The Greatest Architectural Sacrileges in your cities history (Urban Renewal Crimes)

[TWAK]

16th Street Station in Oakland, which is now usable as an event space.


link
events

[LouisVanDerWright]

I like the use of the phrase "urban renewal crimes".

I feel like we need to punish these crimes WWII style with some sort of tribunal. Maybe have people who are like Nazi hunters who seek out the fools who did these deeds while they were younger and drag them out of their retirement homes and hold them accountable for what they did? You know, get a little Nuremberg action going here.

Honestly, the word holocaust (not to make light of the WWII event of the same name) actually applies here. "Destruction or slaughter on a mass scale"...

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

I like the use of the phrase "urban renewal crimes".

I feel like we need to punish these crimes WWII style with some sort of tribunal. Maybe have people who are like Nazi hunters who seek out the fools who did these deeds while they were younger and drag them out of their retirement homes and hold them accountable for what they did? You know, get a little Nuremberg action going here.

Honestly, the word holocaust (not to make light of the WWII event of the same name) actually applies here. "Destruction or slaughter on a mass scale"...

I read an article (I think on CityLab) a few years back that argued that American urban renewal in the 1950s came about due to jealousy of Europe. Essentially since many European countries had their central cities carpet bombed, European urban planners at the time were working from a blank slate, free to redo the entire core in many cases along mid-century modernist styles. American urban planners wanted to have hundreds of acres of land in urban cores to undergo similar "experiments" so they decided to help push an agenda which proposed wholesale destruction of massive swathes of the urban core.

[LouisVanDerWright]

^^^ I think the biggest motivator was actually "because we can". The US was left in the wake of WWII with enormous excess production capacity for all sorts of shit that was war specific. That resulted in a lot of "swords into plowshares" factory retooling. We were literally just looking for things to make. One of the results of that was a whole generation of appliances that were built like tanks. This was because they were built using tooling made to build tanks. I mean your 1950 commercial milkshake blender was probably a motor originally designed for some high stress flap on an airplane inserted into a bombshell attached to a stand that was cast using equipment used to cast suspension components or something like that. There's a reason everything after WWII looked like rockets and airplanes and it wasn't just because we thought it was a cool aesthetic, it's because all of the equipment left over for actually making those things was re-purposed as quickly as possible for domestic output.

The biggest mark was made by the re-purposing of heavy equipment production which basically resulted in massive output of bulldozers, excavators, cranes, you name it. Suddenly the US was producing a literal army of such equipment every year and they needed to do something with it. So they started building interstates... and razing anything that looked "gross". This wasn't possibly in human history prior to WWII. Even after WWI, there wasn't enough heavy equipment in the US to efficiently demolish whole neighborhoods. After WWII it became like brushing a fly off our shoulders. Unfortunately we didn't realize until far too late that "with great power comes great responsibility". Can you imagine what the US would be like now if we understood the implications of reworking our inner cities so wantonly? Can you imagine what Chicago, for example, would be like if there was only selective reconstruction of the core and we used the great power of our shiny new toys to say complete the 1909 Plan of Chicago instead? Instead of ripping down whole neighborhoods and building projects or freeways, what if Chicago had selectively added boulevards leading to superhighways on the city's edge and then used whatever debris to complete the lakefront islands Burnham proposed?

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

The biggest mark was made by the re-purposing of heavy equipment production which basically resulted in massive output of bulldozers, excavators, cranes, you name it. Suddenly the US was producing a literal army of such equipment every year and they needed to do something with it. So they started building interstates... and razing anything that looked "gross". This wasn't possibly in human history prior to WWII. Even after WWI, there wasn't enough heavy equipment in the US to efficiently demolish whole neighborhoods. After WWII it became like brushing a fly off our shoulders. Unfortunately we didn't realize until far too late that "with great power comes great responsibility". Can you imagine what the US would be like now if we understood the implications of reworking our inner cities so wantonly? Can you imagine what Chicago, for example, would be like if there was only selective reconstruction of the core and we used the great power of our shiny new toys to say complete the 1909 Plan of Chicago instead? Instead of ripping down whole neighborhoods and building projects or freeways, what if Chicago had selectively added boulevards leading to superhighways on the city's edge and then used whatever debris to complete the lakefront islands Burnham proposed?

