Yet another collegetown bar bites the dust

[Trotsky]

What monstrosity are they going to build on the Oliver's (fine, CTB) site?  20 stories?  $3k starting rent?

There are a couple of elevations shown in the Ithaca Voice article from last August, along with a bunch of history.

That looks... actually, pretty nice.  The present building, for all its history, is a horrific eyesore.  Pretty much anything they put there is going to be better.  5 stories is, well, inevitable until the plague cuts the population back to a reasonable level.

I'll allow it.

[billhoward]

What monstrosity are they going to build on the Oliver's (fine, CTB) site?  20 stories?  $3k starting rent?

The new building gains one additional floor, taking it from four to five. There is a confusing paragraph in the Ithaca Voice about how the number of apartments on the block will increase from 30 to 56, but it's not the only building on the block. If the first floor is retail, then going from four to five floors should increase the apartments by a third, more or less.

Meanwhile, Student Agencies, which I thought of as the people that rented you dorm refrigerators and maybe ran a laundry, now is a conglomerate. Among other things it produces the Cornellian yearbook ... priced "from $150.00."

I continue to be surprised the university hasn't been more aggressive grabbing land. Cornell can buy individual apartment buildings, keep them going for 10-25 years, until they amass enough land to put up something larger. The only downside is Cornell probably has a higher cost of doing business because it needs to actually maintain buildings to code. I used to assume Cornell as a Collegetown landlord is a good thing, now I'm uncertain. It may be that Cornell would see a need to build collegetown apartments that are more affordably priced, if Cornell can do it and not lose money.

I lived for a decade in a two-family apartment bordering Smith College in Massachusetts and in 1980 Smith had a standing offer to buy the house. It's now in a next generation of the landlord's family. And I believe the offer still stands. It's probably like that in every small town collegetown.

[Scersk '97]

What monstrosity are they going to build on the Oliver's (fine, CTB) site?  20 stories?  $3k starting rent?

There are a couple of elevations shown in the Ithaca Voice article from last August, along with a bunch of history.

That looks... actually, pretty nice.  The present building, for all its history, is a horrific eyesore.  Pretty much anything they put there is going to be better.  5 stories is, well, inevitable until the plague cuts the population back to a reasonable level.

Meh. Looks like a prison block on top of an oversized office park building. It turns the Oliver's corner very, very corporate. And you know that brick is going to be that ugly, big, over-grouted crap they use everywhere because no one does quality masonry work anymore. It'll all look uniform and plastic.

What I'll miss most? The oversize shopfront entrance. You know, a detail meant for humans.

[David Harding]

Not quite so venerable an establishment, but more turnover in the Collegetown resatauant scene.  Miyake has closed, another one is set to take its place on Eddy Street.

[Trotsky]

What monstrosity are they going to build on the Oliver's (fine, CTB) site?  20 stories?  $3k starting rent?

There are a couple of elevations shown in the Ithaca Voice article from last August, along with a bunch of history.

That looks... actually, pretty nice.  The present building, for all its history, is a horrific eyesore.  Pretty much anything they put there is going to be better.  5 stories is, well, inevitable until the plague cuts the population back to a reasonable level.

Meh. Looks like a prison block on top of an oversized office park building. It turns the Oliver's corner very, very corporate. And you know that brick is going to be that ugly, big, over-grouted crap they use everywhere because no one does quality masonry work anymore. It'll all look uniform and plastic.

What I'll miss most? The oversize shopfront entrance. You know, a detail meant for humans.

Whaddya want?  The last beautiful building in the US was erected 80 years ago.

[Scersk '97]

Whaddya want?  The last beautiful building in the US was erected 80 years ago.

Do you mean this?


I'll agree. 1939 was still a good year. The problem was in residential architecture, where Miesian steel/glass boxes took hold, knocked off by architects who didn't have the originator's command of openness and light.

To be honest, something in me likes some of the Stalinist architecture from the 40s and 50s...


I'm probably attracted by the exuberance of ornamentation, something that became anathema in the west because the Nazis loved it and we had to be darn sure to prove we weren't Nazis. Or Socialists.

Even brutalism has its place. (Not in the middle of Boston, but I digress.) But, geez, you need talent to pull it off! Most of the time, the money behind whatever project is being built doesn't have the aesthetic chops to force the architects toward creating something great, that is, if they have the ability to do so in the first place.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

I actually stayed in one of those Stalinist Skyscrapers when it was the Hotel Ukraina.  It didn't have air conditioning at the time, which in a Moscow summer is critical.

