10/22/14- 10/28/14 Arts and Urbanism Roundup

Pittsburgh 

Pitt Football brings back classic script helmet design (Pittsburgh Tribune Review)

Heinz Field facing growing no-show problem (CBS Pittsburgh)

Video series: The scariest haunted houses in the Pittsburgh area (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

Fire at Flight 93 Memorial raises questions about the National Park Service's ability to protect historic artifacts (Pittsburgh Tribune Review)

Natural History Museum reaches out to over 21 crowd  (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

Google thanks Polio vaccine developer, Jonas Salk with a Google Doodle (Washington Post)

Pioneering Penn Ave alternative arts venue, Garfield Art Works closing in December (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

Greensburg 

Restored Greensburg Civil War statue may move out of courthouse soon

Cleveland 

Top Cleveland dive and neighborhood bars: Photo Gallery (Cleveland.com)

Why is Baldwin Wallace University ashamed to say it's near Cleveland? (Diggingpitt)

Devo releases recording of 1977 Cleveland show as a live album (Consequence of Sound)

Cleveland theater company adopts Night of the Living Dead for the stage (Cleveland Scene)

Making beautiful music in a Cleveland retirement community (CBS Evening News)

Akron

Akron musicians break in new downtown jazz club (Akron Beacon Journal)


Ohio

Spotify study shows Ohio State students listen to the most classical music (The Lantern)

Chicago

95 problems: A walk down the South Side's most notorious "stroad" (Streetsblog Chicago)

Detroit

Renovation work starts on Detroit's huge, historic Packard plant complex

Other Urbanism News

How asset foreiture allows cops to steal from citizens  (Reason)

The most expensive housing markets in the U.S. are also the most Liberal (The Washington Post)

Is 21 days enough for Ebola quarantine?  (Five Thirty Eight Science)

World Series is on and everybody's watching...football (New York Times)

Redfin buys Walk Score (Wired)

Real Estate network sues Zillow, claims the company stole trade secrets (Puget Sound Business Journal)

California community suffers as wells dry up in drought (Yahoo News)

New urbanisim hits the suburbs, as pricey condos multiply on Long Island  (Wall Street Journal)

The death of the suburban corporate campus (Better Cities and Towns)

Florida's Department of Transportation doesn't seem to know its own rules (Streetsblog)

Why cities need localists (The American Conservative)

Why Conservatives must engage urbanism (The American Conservative)

Is America finally saying no to junk food? (CBS Moneywatch)

Other Arts and Architecture News

You can legally busk in New York's subways but a cop might arrest you anyway. (Reason)

Frieze Art Fair: where great refinement meets harrowing vulgarity (The Spectator)

Frank Gehry, gives critics the finger- literally  (Arch Daily)

11 at risk American art landscapes (Art Net)

What to do with Uruguay's massive shipwrecked Nazi bronze? (Art Net)

Subtle street art: 27 easy to overlook urban enhancements (Web Urbanist)

Affordable housing plan threatens Parisian street art haven (Hyperallergic)

750-year old city founded by Genghis Khan's grandson is unearthed (Hyperallergic)

Some Shots of Case Western's Frank Gehry Designed, Peter B Lewis Building

Sort of by the grace of god, Pittsburgh's major college and art museum complex ended up within the city, while Cleveland's ended up right on the city's edge and just across the city line. For the most part, I think the motivation to build a clean, new place away from the dirty industrial core was similar to Pittsburgh's except, in our case, the bulk of really heavy industry was never in the city itself--but outside in the huge complexes along the Mon and Ohio Valleys.

A high percent of visitors to Cleveland spend some time in the area called University Circle, home to or bordering on such major institutions as The Cleveland Clinic, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cleveland Botanical Garden, The Children's Museum Of Cleveland, The Cleveland Institute Of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Severance Hall, The Cleveland Institute Of Music and Case Western Reserve University--many of them housed in beautiful and often uniquely designed buildings, some of which are icons of modernist design.

The good aspect of lots of good modernism is it's sensitivity to the landscape--the bad part is often it's total ignorance and insensitivity to human needs and human scale. Architecture must be judged on both the aesthetic value of how it looks, but on the social level of how it works, as a place for people to live and interact.

I can't fully judge, University Circle having spent too little time in and around it in the surrounding neighborhoods. We did walk around Little Italy which is close by.

The area around the museums is windy which obviously works well for cars. However, at least in nice weather, there are wonderfully landscaped wide walkways and lots of maps making it a great place to walk from place to place.

Here are images of the new Peter B Lewis Building, home to Case Western's Weatherhead School of Management. From the exterior, I have a very good impression of this building, although the huge Peter B Lewis name sloping over the front entrance is pretty overwhelming. Would love to have been a fly in some of those design meetings with Gehry.

Architecture Tour Takes In Frank Lloyd Wright And Other Great Buildings Around Cleveland: April 9

Peter B. Lewis Building, Case Western Reserve University: Frank Gehry



Frank Lloyd Wright: Staley House



Frank Lloyd Wright: Penfield House



The Weltzheimer/Johnson House: Frank Lloyd Wright

The Weltzheimer/Johnson House holds public open house hours on the First and Third Sundays of each month

OK--straight up, registration for this tour is over so this post is just to make one more aware of these buildings and this event. Also, many of these buildings, including a Wright house are open for tours.

Wright made an impact in Ohio later in his career than in Illinois, Wisconsin and Western PA, but still left a significant legacy of six houses in Northeast, Ohio.

"On Saturday, April 9, Out and About Wright participants will have the opportunity to visit not one, not even three, but five Wright-designed private residences in Northeast Ohio. Once home to a thriving manufacturing industry, Cleveland is re-emerging along the banks of Lake Erie as a Midwest center for art and architecture. Before the region saw the landmark construction of the new I. M. Pei-designed Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it already had a varied and interesting architectural heritage, including six mid-century works by Wright:"

Saturday Afternoon at the Digging Pitt

Our friend Jason was in town from Flint, MI this past weekend, so we brought him by the Digging Pitt to meet John and have a New York diaspora powwow. Here's John, Jason, and Tom passionately discussing downtown Brooklyn and Stuyvesant Town in terms of Jane Jacobs, Le Corbusier, and Frank Gehry.