I Always wondered how Philadelphia got through the mid 20th century mostly unscathed. I mean yes, the Delaware riverfront was ruined by 95, and 676 cut off Center City from North Philly. Still, it doesn't seem like many neighborhoods were demolished for the sake of just being demolished.

[McBane]

^ See my earlier post. Philly did completely level several blocks of 19th century commercial buildings to make way for Independence Mall (and a few adjacent office buildings). Compared to St. Louis and other cities, this was pretty minor. But the same planner (Edmond Bacon) also rescued and restored Society Hill, which at the time was a prime candidate for being totally bulldozed. Despite Independence Mall, Bacon was ahead of his time in having the fortitude to preserve and restore Society Hill when demolition and starting anew was the trend.

As I said before, Society Hill is probably the most successful urban renewal project of the 1950's. It's hard to imagine what Philadelphia would be like without Society Hill.

[Boisebro]

it's funny, as much as we lament these "urban renewal crimes," I'm guilty of doing this numerous times when I played SimCity.

I'd eagerly wipe out entire areas of a city to put in more parkland, extend freeways for better traffic flow, reroute streets for more density, build a ballpark or other speciality building, etc.

that image of Cincinnati's freeway reminded me of the times I'd destroy huge swaths of a city to rebuild an area in a new way. of course it's only a game, so I didn't worry about losing architectural gems or displacing citizens or the chance developers wouldn't build on the newly acquired land--I just wanted my city to look more like a city, dammit.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by McBane

^ See my earlier post. Philly did completely level several blocks of 19th century commercial buildings to make way for Independence Mall (and a few adjacent office buildings). Compared to St. Louis and other cities, this was pretty minor. But the same planner (Edmond Bacon) also rescued and restored Society Hill, which at the time was a prime candidate for being totally bulldozed. Despite Independence Mall, Bacon was ahead of his time in having the fortitude to preserve and restore Society Hill when demolition and starting anew was the trend.

As I said before, Society Hill is probably the most successful urban renewal project of the 1950's. It's hard to imagine what Philadelphia would be like without Society Hill.

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that no urban renewal had taken place - of course it had. But even in comparison to NYC (where a lot of old urbanism survived due to sheer scale) you don't really areas like Stuyvesant Town or much of the Lower East Side where Philly just demolished areas which were considered "outmoded" to build essentially the same uses in a more modernist form.

Originally Posted by Boisebro

it's funny, as much as we lament these "urban renewal crimes," I'm guilty of doing this numerous times when I played SimCity.

I'd eagerly wipe out entire areas of a city to put in more parkland, extend freeways for better traffic flow, reroute streets for more density, build a ballpark or other speciality building, etc.

that image of Cincinnati's freeway reminded me of the times I'd destroy huge swaths of a city to rebuild an area in a new way. of course it's only a game, so I didn't worry about losing architectural gems or displacing citizens or the chance developers wouldn't build on the newly acquired land--I just wanted my city to look more like a city, dammit.

I haven't played Sim City in years since they ruined the franchise. However, a few years back I did play its modern knockoff (Cities: Skylines). It had the same problem, but worse - all of the neighborhoods are ugly, because the default buildings are bland modernism, meaning you go right from suburbia to ugly residential and commercial towers. Thus even though the game itself was fun, the cities I built weren't beautiful, and I lost interest.

I'm really surprised no one has attempted to update the SimCity model to begin in say 1800, and slowly add not only new building tilesets, but new features. Thus if you literally don't have access to zoning before 1920 perhaps, and buildings can be constructed literally anywhere. It would make the game type much more fun.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Boisebro

it's funny, as much as we lament these "urban renewal crimes," I'm guilty of doing this numerous times when I played SimCity.

I'd eagerly wipe out entire areas of a city to put in more parkland, extend freeways for better traffic flow, reroute streets for more density, build a ballpark or other speciality building, etc.

that image of Cincinnati's freeway reminded me of the times I'd destroy huge swaths of a city to rebuild an area in a new way. of course it's only a game, so I didn't worry about losing architectural gems or displacing citizens or the chance developers wouldn't build on the newly acquired land--I just wanted my city to look more like a city, dammit.

In the Super NES version, I'd always solve the problems in the scenario cities, then wipe them out and rebuild them. I simply could not abide all the curving, unnecessary roads, all the wasted space, and the way all the scenario cities never utilized blocks, and only used individual zones.

