The Firth of Forth Rail Bridge, Queensbridge, Scotland
A recent presentation to the Scottish-American History Club about the Firth of Forth Rail Bridge would not have been complete in historical context without mention of the Firth of Tay Bridge Disaster. One in the audience chuckled, and mentioned a poem composed about the disaster written by William McGonagall.
“…On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very, very, very, very, very long time…”.
While Robert Burns wears the honour of Poet Laureate of Scotland, William McGonagall is hailed as the absolute worst poet to have ever come from Scotland, and possibly the worst poet ever in the history of the English language:
Happy New Year. It’s surprising to see that we’re already a decade into the new century.
Previous posts have spoken about vacant storefronts and even vacant buildings, all from the aftermath of the latest economic turn. There is so much vacant space out there that based on current absorption rates, some markets have several years supply of some building types like… condominiums. It could take several years to recover to get back to where we were. This empty space in empty buildings simply sits and waits. No one has really caught on to the idea that this space could be re-adapted to different uses.
In the meantime, one may deduce a similar “oversupply” of the people who design and build. In this case, many of these people have “re-adapted” out of necessity. While this is good for them, it has left an enormous void of talent, skill and expertise that has left the marketplace. A colleague (formerly) in the print publishing business suggested that it may take as long as twenty years for the architectural profession to make up lost ground, lost to a “brain drain” caused by the current economy.
There are fascinating opportunities coming out of all this. While cities that best depicted the late twentieth century – the Sunbelt – have stalled from an oversupply of built space that led to sharp drops in real estate prices; many cities of the early twentieth century – the Rust Belt – are retreating.
It’s like Las Vegas vs. Detroit.
Las Vegas just opened an incredibly huge hotel complex; its economic viability is yet to be seen. Residential housing prices in the Las Vegas area are still depressed, though many feel this reveals some “great buys” in the real estate market that services retirees. The retiree market doesn’t depend on finding employment to sustain housing costs.
Detroit has even better deals – well, lower prices – in residential real estate. At first glance, Detroit may seem to be unsustainable and unaffordable: although prices are low, the potential market is people who work. In a city without jobs, housing at any price is unsustainable and unaffordable.
I’ve heard many a seminar presentation about cities like Detroit recently, and Detroit is the oft-cited example. It was a much larger city in its heyday a few decades ago: having shrunk in population but not geographical area, it’s saddled with much more infrastructure than it needs and can support. Many are projecting Detroit to be a very viable city if it trimmed its infrastructure and broadened its economic base to support a city of its current population levels – still one of the largest cities in the United States. Some are even proposing urban agriculture for Detroit, a very novel “reuse / re-adapt” concept.
Michigan Central Railroad Station, Detroit
Speaking specifically about Detroit as a precursor and example, it has the potential to be a very vibrant smaller city; the buildings that supported a larger city have been left behind. Several buildings buildings have been left in ruin – the former Michigan Central Railroad Station, various hotels and office buildings, even industrial complexes where automobiles were once assembled.
In archaeology, we know of classical ruins, of medieval ruins and the like. Here, we have a new category: modern ruins. Quite fabulous modern ruins, at that.
Regardless, it’s still a decade into the new century. Just as the nineteenth century economy was different than the twentieth century economy that followed; the nineteenth century set up the twentieth century’s economy. The same may be true of the twentieth and the twenty first century’s economies. The economic structure of the new century hasn’t revealed itself.
The “Roundhouses of the World” exhibit that has been on display at the Hanna Public Library is closing this week. In a way, it still lives on.
The Oak Park Architectural League is having its Bi-Annual Members Show this month at the Oak Park Public Library in Oak Park, Illinois. Being a member, my contribution to the OPAL exhibition is a condensed version of the “Roundhouses of the World” exhibit. This exhibit depicts a bit of the work to date associated with the Hanna Roundhouse.
Using Prince Phillip’s musing of the studio cottages of the Banff Centre of the Arts “I gather that it’s my duty to declare this facility much more open than it previously has been”; although the OPAL exhibition is currently open to the public, the grand opening, if you will, will be held on Wednesday, December 9 at 630PM. I have been asked to say a couple words about the Hanna Roundhouse.
The Oak Park Architectural League exhibit will remain on display in the Art Gallery of the library until December 29.
A recent news report from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat cites fifty major, tall building projects worldwide that have been halted by a global economic downturn.
Last Friday, the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s “Chicago Model City” exhibit temporarily included the scale model of Santiago Calatrava’s “Spire” condominium project, the real one being on indefinite hold. Asides from the model representation, the only physical evidence this project has left in Chicago is a large, circular foundation, commonly referred to as the “bathtub”.
Had the actual project been built, it would have been much taller than anything else in Chicago, including the Willis (nee Sears) Tower.
