Veritas et Venustas

Places to stop when driving to and from New York (updated)

THE LAST TIME I HEARD, the busiest McDonald's in the nation was the one on the southbound lane of I-95 in Darien, Connecticut. You can't get to it from the streets of Darien, but parents on the last stretch back into New York pacify their children with sugar there. Here are some better places:

Rosie's, New Canaan, Connecticut. First of all, unless you have to be on I-95, you want to be on the Merritt Parkway instead. To get to it you can take the Wilbur Cross from I-91 or I-95, or even Route 8 south from I-84.

New Canaan is a pretty, very wealthy small town north of Darien and just off the Merritt. When I was a kid it was full of executives who commuted to New York City. Now it has lots of Euros who come here for a year or two while they work at the banks and and Fortune 500 companies that have relocated to Stamford, Connecticut.

Take Exit 37 on the Merritt and head north on Route 124. When you come to the first T-intersection, where you have to turn left, park the car and walk. Rosie's is to the right, on the other side of the street. It has self--serve tables, a lot of take-out salads, meatloaf and the like, as well as a lot of fattening carbs. The carrot cake is reportedly the best in Connecticut.

Walk once around the block and you'll see an interesting New England green and some nice buildings. Before you get back on the Merritt, there are also two gas stations and two supermarkets in town. (BTW, I didn't link to www.rosienewcanaan.com, because Google says the site has been hacked by people who want to put malware on your computer.)

Express Stop on the Merritt: If a mile off the parkway is too far for you (even though the traffic to Rosie's is light and fast), take Exit 35 in Stamford and go south on High Ridge Road. Five-hundred feet from the Merritt is a small shopping center with an A&P, a large drugstore, a gas station and a Cosi. All of them open early and stay open late.

The Original Frank Pepe's Napoletana Pizza has been famous for decades (established 1925). It's on Wooster Street, right at the intersection of I-91 and I-95, in what could be called New Haven's Little Italy. The street is short, but it's lined with pizzerias and trattorias, some of which compete fiercely with Pepe's. If you want Pepe's you may find an hour-long line, but you can circumvent the line by ordering take-out, either in the restaurant or by phoning ahead. Nearby Wooster Park provides a great place for a picnic on a nice day. If you want to sit down, Pepe's biggest rival is the nearby Sally's Apizza, preferred by some.

When it's time to leave, if you're parked in front of Pepe's and want to head north on I-95, continue down Wooster until it goes under I-91 and becomes the I-95 onramp. To head south on 95, after Pepe's take the first right, then the first right and then the first left, which curves around and becomes the I-95 service road.

After the jump, 3 places in Bedford, New York, and a coffee shop in Princeton, New Jersey.

Rosie's, 27 Elm Street, New Canaan, CT (203) 966-8998
Table, 11 Babbit Road, Bedford Hills, NY (914) 241-0269
Near & Natural, 1 Court Road, Bedford, NY (914) 205-3545
Wm Nicholas & Company, 19 Edgemont Road, Katonah, NY (914) 232-1949
Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ (609) 924-4377
The Original Frank Pepe's Napoletana Pizza, 157 Wooster Street, New Haven, CT (203) 865-5762

Table, Bedford Hills, New York. If you're driving all the way up or down I-684, there's a better way that also gives a good stop at a new local produce market in Bedford Hills, about 40 miles from New York City. From New York, take the Cross County Parkway to the Bronx River Parkway north, to the Sprain Brook Parkway to the Saw Mill Parkway north. The route is shorter than continuing on the Cross County to the Hutchinson Parkway and then 684, and more pleasant too. The Saw Mill ends at Katonah (another Bedford hamlet), where a new connector takes you directly to 684.

Bedford Hills is the hamlet before Katonah, and it's convenient to the Saw Mill (follow the signs to the village or use Google or your GPS to find 11 Babbit Road). A new market there specializes in local produce and sustainable agriculturel. The kitchen will fix you local eggs from John Boy's Farm, or make you a local salad in season. Of course there is also organic produce all year round, and things you would expect in a store like this, such as artisanal cheeses and healthy crackers. A communal table is available for sitting down.

If you stay on 684, Exit 4 will put you a mile or two from a similar store in Bedford Village called Near & Natural (go southeast on 172, turn left on 22 and follow 22 when it curves around the Green -- Near & Natural is on the corner of 22 and Court Road, the first right after the Green). Near & Natural is not quite as near to the highway as the other places I've mentioned, but Bedford Village is the most attractive of the three Bedford hamlets, and well worth a trip. The village and its surrounding area are about as close as you can be to New York with any illusion of being in the country. Near & Natural is not as ambitious as Table, which is partially supported by local subscriptions of $1,200 per year. (New York Times review here.)

