Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Everything old is new again


From CBS News:

They may not make 'em like they used to -- but that doesn't mean no one's trying.

Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch are founders of the design firm Roman and Williams. In an age of generic glass buildings, their designs evoke a sense of personality . . . and permanence.

"We feel like we could build a building right now with current labor and materials that could last four or five hundred years," said Alesch.

"It's a breakthrough to do a brick building -- to do a really good brick building, with wood windows, right now, is a breakthrough," added Standefer.

Take for example Elizabeth Street in Manhattan: Other buildings on the block are well over a hundred years old, except for the seven-story building on the corner of Elizabeth and Prince. It's nearly new, but built the old-fashioned way, with old-fashioned bricks.

"All of our bricks were dead stock," said Standefer, which means, "they hadn't been used since 1950. No exaggeration."

And when the place was finished, people thought it had always been there.

"When we took the scaffolding down, they just thought we had cleaned the building," Alesch said.

"But you built it from nothing?" Smith asked.

"Totally. Ground up," said Standefer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check it their building on google earth.

Makes the crap boxes of Queens painful. They are simply building cheap flimsy barracks in our borough that crush the soul out of our communities and overtax its infrastructure.

Queens is becoming one of the ugliest, most backward communities in this country.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic! Let's hope this is an architectural trend that takes hold asap.

Anonymous said...

'Hope' you are wasting your time.

If our politicians can tear themselves away from street renamings, pointless bullshit issue photo ops and email spamming into starting to address community preservation we might see some action.

To do that people have to force them.

Until then, you can hope till the cows come home.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it's time for an Avella & Graziano LLP to fight for preservation in Queens.