A second installment from the Providence Preservation Society’s 2010 Most Endangered Properties series — the old Temple Beth El at 688 Broad Street (1910-1911). Like the previously discussed Atlantic Mills Towers it suffers from being a hulking pile in a difficult location (in a more than difficult economy). What can be done with this thing? It is still an inspiring edifice, but judging from the protective ‘netting’ around the capitals it’s going to need help soon. PPSRI provides some history;

In 1908, the Congregation Sons of Israel and David, a reform group, decided to move from their temple on Friendship Street. After renting a hall Downtown for a year, they decided to purchase land on Broad Street and construct a new temple. The interior of the Temple was built to reflect the Reform style of worship of the congregation. The congregation decided to build a new temple on the East Side during the 1940s as the population around Temple Beth El was no longer the German Jewish community it had once been. The neighborhood now consisted of a number of small Orthodox congregations from Eastern Europe. In 1954, Temple Beth El was sold to the new Congregation Shaare Zedek, which formed out of five smaller Orthodox groups in the neighborhood. Interior changes were made to reflect the congregation’s Orthodox style of worship.

The current owner plans to put it up for sale. Any takers? Any suggestions? More info and complete list at PPSRI. More pix after jump.

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The Providence Preservation Society of Rhode Island has released its annual Most Endangered Properties survey. Once again on the list are the weirdly whimsical and totally phallic towers (I’m sorry but I know a penis when I see one, pic after jump) at the Atlantic Mills complex at 100 Manton Avenue, built in 1863. Apparently the builders had a little extra money to throw at this project — the brickwork on these impractical edifices is insanely detailed. The PPS hopes somebody will do something.

The society says it hopes the list serves as a catalyst for sustainable development by sparking conversation and finding solutions that ensure preservation. The society noted two successes in protecting properties placed on last year’s list. The General Ambrose Burnside House, at 314 Benefit St., underwent extensive work during the summer of 2009 to restore the property to its late 19th-century splendor. And the Captain Joseph Tillinghast House, at 403 South Main St., is currently being stabilized and restored.

But as they say in the real estate biz — location, location, location. How can this crazy pile be re-imagined in this economy, in this location? Luxury condos? I don’t think so.

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Inspired by a similar exercise in The Boston Globe, David Brussat, architecture critic for The Providence Journal, has called for readers to name their choice for ‘Ugliest Building in Providence’. . .

I applaud Robert Campbell for getting the ball rolling in Boston. Let’s get it rolling in Providence. Which buildings should we murder? We all have our opinions. Let me know what yours are. I will publish them here, and more fully on my blog. Say it with real passion. The tastes of those who inflict ugly buildings upon us are more fashion than feeling, and they will change if we demand it.

Pictured here: The Jenga condo tower down by the Waterplace Park basin. (Check out their website — the images they use to show the view from the building are photographs, but the images of the building are illustrations.) Another strong contender after the jump.

Go vote and comment on Brussat’s blog ‘Architecture Now and Then’.

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Isn’t it exquisite? In a recent ProJo article bemoaning the “city’s latest architectural monster”, the Providence Career and Technical High School, columnist David Brussat mentions a recent event held in the building’s auditorium. For a lecture sponsored by the Providence Preservation Society, Wheaton College art history professor Tripp Evans was invited to speak on the topic of modern architecture. Brussat found him unpersuasive.

Some say the famous modernists (or their firms) were not at the top of their games in Providence, but Evans insists that it is important to “look closely” at the details to understand how “exquisite” such buildings can be. In fact, he listed among his favorites a building I saw from the deck of an open house on Sunday. It was a purebred International Style office building of surpassing ugliness near Wayland Square, known as Bliss Place.

I assure you: Up close it is even worse.

It’s exquisite details elude me as well. Not surprisingly, there appear to be units available behind this unlovely facade.

Attention creative types. Submissions and applications are being accepted for participation in this really cool. . . thing.

‘System of Meaning’ (who brought you Pleasure Dome and The Music of Erich Zann in the Penal Colony) is looking for collaborators.

Sculptors, painters, architects, musicians, and actors are all welcome
to participate in The Passion of Patty Hearst, to be held in the Old Stone Bank, 86 North Main Street, to run February 4 thru 7.

