Veritas et Venustas

What is this blog about?

"Hello, my name is John. I'm a recovering architect."

I like all sorts of towns, cities and buildings, but what I design are Classical buildings and Traditional towns and cities. You can see some of them at www.massengale.com.

With Robert A.M. Stern I wrote a history of architecture and urbanism in the Progressive Era, New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890–1915 (Rizzoli, 1983) as well as an introduction to the history of suburbia before sprawl, The Anglo–American Suburb (St. Martin's Press, 1981). With Victor Dover, I am writing Street Design, The Art & Practice of Making Complete Streets (J. Wiley & Sons, 2013).

I'm a Board Member of the Congress for New Urbanism, the former Chair of its local chapter, CNU New York, and a former Director of the Institute of Classical Art & Architecture and Federated Conservationists of Westchester County.

A co-founder of the New Urban and Traditional Architecture Councils.I was also a co-founder of the pro-urb list, a forum on the internet for an advanced discussion of New Urbanism. And in this blog you will find some postings from that list, along with other writings and clippings on architecture, urbanism, Classicism, Tradition, metaphysics and culture.

Categories

• Architecture
• Baseball
• Books
• Classicism
• Culture
• Current Affairs
• Education
• Film
• Food and Drink
• Games
• History
• Jokes
• Music
• New Urbanism
• New York
• Personal
• Quote of the Day
• Religion
• Religion & Metaphysics
• Science
• Sports
• Television
• Travel
• Urbanism
• Web/Tech
• Weblogs

Archives

• December 2013
• November 2013
• September 2013
• November 2012
• April 2011

 

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Recent Posts

• Veritas et Venustas will be moving from massengale.typepad.com to blog.massengale.com. See you there.
• Philip Johnson Quote of the Day
• My Comment on Chris Gray's "A Landmark Lost and Found" in the New York Times
• Happy Holidays to all & Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it
• VV REDUX: Jung On Traffic Engineers
• Children Demanding Play Streets Changed Amsterdam
• NICE—but will drones soon be colliding over the streets of Manhattan?
• New York, New England, New Marlborough
• #Bloomberg Administration London Envy Softens—City Planning Withdraws East Midtown Upzoning
• Two types of architecture: good, and the other kind
• On the Second Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the face of Global Capitalism, brought to you by the Sheik of Dubai, Chinese Communism, Starchitects, and the billionaires who broke the world economy in 2008
• The Shanghaiing of New York
• Fran Lebowitz Goes To Town (a must see video for New Yorkers)
• New York the New Namibia Redux? & What's the good of rich people if you can't tax them?

Recent Comments

• a new yorker on All Hail Summer Streets & the NYC DOT!
• Jen on Gentile's Fine Foods: The Grumpiest Store in Manhattan?
• ellenyc on All Hail Summer Streets & the NYC DOT!
• joey on All Hail Summer Streets & the NYC DOT!
• Anon on All Hail Summer Streets & the NYC DOT!
• Ivo Beutler on Dude, They Pimped My Bimmer II
• Erwin Calverley on Dude, They Pimped My Bimmer II
• Annette on Quote of the Day - Daniel Libeskind Tells the Future
• Jason Spriggs on Manhattan Mini Storage thinks they're the best - but I can't even use them
• Ricardo on Quote of the Day - Daniel Libeskind Tells the Future
• Walter on Quote of the Day - Daniel Libeskind Tells the Future
• Marc on Quote of the Day - Daniel Libeskind Tells the Future
• Steven Semes on Quote of the Day - Daniel Libeskind Tells the Future
• mxthree on The Shanghaiing of New York
• Steve on The Best Way to Travel to Rome
• mxthree on Modernism: Stuck in the 20th Century
• mxthree on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (December 21st is coming)

“Ninety-nine and a half won't do”