I mean, just look at this:

• Video Link

[Boisebro]

for Milwaukee, this:



source: wikipedia


was replaced by this:



source


I'm all for height, and I don't think 100 East is necessarily a bad building, but not to replace a building as awesome as the Pabst.

[muppet]

If you look at some European examples of heavy damage during WWII you can always say, yeah that's forgivable, it was a time of war. But then when you see how much MORE destruction the local authorities continued to wreak I don't think that is. They were just as guilty as the US in commandeering a 'blank slate'.

Case in point, Exeter is a typical example. A cathedral city targeted in the 'Baedeker raids' (Hitler's use of the famous guidebook to destroy the country's most beautiful cities), it lost half of its gorgeous main street, but the other half miraculously surviving. However, after the bombing, they then went and bulldozed the survivors:


More here:

http://demolition-exeter.blogspot.co...eet-after.html

[muppet]

Take note though, the feisty residents of Hildesheim are a lesson to us all. The city was destroyed in the war, then rebuilt by the Communist authorities in your socialist modern style
a la commie block heaven. However the residents were so appalled they pressured the authorities into demolishing the new centre, and rebuilding the old.

Surprisingly many of the Communist block countries rebuilt and restored in traditional styles (Dresden the most famous example).


www.relexa-hotel-bad-salzdetfurth.de

[elsonic]

A few (well a lot, but a few considering everything that has been destroyed) in Montréal.

Mostly because considered outdated, speculation and urban «renovation».


Bonaventure Station


Windsor Hotel


McIntyre House


Strathcona House


John Redpath House


Main Post Office


Rokeby House


St-Laurent Market


Balmoral Hotel


Drummond House


Mackay House


Angus House


Joseph House


McGill College Avenue Synagogue


Aberdeen School


Jacques-Cartier School


Bank of Toronto


Société des artisans canadiens-français


Crédit foncier franco-canadien


St. Henri Church


St. James Club


Crystal Palace


Queen's Hotel


Strand Theatre


Pine Bluff Mansion


Art Association building


Sisters of The Congregation of Notre Dame


Royal Insurance Company Building


Y.M.C.A. Victoria Square


Y.M.C.A. Dominion Square Square


Alliance Fire Assurance Building


Department store at University Street


Albert Building


Université Laval


Montreal High School

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Boisebro

for Milwaukee, this:

I'm all for height, and I don't think 100 East is necessarily a bad building, but not to replace a building as awesome as the Pabst.

Oh fuck, I had no idea that's what that building in Milwaukee replaced.

That Sisters of The Congregation in Montreal though.

[Heaviside]

Originally Posted by Boisebro

for Milwaukee, this:



source: wikipedia


was replaced by this:



source


I'm all for height, and I don't think 100 East is necessarily a bad building, but not to replace a building as awesome as the Pabst.

The old Pabst brew house was also turned into a hotel

[CaliNative]

Have said this before, but needs to be repeated: complete bulldozing of 19th century Victorian neighborhoods on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles in the early 1960s was awful mistake, as was the tearing down of the art deco masterpiece Richfield tower in 1968/69. Awful awful. At least the Eastern Columbia building is still there, as are the West Adams Victorians.

[10023]

Originally Posted by muppet

Take note though, the feisty residents of Hildesheim are a lesson to us all. The city was destroyed in the war, then rebuilt by the Communist authorities in your socialist modern style
a la commie block heaven. However the residents were so appalled they pressured the authorities into demolishing the new centre, and rebuilding the old.

Surprisingly many of the Communist block countries rebuilt and restored in traditional styles (Dresden the most famous example).

The historical center of Dresden was only rebuilt after German re-unification. The communist East German government had just left it empty, or built commie blocks.

[muppet]

The Communists started the process but never had enough money to finish the task, hence why they left it empty rather than rebuild in modern style, like in Frankfurt for example. However they did restore the two largest complexes, the Zwinger palace and Semper Opera House square. Tbf the continuing restoration after reunification isn't from the new govt so much as from private funds coming from former West German millionaires.


https://theredlist.com/wiki-2-19-878...n-germany.html


https://pre00.deviantart.net

[eschaton]

Here's a video I found on Youtube documenting individual buildings lost in Pittsburgh after 1950.

• Video Link

Link in case direct embed doesn't work.

[tdawg]

That Berlin department store, Karstadt. What a beauty (and a shame)! I remember going to KaDeWe as a kid but don't remember Karstadt.