The third hamlet, Katonah, has a good prepared-foods store called Wm Nicholas & Co that while not far from the Saw Mill has travel directions that are a bit complicated for those who don't know the area. The alternative is a short route that's simple but that strays into the land of the traffic engineer, whose dead hand is much in evidence. Going north, go to the the end of the connector between the Saw Mill and 684 and take the offramp for Route 35. Turn left on 35 and left again at the first street beyond 684. Go half a mile or so, take the first left again and Wm Nicholas will be on the left in the middle of the short block. (map here)

Once you get to the village, Katonah is a pleasant town that's worth a short stop. In the late 19th century, it was moved to make way for the New York City reservoir system: more than 50 buildings were lifted up and pulled along timber tracks by teams of horses. The site plan for the new town was designed by the Olmsted Brothers. Trivia: The John Jay National Historic Site and Martha Stewart's house are nearby.

Small World Coffee: The New Jersey Turnpike is one of the most boring and heavily trafficked roads in America. When we're driving north from Washington and we have the time, we avoid most of the Turnpike, and its tolls, by taking 95 to Philadelphia and then to Princeton.

Before there was a Whole Foods in New York we would sometimes stop at the Philadelphia Whole Foods near the Vine Street Expressway before continuing on to New Jersey. The last stretch into the center of Princeton is along a country road from Lawrenceville. You come into the pretty town of Princeton, with Princeton University on one side of the main downtown street. Perpendicular to it is Witherspoon Street, and on it is a good local coffee house named Small World Coffee. It's always a nice stop. Further down the main street (Nassau Street), is Hoagie Heaven, the last place with good hoagies on the way to New York. When there's time, walking around the campus is always a nice break. If you go, take a look at Princeton's newest Gothic residence, Whitman College.

The fastest route back to New York is Route 1, which is ugly but shorter than going back to the Turnpike. If you drive the whole route (Delaware to New York on 95 and US 1) without stopping it doesn't take much longer than the Turnpike, and it's less likely to have stop and go traffic.

More recommendations to come

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (new Yankee Stadium update)

AT THE END OF CNU 17, a group of New Urbanists went to a Sunday afternoon game at Coors Field. I'd been there once before, but my first thought on seeing it again was that it is simpler, and better, than the new Yankee Stadium.

The first impression comes as you walk through LoDo to Coors. Its brick and concrete exterior is better than the more expensive Yankee Stadium facade, for three reasons: it has better proportions; better details; and a more human scale in its details and construction.

As a whole, the stadium is less sprawling and from the seats feels more enclosed. The first makes it more urban, the second makes it a more comfortable place to watch a game.

Inside, the brick and painted metal construction is more pleasant to be around than the concrete and unpainted aluminum details at Yankee Stadium. It's too bad that when the Yankees built baseball's most expensive stadium they didn't get HOK's best work.

One thing that is similar is the large, open concourse level, an HOK trademark that works well. Less good is that it contributes to the the less expensive seats in the new HOK stadiums being farther from the field than the seats in old ballparks. Optimizing the view from the concourse is one of the reasons that the rake of the seating terraces above and below is flatter than in old parks, and that the levels above the concourse are farther from the field than in old parks.

THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM is a good place. That's the short answer after my first visit yesterday.* It's where the New York Yankees play. Thanks to its location in the Bronx, I can get there in 15 minutes by subway, and now there's a train station too. The new stadium has a good urban presence, and more architectural unity than the renovated stadium across the street. The facade is now limestone. The field has the dimensions of the previous stadium, and the views of the field from the broad concourses are beautiful. The players love the new clubhouses. These are all good things, and I look forward to watching games there.

Once you're in your seat, the view is a lot like the view in the previous, renovated Stadium. As on the outside, there's more architectural unity in the new version. The biggest changes are out in the outfield, where the bleachers now have a restaurant and food court in the middle. In the previous stadium, the center section had no seats and was painted black, so batters could see the ball well. The restaurant that's now there has black glass (too bad it can't be open to the field), and the batters report no problems. Above the restaurant is a deck where you can stand and drink beer, which isn't allowed in the bleachers themselves — so that's a popular space and a good vantage point. This all raises the scoreboards behind the bleachers higher and makes the Stadium feel more enclosed. That's all for the good too. A slot was left to one side of the signs and scoreboards, so that from the seats you can see the trains arrive on that New York oxymoron, the elevated subway, just like in the old Stadium.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architectural critic for the New York Times, calls the new stadium retro, but it really isn't. By traditional architectural standards, the facade is often poorly proportioned and poorly detailed. The clunky moldings, for example, don't have the beauty of well-used cyma rectas and ovolos. The facade isn't downright ugly, but it's not beautiful either.

