ASTROTURF IN THE HOLY CITY
An article in the New York Times Real Estate section is titled “The Charleston You Haven’t Seen” and it describes a “gem” of a house that I certainly hadn’t seen on my visits. It’s a cartoon version of a gable-roofed house. There is a front yard (typically houses in the Holy City don’t have front yards),and lest you take that too seriously, it’s finished in Astroturf. And the house is painted black. The readers’ “Comments” are worth reading, especially those of the neighbors. My favorite is from California: “This isn’t ‘The Charleston You Haven’t Seen.’ It’s a single, hyper-modernistic uber-designer house that has no relation to its environment. It could be located in any city, and refers to nothing outside itself.”
THE CROWN
As a confirmed Anglophile I can’t resist another season of The Crown. But the episode “Dangling Man” that dealt with the Duke of Windsor left me dissatisfied. In a BBC interview, the Duke (played by Derek Jacobi) gives the impression that he was forced to abdicate in large part because of his progressive views of the role of the monarchy. He was hardly a progressive. In 1937, after his abdication and marriage to Wallis Simpson, the couple visited Germany, were well received by Hitler, and thereafter proved active appeasers. There was much talk of their pro-Nazi sympathies and intrigues with highly-placed Nazis. This all led Churchill, who had been a supporter of Edward VIII, having him appointed governor of the Bahamas to get him out of England. The TV series suggests that Prince Charles was close to and admired his uncle. Is that why the Queen, now 93, has refused to step down in favor of her son?
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
I recently received my new passport. The pages for stamps and visas are decorated with images, as they have been in the past, but this is the first time I looked at them closely: a windjammer and a lighthouse; a steam engine pulling a train in a Western landscape; a farmer plowing a field with a team of oxen. Not one of the images is contemporary, with the exception of a communications satellite on the inside back cover. The pictures generally invoke a (rosy) pre-industrial past. And except for Independence Hall, there is not a hint of urbanity. America is apparently a land of open spaces, not a city to be found in the place.
IN MEMORIAM
On January 8, 1958, a fire broke out on the Norwegian ship Earling Jarl while the vessel was docked in Bodø, a small coastal town north of the Arctic Circle. The ship was part of the Hurtigrutten (Express Route), which serves small isolated communities up and down the coast carrying mail, goods, and people. The route is between Kirkenes in the north and Bergen, about five days sailing. The Earling Jarl fire took the lives of fourteen people. A small bronze memorial stands in the town to commemorate the event—and the victims. The artist is Istvan Lisztes, a Norwegian sculptor of Hungarian descent. Although I have taken the Hurtigrutten I have not seen the memorial. But from the photograph it seems like a perfect commemoration: small, unostentatious, attractive, and full of feeling. In an era of pompous, obscure, and sprawling memorials, there is a lesson here.
THE FIRST MODERNISTS
This 1931 photograph of a group of party-goers at the Beaux-Arts Ball in New York is famous. That’s William Van Alen in the center (the Chrysler Building), flanked by Ely Jacques Kahn (the Squibb Building) on the left, and Ralph Walker (the Irving Trust Building) on the right. Three great skyscraper architects. William F. Lamb (the Empire State Building) was also there but didn’t make it into the picture. These men are all part of a generation of American architects that has been written out of the history books. That’s a shame. We all know their buildings—the Empire State, the Chrysler, 30 Rock, and the Federal Reserve in DC. We should remember Lamb, Van Alen, Raymond Hood, and Paul Cret. Their works adorn our cities—and are likely to do so for a long time since they are mostly listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
