www.quondam.com/65/6470.htm

...and speaking of random tangents
2007.03.09 22:02

The four architects had decided to achieve an effect of harmony and therefore not to use any historical style in its pure form. Peter Keating designed the white marble semi-Doric portico that rose over the main entrance, and the Venetian balconies for which new doors were cut. John Erik Snyte designed the small semi-Gothic spite surmounted by a cross, and the bandcourses of stylized acanthus leaves which were cut into the limestone of the walls. Gordon L. Prescott designed the semi-renaissance cornice, and the glass-enclosed terrace projecting from the third floor. Gus Webb designed a cubistic ornament to frame the original windows, and the modern neon sign up on the roof, which read: "The Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children."

"Comes the revolution," said Gus Webb, looking at the completed structure, "and every kid in the country will have a home like that!"

The original shape of the building remained discernable. It was not like a corpse whose fragments had been mercifully scattered; it was like a corpse hacked to pieces and reassembled.
--Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943), pp. 385-6.

Is anyone reading Frascari's Monsters of Architecture these days?

Are monsters merely crazy, mixed-up reenactments?

««««

»»»»