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For some reason, this row of houses has never moved me, charming as it is and fond as I am of uniformity in the architecture of streetscapes. It seems to be an old version of that later row erected in the 1980s, somewhere between Second and Third Avenues in the East 60’s by a developer. This too is a row of uniform architecture, much like this row in the Village, but this time rendered in bow-fronted rose granite. They both seem to possess the same odd quality of lack of place and blankness of regard for the streets they inhabit. I am sure both were well-intentioned, and they were both executed of sturdy material, yet they seem to be at distinct variance with the the elegance and spirit of other identical rows of houses/buildings, as found in Brooklyn’s Park Slope or the uniform facades which grace long stretches of Paris’s Haussmann-era boulevards. Such is the mystery of architecture, where the omission of a simple molding or a modest stringer course of brick, which would have thrown a shadow line across the facades, results in an inexplicable blankness and inhumanity.
For some reason, this row of houses has never moved me, charming as it is and fond as I am of uniformity in the architecture of streetscapes. It seems to be an old version of that later row erected in the 1980s, somewhere between Second and Third Avenues in the East 60’s by a developer. This too is a row of uniform architecture, much like this row in the Village, but this time rendered in bow-fronted rose granite. They both seem to possess the same odd quality of lack of place and blankness of regard for the streets they inhabit. I am sure both were well-intentioned, and they were both executed of sturdy material, yet they seem to be at distinct variance with the the elegance and spirit of other identical rows of houses/buildings, as found in Brooklyn’s Park Slope or the uniform facades which grace long stretches of Paris’s Haussmann-era boulevards. Such is the mystery of architecture, where the omission of a simple molding or a modest stringer course of brick, which would have thrown a shadow line across the facades, results in an inexplicable blankness and inhumanity.