The Passion of Patty Hearst is an immersive, site-specific performance that re/deconstructs the life of Patricia Campbell Hearst, famed hostage-turned-terrorist whose notorious participation in the April 15, 1974 robbing of the Hibernia Bank of California riveted the nation. In a burst of automatic gunfire, Patty shatters our ideas  of action and belief. In The Passion of Patty Hearst we stage the story as modern-day miracle play. By embodying Patricia hearst — newspaper heiress, socialite, hostage, bank robber, and cultural icon — across a range of actors’ bodies and through a variety of media, drawing on documentary, journalistic, operatic, and burlesque theatrical traditions, we aim to resurrect difficult questions about socio-political activism, stardom, and economic disparity that continue to haunt the civic architectures and social narratives of our nation today.

The bank building is 27,780 sq. feet of space waiting to be heisted. Rooms of many different sizes and descriptions are available. If you think you have a project that would be appropriate, please contact andrew_starner@brown.edu with a short description of your piece and
relevant previous work.

Well. Another one of these.

Merchants Bank Building, 32 Westminster Street, built in 1855.

Providence city councilman, Cliff Wood, sends out an open invitation to come poke around the shiny new Nathan Bishop. This should be of interest to the neighbors who advocated for the renovation, prospective parents and students, and I should think former students would want to take advantage of this opportunity to revisit their old school. Meet teachers, students and staff and learn about the academic programs and student activities.

RSVP is requested but not required by PPSD at 456.0686.

Dedication ceremony 4:30pm, open house 4pm to 7pm, Tuesday, 101 Sessions Street

Congratulations to all the people who worked so hard to make this happen. Nathan Bishop Junior High is scheduled to reopen this fall, starting with a sixth grade class, with seventh and eight grades to be folded in over the next two years.  Among those to be thanked is East Side City Councilor, Cliff Wood, who has long been an advocate of public education. He may well be acting out of enlightened self-interest and I say, more power to him. (Perhaps he can set his sights on Hope High now.) My recommendation to the new faculty is to get the students invested in the building and grounds right away with assigned maintenance chores so they can take personal pride in it.  Happily the new landscaping includes some sizable shade trees; science teachers should work those into the curriculum as has been done at Moses Brown. The exterior work is beautiful and the building an asset to the architectural fabric of the neighborhood. (More at ProJo.)

This is completely not related to Providence in any way, but check out this awesome time-lapse video of the Manhattan Bridge bobbing up and down as the subways go through it.  It’s slightly scary yet oddly very pretty, in that way that sometimes makes me want to live in New York (until I think about things like rent prices.)

[via Twitter]

Glorious clips of the peregrine falcons, and greater downtown Providence. All the more special for being unmolested by the crap-brown concrete lattice of the Textron Building, as that’s whereupon the birdies are perched.

Rare to find predatory creatures sharing turf so amicably.

In a recent piece for the Providence Journal (Modernist rampage in Providence) columnist David Brussat decries, among other projects, the ghastly Box Office.

The Box Office is a proposed three-story building of 36 recycled steel shipping containers. Instant slums. Maybe that works for Olneyville. The young developers of this project wondered: With shipping containers piling up in ports, why not use them as buildings? Which makes me wonder: Why not leave them piled up in ports, where they will come in handy as shipping containers after the recession?

Aesthetics aside for a moment, is there a shortage of empty buildings in Providence I was unaware of?  I thought we had plenty of available inventory.  I know just how this ends — the developers* will be shocked to discover that the market is glutted with such units, bail on the project and leave a pile of rusting shipping containers to peel in the sun by the side of the road (the site of the old Harris Lumber) looking for all the world like an abandoned container port. Mayor Cicilline was at the groundbreaking (?) ceremony for this harebrained enterprise  — he should call the whole thing off.

*The Truth Box, Inc. website lists 27 Sims Avenue in Providence as its address.

The Providence Journal sees no downside to the new CVS being installed on the first floor of the Providence Place Mall, hence the title of its brief editorial in Wednesday’s paper — “More downtown delights”.