Suddenly, my interest in the abandoned railway roundhouse in Hanna, Alberta and electronic social media meet. Kind of.
I’m helping the effort to restore the Hanna Roundhouse by donating a slideshow exhibit production describing the history roundhouses. It’s all being produced through a part of my practice called Babuk Presentations, or for the 21st Century, www.learnaboutchicago.com . This exhibit will be on display in the Hanna Public Library for the month of November. Babuk Presentations / www.learnaboutchicago.com provides public speaking and presentations about architecture and railroad history (see Page 4 of this website).
In researching this display presentation about Hanna railway roundhouse; I came across a 2008 news story about another railway roundhouse in Biggar, Saskatchewan that Heritage Canada placed on its “Endangered Buildings” list. The story claimed that the roundhouse was slated to be demolished in 2009.
Former Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Roundhouse, Biggar, Saskatchewan
Neither I, nor my client had heard about this roundhouse until now. It too is claiming to be the last standing roundhouse in western Canada.
“Biggar”, population 2341, is the town’s actual name. Its motto is “New York is big, but we’re Biggar”!
With the presentation being due this week, I needed an answer last weekend. I had just come from a friend’s presentation, showing the features of networking electronically through “LinkedIn”. In his third degree of contact, he had more than a million and a half contacts! He assured me that I had at least that many as well!
This being a Friday night, I dutifully tore through those LinkedIn contacts, going down to the third, or fourth degree – nothing!!
Municipal offices – even the town’s newspaper – were bound to be closed on Saturday. I pondered if there might be a local drug store that I could call on Saturday, and simply ask the clerk who answered if their roundhouse was still standing.
This called for a quick phone call to my brother in Calgary for help. His wife is friends with a lady from Biggar. I have an email message in to her. So there…
Apparently, the Biggar Roundhouse is still standing, having been vacated last year by some sort of turkey farming operation. Roundhouses have been known to be put through all sorts of indignities during their life.
An update on the Hanna Roundhouse: not only has it made the cut to the second round of voting in the Aviva Community Fund contest, but apparently Nickelback has posted a message of support for restoring the Hanna Roundhouse on their Facebook Fan Club website. Nickelback is from Hanna, and the roundhouse was featured prominently in their “Photograph” video.
November / December 1983 "Minnesota Architect" Cover Photo
Many years ago, having just arrived in Washington, DC for my tenure but realizing that I was a long ways from home; an issue of the Minnesota Architect crossed my desk. The feature story was a photo essay about wooden grain elevators; the front cover photograph was of the “nine in a line” grain elevators from a town I grew up in. The photo was cropped so as not to show the Canadian Pacific Railway station where we lived, but looking at the grain elevators was comfort enough. Everyone who visited my desk – wearing crisply pressed shirts with stiffly starched collars – tried to understand what I saw in this. It seems as though I had an acquired taste for the Canadian Prairies that was difficult for my colleagues to understand. But for me, it was as soothing as a good cup of tea.
Moving ahead years later, I was waiting in line for a cup of coffee at the Oak Park Village Market. It was down the street from my office, and an unlikely place to get coffee. Oak Park Avenue has all sorts of trendy coffee places; they all sell what people believe to be strong coffee but in actuality, it’s simply coffee whose beans were over-roasted to simply taste strong. That’s the explanation I read in a catalog from Murchie’s Tea and Coffee in Vancouver. I think that it just tastes burnt, so I go for the regular stuff. You know – Maxwell House, or Folgers’s.
Back to the story – standing, waiting for coffee, they were playing rock videos. I never watch rock videos. But, about a month or so before, when a non-confidence vote in the Canadian House of Commons was being televised on CSPAN, my wife made the unconscionable error of saying that she felt that I had lost my Canadian accent. So I started listening to webcasts of Canadian radio stations to gain it back. One radio station from Toronto played the song “Photograph” by “Nickelback” often. This disk jockey described the video for this song, and how it had been filmed at the lead singer’s high school in Calgary.
So, this video was playing at the Oak Park Village Market as I was waiting for coffee. I watched. They showed a high school gym – I know all eighteen high school gyms that were in Calgary during my day, and this wasn’t one of them. We Calgarians always suspect the geographical knowledge of our friends from a city on Lake Ontario. But, this video; it showed a bunch of Canadian Wheat Board grain cars in a railway yard – this video was definitely shot somewhere in Canada, the background looked definitely prairie. It showed a stucco train station – it had a spray painted sign that read “Hanna”, but anyone could have done that. Hanna is a town east of Calgary, I recall my father telling me about how it had two different train lines, and that one of those was the Canadian National Railway. The arch-rival for a Canadian Pacific family. But they had a roundhouse in Hanna, Dad thought that it had been abandoned or something. But, back to the video – suddenly it showed one of the band members and a woman running across a turntable bridge – to a roundhouse! I thought that it had been torn down years before.
