus for our trip to Cuba, being on the road between the Block Barn and lunch at Sprague's in Portville.

The schoolhouse is now the home of the Portville Historical and Preservation Society. The main room had double desks to hold two students and was large enough that multiple grades could be taught. The teacher was seated on a platform in the front of the room. Later, it was mandated that teachers should not be on a different level than the students and the arrangement of the room was flipped with the teacher platform at the back.

When I was in first-third grades in New Auburn, Wisconsin, the school house was for all the grades, no kindergarten but all twelve numbered grades met in one building with shared rooms for first and second and for third to fifth. That meant that my older sister and I were in the same classroom when she was in fifth grade and I in third. One day, Roberta's class was discussing the polar regions and nosy me butted in to say that we had been to the North Pole. Roberta had to correct my story to say that it was Santa's North Pole in the Adirondacks.

The "we" of the field trip were members of the Bakers Bridge Historical Association and other interested folks.

Palladianism in Kane, Pa., and Yorkshire

McDermott Mausoleum

Kane, Pennsylvania

Temple of the Four Winds

Castle Howard

Yorkshire

Wikimedia Commons

By jcw1967 from Leeds, UK - Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, 17112017, JCW1967, EOS 1Ds (2), CC BY 2.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78305779

Queen of All Saints Chapel

I happened on the Queen of All Saints Chapel on Spring Lake Road near Brooksville, Florida, because I was lost northeast of Tampa on my way from Sarasota toward Tallahassee. But what fun to find this treasure of conservative traditionalism. It would have been fun to go inside but the dress code for men included coat and tie, no jeans, no earrings. Three strikes, you're out(side).

More pictures from my southern road trip at https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/albums/72177720314881851
 

perusing the paper & architecture and politics

(NPS photo)

My nephew asked me about the obituary for Dr Lloyd Watson, a bee scientist who had been a major influence on my father as he was growing up. Enough that I was named after his son. The obituary appeared in The New York Times for February 27, 1948. I looked at the obituary on the TimesMachine so I was looking at the content as a newspaper page.

An obituary in a neighboring column was for a Dr William Maxon, a botanist and expert on ferns. Probably not a relative but I am related to Maxsons, a variant spelling of the surname. LCSH uses Maxson family with a reference from Maxon family and a couple other variants.

I couldn't help myself. I turned the newspaper back a page or two, noting book reviews, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, and other items that now seem less integrated in today's Times. Next to the main book review was an article entitled "Decision to stand on Jefferson Arch: prize-winning design for huge parabola is opposed here as similar to Mussolini's." The arch, designed by Eero Saarinen, is now known as the Gateway Arch and is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

The Jefferson Arch was criticized by Gilmore D. Clarke, the chairman of the National Commission on Fine Arts, as similar to a Mussolini arch. Mussolini had approved a parabolic arch for the international exposition in Rome in 1942 celebrating twenty years of fascism. The president of the Jefferson Memorial Association argued that the similarity of the designs was "purely coincidental." Saarinen described the parabola shape as a basic form and said he had never seen the Rome design. The connection of fascism to modern architecture, particularly in Italy, is troubling to me (and others).

As an aside, Gilmore Clarke is mentioned three or four times in the article and his "Clarke" is misspelled as "Clark" in the first instance.

 

housing inequality

The National Edition of the Sunday New York Times includes two or three pages of real estate and metropolitan content at the back of the business section. These days, when stock prices and currency exchange rates are readily available on the web, the business section has more content about business people or firms and socioeconomic context. The two real estate articles this past week, on facing pages, were titled "A name brand as an amenity" and "In Detroit, an eviction rattles a housing plan." While not explicitly about housing inequality, the amenity article addresses apartment buildings in Miami and elsewhere with condos selling for as much as 59 million dollars. The Detroit eviction article addresses the eviction of a homeowner for not living full time in her tiny house. Her name appears on the lease of her boyfriend's riverfront condo. She says that she works for her boyfriend's firm which is based in the apartment. The tiny houses are owned and operated by Cass Community Social Services and the rent is $1 per square foot on the lease-to-own basis.

(Photo by Michelle and Chris Gerard on Curbed Detroit)

Neither article is simply about high-priced or low-priced housing but I cannot help thinking about how many decent living spaces could be created with 59 million dollars. Not just tiny houses but living spaces from abandoned industrial buildings, rehabilitated houses, accessory dwelling units, as well as new buildings. Rehabilitation also can go a good distance on greenhouse gas mitigation.

