architecture – My Own RE:public

Pugin

Should one not be adequately informed, by virtue of professional or personal interest, in the social and cultural history of Victorian England (and the Georgian that preceded it), one could be forgiven for not easily placing the name Pugin (says she absolving herself!). That is, to be precise: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin^[a] (/ˈpjuːdʒɪn/PEW-jin; 1 March 1812 – 14 September 1852). And so pasted from Wikipedia; for, having come to the end of a fabulous biography, I now realise I have been saying – in my head anyway – quite correctly (by chance!) the first syllable but consistently mispronouncing the last syllable with a hard ‘g’. And for reasons I can’t say, for there is that rule dependent upon the following vowel and in days gone I certainly had a penchant for an icy gin and tonic of a summer evening. Too long a stay in Germany perhaps, where the g of Germany and gin is confined to words derived from other languages – like, for instance, ‘Germany’ and ‘gin’!

As mentioned previously, in a weaker moment last year I relented and, despite my modest budget, subscribed to the London Review of Books. The reading of a random piece here and there or a rare purchase at a Hauptbahnhof en route from here to there had become a bit tiresome. And I haven’t regretted doing so; even when some articles tend to veer too left of my (fading) scope of vision. While sometimes delivery has been tardy (unfortunately a digital only sub. is not offered so it is always the case that I have an online version for a significant time before the hard copy turns up) and this year has seen a hefty price hike, I am sticking with it for the moment. During the year gone I have discovered some really excellent pieces of writing – from people known to me and not, about subject matter with which I am familiar and that which I’m not.

Rosemary Hill is an example of such an ‘unknown’ (to me) with whom I have been glad to become acquainted. As it transpires, Hill is not only a regular contributor to LRB, but a widely respected writer and cultural historian. Early in the year gone, I was impressed by a ‘Diary’ piece in which Hill, inspired by the 1921 census becoming available and an interest in discovering her father as the baby he then was and the family that surrounded him, explores her familial roots in South London and in doing so vividly illustrates the conditions under which the ‘working-classes’ lived at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Then later I listened to a series of podcasts hosted by Rosemary Hill on Romantic Britain coinciding with her new book Time’s Witness (I await the paperback – remember, the modest…meager budget – ordered and due in a couple of weeks) which led to the discovery of her 2008 Wolfson History Prize winning book God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (2007), of which an immaculate paperback copy fell into my hands.

And then there was light …

Amidst all the dark tidings from the world’s metropoles, some light at the end of the tunnel came with the New Year opening of the Moynihan Train Hall annexe to Penn Station in NYC.

Moynihan Train Hall, Opening Day 1st January 2021, by Garrett Ziegler, CC BY-SA 2.0

And this gives me the opportunity to speak to Michael Kimmelman’s verdict at The New York Times. (Kimmelman, their architecture critic whose opinions – for instance, on the perversion of “the classical” that I linked to from this post – and multi-media projects, like last year’s virtual walking tours of NYC, are always impressive.)

Firstly, Kimmelman lauds the very fact that, in these extraordinarily stressed times, such an immense public works project could be fulfilled – and within schedule and budget! And with plaudits for all those concerned – from the architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and construction engineers, Schlaich Bergermann to Gov. Cuomo and all those in-between. Placed in the historical context of its original function as a general post office and mail sorting facility (later named the James A. Farley Building, and from the same firm of architects, McKim Mead and White, responsible for the old Pennsylvania Station opened a couple of years previously and demolished in 1963), beautifully described (and pictured) are the sky lights and trusses as ” […]aerial feats of sculptural engineering and parametric design.” And recognised are the tributes paid to the original Penn and Charles McKim in the arched windows inspired by the Baths of Caracella and the geometric, hanging clock, designed by Peter Pennoyer.

Original Pennsylvania Station 1910 (demolished 1963)

As a with all contemporary public projects, the realist Kimmelman acknowledges the role of commercial and retail influence, but is satisfied that, for the moment at least, these haven’t intruded excessively into the public space, and that the main hall has been designed with utilitarian motives and not capitalist; passenger service as the imperative. And that the space has been magnificently served by art installations courtesy of the Public Art Fund.

White washing the past

In the last week or so, two disparate associations have made me consider just how much European culture (that is, the western Christian version) has invested in commanding the narrative of (their) inherent superiority, and how even today there are some who would seek to reverse or suppress an appreciation and wider representation of cultural diversity. To perpetuate their lineal myopic narrative they return now, as was so during the Enlightenment, to the Mediterranean and Aegean of the classical antiquity.

Firstly, the bizarre Presidential decree, entitled – believe it or not – “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”, that instructs planners and architects to resist the dictates of a zeitgeist determined to be obsessed with diversity and inclusiveness (and presumably any innovative design tendencies of the 20th century), and instead adhere to a traditional architectural form, that is, one inspired by the classical lines favoured in the founding years of the new republic and perfected in the moral wastelands of the antebellum South.

The Call-Collins House, The Grove: Tallahassee, Florida

As The New York Times says in an editorial:

…The proposed executive order reflects a broader inclination in some parts of American society to substitute an imagined past for the complexities and possibilities of the present. It embodies a belief that diversity is a problem and uniformity is a virtue. It is advocating for an un-American approach to architecture.
The Editorial Board Feb. 4, 2020

Beyond the retrograde aesthetic that seems to be espoused, I can’t help but ponder that here we have another insidious attempt by the President and his cohorts to undermine a fragile social cohesion, and that along racial lines. One can well imagine how the power and grace of David Adijaye’s wonderful National Museum of African American History and Culture would send them off on a delusory tangent, whereby the Times’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes this wonderful piece offering a more nuanced definition of “classical” – but then “nuance” is not a category applicable in some thought processes.

David Adijaye’s National Museum of African American History and Culture

And a second association arose out of my reflections upon visiting an exhibition in Frankfurt a few days ago. At the Liebieghaus, and entitled “Gods in Color” , displayed were an impressive range of reproductions of antique sculpture reimagined in the colorful splendour of their time.

My own photograph of the polychromy reproduction of the so-called Small Herculaneum Woman type, Delos, 2nd c. BC

I was interested in many different aspects, including the historical narrative and cultural significance of the sculptures, the techniques and materials used in their creation and the contemporary techniques used to expose the polychromy. But, prompted by learning (short video clip below) that there had been evidence enough in the 18th century of antique polychromy, contrary to the essentially monochrome narrative inherited from the Middle Ages, and, further, that the preeminent art historian of the time, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (this a Wiki link, better is this from a 2017 exhibition in Weimar, unfortunately only in German), was erroneously seen as a proponent of the marble-white theory (until 2008!), I have been thinking a lot about the enduring public perception of the “whiteness” of antiquity – be it in sculpture, attire…and buildings.

Gods In Color – Golden Edition (to August 30, 2020)

And here I return to the very Trumpian view of the architectural imperative: the State embellishing (better said, white-washing) history and defining the present in the image of this falsely received and often discredited past.