Other stadiums by HOK, now called "Populous," have more traditional details and materials. This is one of their most urban stadiums, but once you step inside, a lot of the tradition is gone. The Great Hall at the entrance owes more to suburban shopping malls than any New York building I know of: I found it a disappointing, dead space, that puts too much distance between the entrance and the concourses.

Once you get to the concourses, the view is great, the spaces are fine, and there are many more food stands than before: that's all good. But the way the concourses, and most of the Stadium, are built and detailed again owes more to contemporary shopping malls and inexpensive commercial construction than traditional New York buildings.

Many other HOK ballparks use a lot of painted metal, which is what old ballparks like the original Yankee Stadium had. The new Stadium has a lot of galvanized metal and cheaply detailed aluminum, which give an unpleasant affect.

There are also acres of cheap concrete. Different mixes can make concrete more and less pleasing: Yankee Stadium's concrete is unpleasant. At least HOK used glazed concrete block for most of the horizontal surfaces, but if you compare the materials in the Stadium to the renovations going on in many subways stations in the city, the Stadium comes in a distant second to the typical new subway stop. Those have stone tiles on the floors, iron treads on the stairs, and small, elegant "subway" tiles on the walls, highlighted here and there with details like the one below. The new Yankee Stadium has nothing that traditional, or with that much human craftsmanship or scale.

Better photo to follow

I didn't take any photos of the details like the galvanized railings, because they're ugly, and we don't go to ballgames to fret about railing details. But there are two more things I didn't like about the experience at the Stadium — the prices and the excess.

Even in our (rapidly ending?) age of excess, no other team charges more than $500 for a ticket. Most don't even charge $150. But the Yankees now sell seats behind the dugouts for $2,625 per game. Season tickets for a box with four of those cost $810,000. These come with access to two restaurants behind the seats, and all you can eat delivered to your seats, as though what Americans need is more Supersizing of their butts (the superpadded seats in these sections are 33% wider than the seats in the original stadium).

My ticket cost $45. During the game a man sat down to talk to a friend sitting in front of me, so they could compare season ticket plans. The visitor had been buying season tickets for 19 years. Last year he paid $85 a game. This year he has good seats on the first level, but they cost $350 per ticket per game. For his pair of tickets, that's $56,700 for the season. He was mad that the Yankees hadn't allowed him to downgrade to season tickets where we were sitting, for $7,290.

There's also a Little Old Lady from Dubuque aspect that seems out of place in the Bronx. For example, the "premier restaurant" in the Stadium is a Hard Rock Cafe. Hard Rock Cafes are for Disney World, Las Vegas and New York tourists — New Yorkers don't go there. The Mets also went upscale at their new Citifield, but they did it in a more New York way, hiring Danny Meyer to run all the food operations. Meyer doesn't own the best restaurant in New York, but he owns the restaurants that New York Zagat readers annually rate the favorites, and he owns the Shake Shacks, where New Yorkers stand in 40-minute lines for hamburgers and milk shakes. If you're going to cater to New York yuppies, at least get it right.

When I was a teenager, my brother and I would go to Yankee doubleheaders and sit in the bleachers: 18 innings of baseball cost $1 apiece. The Stadium was a little funky and decrepit, but that's okay. It still had more human charm than the mall-like parts of the new Stadium. I think the Yankees will find they're going to suffer from bad timing, and that in the future we're going to want less excess and more of the simple pleasures of watching the Great American Pastime.

* Originally posted Sunday April 5, 2009

Now that's what I really call good humor (with apologies to Bullwinkle)

http://twitpic.com/482s.jpg

Laboratorio del Gelato

Walking by the new Thom Mayne Cooper Union building @ night this thought comes to mind -

"LET'S BE PSYCHOTIC!"

Live from New York - Starchitecture at Lincoln Center

Renovated lobby at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

This is an iPhone photo of one of the hottest things in architecture, taken a few minutes ago in the renovated main lobby at Alice Tully Hall. It helped put its designers in Time's Top 100 Poobah list of 2009. But the experience of the building is a big "So what?"

The interest of the building is primarily intellectual, according to the rules of "autonomous architecture" taught at places like Columbia and Princeton. I don't know the rules and don't care about them, because they fail to produce what I think we need now, namely good public spaces and places.

Visiting it, I don't find it beautiful, exciting, comfortable or even uncomfortable. The people sitting in the cafe seem simply bored, unlike the animated crowd in a Starbucks one block away. The experience makes me think of a Starbucks in a glass office building lobby, near my office at Broadway and John Street. That simpler, more ordinary Modernism makes a place that is more comfortable to be in. Part of the problem here is that the architects seem to have no interest or understanding of things like good proportion or human scale that are keys to the experience of place.

Most likely, that's not part of their autonomous architecture. But it is something that humans intuitively respond to.

In the post below, Nothing New Under the Sun, I quote the reactions of a great Beaux-Arts trained architect to Modernism in 1931. Glass was the fashion then, and glass is the fashion now — and somehow we're supposed to think that's new.