In May, the CVS on the third retail level of Providence Place will move into a large space at ground level entered from the mall and from the street. It will have a pharmacy and a “digital photo café.”

Second only to Dunkin’ Donuts* in the ugliness of its street facades, their garish signature orange and cheap building materials may well screw up what is a pretty satisfactory streetscape right now.  Who knows, maybe CVS has a special plan for this very public space, but corporations tend to cling to such things, even at the risk of offending their future customers.

*I suppose the hookers’ wig shop on Westminster Street is in serious contention, but I can’t pick on a cute little a mom ‘n’ pop store.

…And I don’t mean Viola Davis and Richard Jenkins.

You may have heard of architect David Rockwell, America’s leading choreographer of visual imagery in public places.  His passion is the one-night transformative power of theatre—so what better venue than the 81st Academy Awards?

According to the New York Times, Mr. Rockwell aims to recapture the show’s “nightclubby, champagne-popping, convivial, communal roots.”  He’ll introduce a theatrical flair to this year’s awards, from scene changes unfolding before the audience to flying LED screens.  He confides:

“It’s about celebration. We want to make it less a big, pre-taped package and more a live show. In a way the Oscars are like community theater on amazing steroids.”

And if community theatre on amazing steroids  is what the Academy Awards want, then Rhode Island will deliver.  For the second time, Swarovski, the world’s leader in fashion crystals and gemstones and even optical equipment, is teaming up with local company Orion RED (not affiliated with Bono, it stands for retail/exhibit/display) on a dazzling crystal curtain that will backdrop every laugh, tear and note of the Oscars.

In 2007, the 79th Academy Awards Swarovski Crystal Curtain, inspired by a paperweight on the Academy Awards designer’s desk, contained more than 50,000 sparking crystals, hung 20’ wide by 34’ long, and weighed over a ton.  Orion designed and fabricated a system to suspend all those crystals, and the resulting curtain garnered national attention and a display on Oprah Winfrey’s show.

Now the 2009 Academy Award Swarovski Curtain is generating even more buzz.  Its appearance is top-secret, but with 92,000 crystals, it just might outshine the stars.  If you plan on watching the show, consider having some shades handy, or maybe one of those pin-hole eclipse boxes.

Austrian-based Swarovski’s North American corporate headquarters are located in Cranston.  Orion’s design, production and warehouse facilities are in Smithfield.  David Rockwell is based in Manhattan but has designed semi-local stuff like the Mohegan Sun shops.  And the 81st Academy Awards will air this Sunday, February 22nd at 8 p.m.

Because if Pawtucket is rising, then I can’t help but think that Providence is sinking. How many artists and musicians are there to go around? Who will wait on our tables? Will Providence be left with all the personal injury lawyers and politicians?  At any rate, tonight at 7pm WSBE Channel 36 will be airing the documentary Pawtucket Rising about a city that found a way to re-purpose old buildings and create a new vision of itself.

When artists could no longer afford the skyrocketing real estate in nearby Providence they were forced to take their business elsewhere. Mayor James E. Doyle recognized that The Arts could be an important catalyst in his city’s revitalization. The city seized the opportunity to invite these small businesses to relocate to Pawtucket. As a result, Pawtucket is now restoring and renovating mill and industrial space that had once sat vacant and decaying.

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The Rhode Island Department of Transportation won approval to sell the site of the former Shooters nightclub (north-facing exterior wall seen here) located in Providence at India Point Park.  Representatives from the DOT presented their plan to state legislators who expressed concern that this piece of property should remain open for public use.  Check out the report just aired at 5:00 PM on Channel 10 News. It features a certain State Representative David Segal (a.k.a. The Lemondrop Kid) making some good points regarding the appraised value of the property.

And the Flaming Poo Poo Platters… look we didn’t know any better. Researcher and Brown grad student Heather Lee is conducting oral history research on some of the old family-owned Chinese restaurants once located in downtown Providence. She is particularly interested in hearing about the famous Ming Garden, Luke’s on Eddy Street, and the Mee Hong (photo circa 1976, Jay Boersma) but feel free to share your memories of other Chinese restaurants in the area. (There used to be one on Thayer Street, too.) Heather is working on this with Jay Hogue over at Art in Ruins (AIR).