IMO the TWA terminal at JFK is an attractive building.  I actually slept in that one, too, but only because of a blizzard in NYC on the way back to Ithaca from a senior year interview.  It wasn't a hotel at the time.

[Scersk '97]

I actually stayed in one of those Stalinist Skyscrapers when it was the Hotel Ukraina.  It didn't have air conditioning at the time, which in a Moscow summer is critical.

IMO the TWA terminal at JFK is an attractive building.  I actually slept in that one, too, but only because of a blizzard in NYC on the way back to Ithaca from a senior year interview.  It wasn't a hotel at the time.

(Eero) Saarinen's TWA Terminal (1962) was/is a masterwork. Yet, even a master can put out a clunker or two. I give you:


the Earl V. Moore Building of Michigan's School of Music (Eero Saarinen, 1958), the halls of which I had the relative displeasure of haunting for [unprintable] years.

Functional for about five months: May, June, July, and August, when pretty much no one is around; and February when the pond (sometimes) freezes enough to permit skating. Like everyone else who goes there, I spent hours gazing cock-eyed out those window slits at (sometimes) the outdoor beauty or (most of the time) the normal Michigan grey overcast muddiness. The rest of the time, I was shuffling about the sepulchral corridors.

Big patio! Never usable, and you're on display for and blocking the view of those using the classrooms. Big windows! Only in classrooms, three sides of one level of the library, and (only) some (very few, actually!) offices. Sound proofing? Nah...

Going back to your point and Saarinen citation, we're still just talking about monumental projects. Residential and commercial architecture in all countries took a nosedive starting in the mid-50s. On the scale of the single-family house, I even have a soft spot for the venerable ol' split level, but then it all mostly got worse from there, ending where we are now with McMansions.

[Trotsky]

Brutalism is a long way to go for a joke, and those Cyclopean Stalinist structures only look good from a distance, if that.



 
 
 
 
 


Though to be fair this is so spectacularly stupid it's kind of enjoyable:



"The North's gonna do it again!"  They should put that fucker in Potsdam.

[Scersk '97]

Brutalism is a long way to go for a joke, and those Cyclopean Stalinist structures only look good from a distance, if that.

That tower? Bradfield? I admit I had to look twice or three times. (Et tu brutalist?)

But that's not a joke; count on postmodernists to make dubious jokes:


I give you Lurie Bell Tower (Charles W. Moore, 1996), Michigan North Campus. I leave its shape as a proof to the reader. (That "corpus" running up one side is not mirrored on the other one.)

Though to be fair this is so spectacularly stupid it's kind of enjoyable:

[snip]

"The North's gonna do it again!"  They should put that fucker in Potsdam.

I like it! Couldn't be more classically gothic inside. But, as a Lutheran church, I suspect siting it somewhere in Minnesota might be more appropriate.

To put a real question out there, has anyone thought of a good residential or commercial building built past, say, 1955? A good skyscraper might count, but something less monumental in the five- or six-story range would be more interesting.

[Trotsky]

The tower is (was) Crosley Tower in Cincinnati.  I assume as in Crosley Field, the precursor to Riverfront Stadium.  Fun fact: Crosley brought mass production to radios so something is his fault, I'm not sure what; maybe mass stupidity.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Brutalism is a long way to go for a joke, and those Cyclopean Stalinist structures only look good from a distance, if that.



 
 
 
 
 


Though to be fair this is so spectacularly stupid it's kind of enjoyable:



"The North's gonna do it again!"  They should put that fucker in Potsdam.

Yeah sorry.  I like that cathedral.  It works for Reykjavik.

[Iceberg]

Yep. The Lief Erikson statue in front of Hallgrímskirsja. Once I saw Reykjavik, I remembered right away.

[David Harding]

Not a bar, or even a restaurant, but an iconic food establishment:  Ithaca Voice reports that the Cornell Orchards retail store is closing after almost 70 years of operation.

[marty]

Not a bar, or even a restaurant, but an iconic food establishment:  Ithaca Voice reports that the Cornell Orchards retail store is closing after almost 70 years of operation.

That sucks.  The annual visit last winter was apparently my last.  I'm fortunate that there is a nitrogen purge equipped store near my home.  

The varieties available at Cornell were great and so was the unpasteurized cider until that disappeared years ago.