I just finished reading Solomon's Crown by Natasha Siegel. When I went to the shelf to pick my next book, I selected The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask. I guess I will be thinking more about the socioeconomics of housing.

teardowns

I have been watching the 1981 version of Brideshead Revisited. Lady Marchmain has died and the London house has been sold by Lord Marchmain. Bridey has asked Charles to paint some views of the house before it is torn down, to be replaced by flats. But don't worry. The house will be saved and the flats will not be built. Charles will find his painting career with the success of the paintings. I know the house will be saved because it is also Grantham House, the London residence of the Crawleys from Downton Abbey.

This photo of the actual Bridgewater House, on the site of Cleveland House, is on Flickr, taken by jupiter1953.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/b1953/7616519714

I first watched the 1981 Brideshead at Judith Holliday's apartment in the Dewitt Mall Apartments in Ithaca. My then boyfriend Randy and I went over every Sunday night while it was on Great Performances on PBS. I had not had a television and bought a modest black-and-white television so we could watch the series. Randy also did not have a television. Judith had a color TV and it beat out my B&W model. I took along my copy of the book and it was amazing (and surprising) how much of the dialogue in the book made it into the telescript.

separated at birth: BIG

VIA 57 West

New York City

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), architect

https://big.dk/

BIBFRAME Implementation Group (BIG)

photo above:

David.Clay.Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

stops along the way on my southern road trip

It may be mostly for my own memory aid, but I thought I would do a post with the overnight and other significant stops along my southern road trip loop from Alfred down to Orlando and then over to Biloxi before heading back North.

• Washington, D.C.: Sargent & Spain exhibition at the National Gallery (including chat with curator Sarah Cash and talking with NGA catalogers), This Present Moment at the Renwick, Giuseppe de Nittis at the Phillips, MASS Design Group at the National Building Museum, plus SAAM, NPG, Hirshhorn
• Richmond, Va.: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Branch Museum of Architecture and Design, Valentine Museum, VCU Institute of Contemporary Art (the building designed by Steven Holl, the museum was closed on New Year's Eve)
• Durham, N.C.: drop off some magazines for USModernist, shop for Sunday Times at The Streets at Southpoint (a new mall pretending to be a good old Main Street and doing a decent job of it)
• Florence, S.C.: Florence County Museum (art and history), visit Jeanette and Wanda
• Charleston, S.C.: Gibbes Museum of Art (including Bo Bartlett show on the top floor)
• Beaufort, S.C.
• Savannah, Ga.: Telfair Academy (with plaster casts of Laocoön and other classical works)
• St Augustine, Fla.: the old fortifications (17th century)
• Orlando, Fla.: visit Elizabeth G, Florida Polytechnic University (new building by Santiago Calatrava), Florida Southern College (buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright including a Usonian house), Orlando Museum of Art (exhibition Don't Ask Me Where I'm From and good selection of older and newer works from their American collections), Mennello  Museum of American Art (exhibition In Conversation: Will Wilson & Edward S. Curtis)
• Fanning Springs, Fla.: ARLIS/NA Cataloging Advisory Committee meeting via Zoom
• Apalachicola, Fla.: overnight spot, just love saying the word
• Lillian, Ala.: Johnny B's Front Porch for Taco Tuesdays
• Foley, Ala.: Book Exchange (the clerk very nicely helped me with the $100 bill that came out of the ATM without sufficient warning)
• Biloxi, Miss.: Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art (one of the major impetuses for this road trip and totally met expectations, museum designed by Frank Gehry)
• Meridian, Miss.: mostly overnight stop but now I wish I'd checked it out a little more
• Montgomery, Ala.: drove around Selma on my way to Montgomery (the tornado struck a few hours later), Lowndes County Interpretive Center of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail between the two cities, National Memorial to Peace and Justice (designed by MASS Design Group), Legacy Museum, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald House Museum
• Tuskegee, Ala.: Tuskegee University with a chapel by Paul Rudolph and other buildings either by Rudolph or showing his strong influence (Fry and Welch, former Tuskegee architecture professors, collaborated on the chapel)
  

From Tuskegee, I started taking mostly interstate highways and was seriously headed toward home in Alfred, New York. I whizzed past Atlanta, Charlotte, Roanoke, Staunton, Harrisburg, and Corning. A couple days of driving most of the daylight hours. Not my favorite way to go from one place to another but when it's time to head home, the interstates do a pretty good (if jarring) job of it.

A couple miscellaneous observations: raptors love to fly over the interstates (must be the road kill), lightly traveled U.S. highways are generally in better shape than the heavily traveled interstates (well, duh).

My Flickr photostream has a picture album from the road. Here's a picture of the trailhead parking area where I attended the CAC meeting in Fanning Springs, Florida.