Everyone in the Oak Park Village Market wondered what had just come over me. I was numbed – kind of like the feeling after drinking a good cup of tea.
There is a website I found that has a link to The Babuk Report, Forgotten Alberta. The link can be found at http://forgottenalberta.com/ . It has a story about the Hanna Roundhouse. It reads like a good cup of tea.
Turntable Bridge, leading to the Hanna Roundhouse
And about the over-roast coffee? Yeah, that takes a bit of an acquired taste, too.
This blog has written at length about early industrial age buildings that go up and down, and turn round, and do all sorts of neat things. One of those buildings from my youth is the abandoned railway roundhouse in Hanna, Alberta, Canada.
Abandoned Railway Roundhouse, Hanna, Alberta, used as a set for Nickelback’s “Photograph” Video
For years, this building sat empty. A group of concerned townspeople are putting together a not-for-profit organization to raise funds and to restore this Roundhouse back to its glory.
The Aviva Community Fund is holding a contest to award funding for community projects, the Hanna Roundhouse Project is one of those. This is a note from Laurie Armstrong, Director of Economic Development and Tourism for the Town of Hanna, encourage people to vote for this project, with a link to vote for this project:
VOTE FOR HANNA!
A project has been submitted to the Aviva Community Fund in the hopes that it will receive $250,000. There are three rounds of voting with only 4 days left in round one. The projects with the most votes and comments make it to the semi finals. Please vote and leave a comment for the Hanna Roundhouse Restoration Project!
The Centennial of the Chicago Plan of 1909 – the Burnham Plan – provided for a season of great networking this year. One of the last Burnham events – a reception to honour the entrants of the Burnham Memorial Competition was held last night at the Field Museum. Nice group, but didn’t have the previous reception’s star power of Mayor Daley and Valerie Jarrett.
It was an “Invitation Only” competition, though a handful of unsolicited entries were submitted. One was submitted by an architect who interned under me in his previous life, Casimir Kujawa, and his intern, Mason Pritchett. I wish that their entry would have been displayed; it was a tremendous design and a stunning presentation.
Otherwise, the fundraising for construction portion of the competition program starts, and will be challenging in this market.
The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, by Renzo Piano
On the way back to the train after the reception, I was able to stop by the Art Institute and retake a couple photos that didn’t take at all well last week during that Burnham Reception. The Chicago Loop at night is exceptionally photogenic. With a camera suitable for night photos, it’s impossible to take a bad photo. These are the last few days for the Burnham Pavilions on display at Millennium Park, they were glowing profusely. It will be sad to see the pavilion describing the earth, they sky, and the city that grew in between be taken down.
While early industrialists had grand visions of mechanized buildings and cities that walked, many of those ideas were whimsical at face value. Mind you, when applied as small parts, they were very useful – like the passenger elevator. One of those side concepts probably came to be applied to personal transportation – the automobile – which I argue is a highly popular form of architecture. Unfortunately, it’s a half baked idea of the original concept, and a half baked idea that has turned tables on traditional architectural and urban planning principles.
Original El Rancho Hotel, Las Vegas
What got me going on this topic was a recent assertion that the original El Rancho Hotel in Las Vegas was planned specifically to be only accessible by car, not on foot. At the time, the Las Vegas Strip had some seemingly seedy elements to it. The thought was to start a brand new “strip” away from the original Strip. The new Strip would be elegant and – controlled. It was a specific tourist destination. To keep the new hotel a “controlled” atmosphere, the easiest way to do this was to limit the patrons only to those who had cars. It mitigated the seedy element.
At this point, one can easily imagine the sorts of gated subdivisions and target market power centres that populate suburbia. All too often, getting from one’s house to do shopping, go to work or school, or even to go to a neighbour’s house is virtually impossible on foot in a cul-de-sac’d subdivision. It’s all designed to be accessible by car only, leading to all sorts of social / economic ills. Maybe even obesity.
Back to Las Vegas – the new Strip grew. Eventually, it became larger than the original strip, all of the new hotels modeled after this “accessible by car” concept. Robert Venturi even wrote a book “Learning from Las Vegas” that looked at the intricacies of this new type of planning and the sort of spaces that just happened around the hotels. I thought that it was written tongue in cheek, but apparently he was serious.
Since then, Las Vegas has built sidewalks up and down the new Strip, and offered transit service along the road. The scale of the street is still built around automobile speeds, rather than pedestrian travel. Now, the automobile scale can be exciting in a way – think of Dan Tana driving up and down the strip in his classic Thunderbird.
West of Chicago, along Roosevelt Road – it has a highway designation, though I can’t recall the number – there is an endless suburb that stretches some twenty miles or so – so mind numbing that I can’t even convert the distance to metric measures. My daughter refers to it as the “Land of Parking Lots”.