But what is new is the intellectualism of the autonomous architecture of today. Its rules, like "twist the building" or "lift up the corner of the building," appeal to the mind that has learned them, rather than to the senses and emotions of the passersby. The rules relate to the esoteric, elitist rules of contemporary Modernist art. But since architecture is a public art that we all participate in (unlike contemporary art, which one can easily ignore by not going in contemporary galleries), that is a problem.

Facing cataclysmic climate change, peak oil and an economy that is the worst since the Great Depression, we need to make sure that what we build does what we need. We need our cities, and we need to make them places where we want to be. If we don't do that, to quote Jane Jacobs, we are in for a Dark Age Ahead. The age of patrons and intellectual follies is over.

And Yadda, Yadda, Yadda...

Dueling Starchitects

Click to enlarge

ON THE RIGHT is Frank Gehry's office building for Barry Diller. North of it on Joe DiMaggio Highway is the new Nouvel apartment building* that's under construction. The photo shows how poorly most Starchitecture makes a good place.

When Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building first went up on Park Avenue, surrounded by a sea of traditional masonry buildings that formed one of the most consistent street walls in America, it was a beautiful exception in the city. When 20 bigger, more boring versions went up on Sixth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, they gave us a sterile street that no longer felt like part of New York.

These two buildings have nothing in common, other than their emphasis on "new," "creative" and "different." The don't relate to each other, they don't relate well to the street and the other buildings around them, and they don't make a street where pedestrians want to be.

That was my point in It's Only One Short Step From Wow to Bow Wow. Starchitects don't play well together, either with other Starchitects or with other buildings in general, and so their buildings rarely transcend being individual objects to shaping cities, towns and neighborhoods where people want to be. Rem Koolhaas said as much in his remarks about a collage of his own work. I'll look for that reference and try to add it.

In the meantime, here's an unusual remark from New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who usually thinks that all architects should aspire to Starchitecture. Talking about Santiago Calatrava's MTA hub at Ground Zero, he wrote,

The model gives us the clearest picture yet of Mr. Calatrava’s vision. Dozens of minor improvements have been made; his structural pyrotechnics look as dazzling as ever. Even so, Mr. Calatrava remains unable to overcome the project’s fatal flaw: the striking incongruity between the extravagance of the architecture and the limited purpose it serves. The result is a monument to the creative ego that celebrates Mr. Calatrava’s engineering prowess but little else. And it reinforces the likelihood that one day, decades from now, when the site is finally completed, it will stand as a testament to our inability to put self-interests aside in the face of one of America’s greatest tragedies.

The same "autonomous qualities of architecture" at the heart of Starchitecture that prevent Calatrava from putting his building at the service of the subway riders prevent the Starchitects from putting their buildings at the service of the city, whether in New York or Beijing.

* "New Nouvel" - not quite like "Shrimp Scampi."

V&V: It's One Short Step From Wow To Bow Wow
V&V: Cities need both order and richness...

Deja Vu All Over Again

IN A TIE GAME, Mo gave up two home runs and was taken out of the game. We'll hear the facts tomorrow, but I would guess he hasn't been taken out of a game during an inning since he became the closer in 1997 or 98.

UPDATE: This may be more than last year's bizarre tie-game stat for Mo. In 11.1 innings this year, Mariano has given up 15 hits, 4 of them home runs. Girardi says he is having post-op arm-strength issues. And the Yankees' two major league catchers are on the DL. Welcome back, Alex.

When Will Joe Learn?

Why does Girardi leave them in so long?

Going INTO yesterday's game, in 2 starts Chien Ming Wang had given up 15 hits and 15 runs in 4.2 innings. In 1.1 innings yesterday, Wang gave up 8 runs in an inning for the second time this year. Then his minor-league replacement gave up 6 more. In Sabathia's opening day start, the bullpen took a 1 - 1 tie and gave up 9 runs in an inning - 14, 8 and 9 run innings? When the Yankee bullpen has some great arms?

The 14 runs given up in one inning were an all-time record for the Yankees.

PS: The Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees won again Sunday, and are now 11 - 0. Pete Abraham reports: "Shelley Duncan homered. He’s hitting .351 and has 13 RBI. Eric Duncan is at .364. Juan Miranda has 15 RBI. Angel Berroa is at .386."

Too bad the Yankees are unable to send the Wanger there for a start or two, although he might sabotage their win streak.

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Robby Cano, Doncha Know

I REMEMBER a time when Robinson Cano's on base percentage was a point lower than his batting average. In four games this year, he's averaging a walk a game, and hitting .571, with a .667 OBP, a 1.100 slugging percentage and no strikeouts. Sure it's only 4 games, but in his final 11 games last year he hit .452.