Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Veritas et Venustas will be moving from massengale.typepad.com to blog.massengale.com. See you there.

Personal posts about topics like the glories of the New York Yankees will move to jmassengale.tumblr.com or blog.massengale.me: TBD.

blog.massengale.com

Happy New Year

 

Wreath

December 31, 2013 in 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 | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Comment on Chris Gray's "A Landmark Lost and Found" in the New York Times

EustonStationClick on the photo for a larger view

FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION: Let's look at the photo again. The arch is lipstick on a pig. The station behind it looks like a Los Angeles shopping mall circa 1980–in the heart of one of the world's great cities.

The people in the drawing look like ants. The building behind them has nothing that relates to human scale. It doesn't even look like humans built it: there is no sense it was touched by a human hand, either in the design or the construction.

London is an enormously wealthy city these days. It can't do better than that? (postscript after the jump)

PS: Here's a photo of one of the oldest streets in London. It was a wonderful place to walk until Global Capitalism and its bankers decided they needed new places to roost.

Bishopsgate

December 31, 2013 in Architecture, Classicism, Culture, Current Affairs, History, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, December 16, 2013

Children Demanding Play Streets Changed Amsterdam

via Angie Schmitt, "How Children Demanding Play Streets Changed Amsterdam," DC.Streetsblog.org

December 16, 2013 in Culture, Current Affairs, New Urbanism, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0)

NICE—but will drones soon be colliding over the streets of Manhattan?

December 16, 2013 in Architecture, Classicism, Current Affairs, New York, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, November 16, 2013

New York, New England, New Marlborough

ONE of the many great things about New York City is that it's easy to get from New York to many great places. We tend to head northeast to New England.

The Berkshire mountains in Western Massachusetts are distinctly not in New York, even though many New Yorkers visit the Berkshires. There are many beautiful ways to drive there, none of which require getting on an interstate highway. You can make the trip in 2 hours, or you can make it take all day. There are also trains to Dutchess County, New York, and people are working on a reviving the old rail line, which still has daily freight trains.

OldNorthNewMarlOld North Road, New Marlborough, Massachusetts

I've been to old Marlborough in olde England, too. It's in our new Street Design book.

Marlborough High Street 2013-04-18_01(low_res)
High Street, Marlborough, Wiltshire

November 16, 2013 in Architecture, Classicism, New Urbanism, New York, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0)