ARCH 280 Lecture 9 - Professor Elihu Rubin, Spring 2020 PDF

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Professor Elihu Rubin, Spring 2020...

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2/10/20 Metropolitan Forms Ghost Towns  Compression of capitalist urbanization  Abandoning just as quickly when profits flee  Expendable attitude towards the built environment  Bodie, CA (1869) o Mining district and townscape acts like the big city o Aesthetic of arrested decay – ghost town atmosphere  Weaverville, CA o Hydraulic mining with monitors/pistols to shoot water at mountain o Italianate style with cornices with brackets, rounded windows o Spiral staircases on both sides of the street o Property ownership separated vertically, exterior access o Chinatown in Weaverville, resident Moon Lee o Joss House, Weaverville (Chinese population should be included in history)  Which narratives are elevated to official status?  How does architecture allude to diversity?  Railroad network transforms American cities Boston Public Garden  Elite citizens formed the Proprietors of the Botanic Garden in Boston o Urban elites organized themselves to advance projects o Picturesque pleasure group for sondering, promenade, leisure  English Romantic gardens and parks influencing the elite in the United States  Keep part of the city away from extraneous development  Swan boats through the Frog Pond of the Boston Public Garden  Anticipates regularized, orthogonal layout of the city o Back Bay and Commonwealth Avenue o Public Garden initiates sequence of building in the city o Plans of Lands on the Back Bay (1864, 1852)  Commodification of lots  FL Olmsted invents system of parks known as the Emerald Necklace  Landscape urbanism – how green spaces, ecological thinking, water spaces are integrated into urban design  Drive wooden pilings deep into the ground to make area stable enough for buildings, on marsh land  Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue adopts Second Empire architecture, Parisian avenue o Mansard roof with flats spanning 4 levels  Emerald Necklace consciously made as a buffer in anticipation of development  Olmstead inspired by British landscape architects, public sector planning

o One of the first nationally known landscape consultants o Proposes parks and park systems for these places o Adjunct to the smoky, industrial city Central Park, New York  1855 Greenward Plan by FL Olmsted and Calvert Vaux design Central Park o 1850 Central Park was not a tabula rasa o Seneca Village – free black neighborhood, slavery outlawed in NY in 1827 o People are displaced from the area with eminent domain o History of Central Park also characterized by dispossession  Mount Auburn Cemetery depicts picturesque English environment o Precedent of romantic cemetery design o Framing vistas in elite English country estates  Developing taste for English practices of public parks in America o Birkenhead Park (suburb of Liverpool), Joseph Paxton o Prospect Park, New York, FL Olmsted  Landscape as a didactic force o Landscape teaches you how to appreciate and behave in public space o Aesthetic experience is picturesque, formal, pastoral, sublime o The Ramble – rocky outcroppings are romantic areas where you look out onto the city heroically o The Mall – formal means legibly monumental, orthogonal  Not everyone has equal access to Central Park, property on the side of Central Park is very valuable but open to everyone  Financing with property assessments and general taxation  As lower Manhattan becomes more dense and industrial, theories of disease mean elite want reserve of Central Park to protect them from moral and physical dangers downtown  Rapid impact of park on property values  Transverse roads – park rolls over landscape, clearance for modern buses and trucks  Earth moving and hydraulic engineering o Park is a piece of urban infrastructure and technology o Plays hydrological role in the city, aqueduct depositing in Central Park o Bethesda Fountain marked arrival of fresh water New Haven  New Haven Water Survey (1860) o Fresh water becomes important for development  Planners beginning to acknowledge ecological, regional connections implied by the city  “Hints for the Layout of East Rock Park,” Donald Grant Mitchell (1882)  Boston milk supply network...