Candler Park TOD & Gentrification times Four in Four Forms - Let's Watch

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) stirs all the right feelings in the breasts of urbnaists. Gentrification seems the name for evil, on par with McMansion. That's another blogger's blog to blog.

The architecture tourist is particularly interested in the contrast of style and form and will enjoy the construction as a spectator sport. I hope I'll like them, hope they'll feel like home.

Right now all the hoopla is about Edgewood/Candler Park Station TOD being built in the MARTA parking lot. It's called "Spoke," 224 units with park, restaurant and performing arts center, 20% of the units allocated as affordable housing.

But there are three more projects under way within a couple of blocks all sharing access to MARTA and everything.



 
Spoke is what 4-story mod apartments look like these days, maybe they'll throw in some natural finishes though the current renderings don't show it.


1463 LaFrance: Modern Dwellings by Cablik looks like 5 townhouse boxes on a shotgun lot. They've got that modern look.



1388 LaFrance Street by Minerva USA is a traditional styled townhouse development on a corner lot. With Spoke it will form a landmark canyon gateway between the Candler Park and Edgewood neighborhoods. A good thing I think I hope.




La France Walk by Eric Kronberg is a Cottage Court on a shotgun lot, standalone houses in vernacular style that echoes the neighboring houses. My pre-race favorite.


Please say hey if you see me out there.

Happy Fun Gables - A Victorian and Three Modest Contemporary Eyecatchers

I'm a kicky-color-gable-guy and there's no beating Victorians for that. But I'm very easy to please.


A yummy oldie in Inman Park.

But there are three newer houses whose show-off colors always catch my eye. All these are SOB (South of Buckhead). Can you do this in Buckhead? I hope so.

Are all three by the same designer? I think maybe yes. Anyone? Anyone?


On my route from Oakhurst to Reynoldstown.


On Hosea Williams in Edgewood. This will hide during leafy season.



On Florida in North Ormewood Park.

(Mental note: How may "state" and "city" streets does Atlanta have?)


On Rock Springs in Piedmont Heights.




I'm following this one Ponce de Leon Place in Virginia-Highland by Artist / Designer William Rossoto. I'm waiting for the colors to come home. The gables are pretty kicky already with that triple tall-in-the-middle window.

Got any favorites?

Flux Night 2015 "Dream" Terry's Tiny Review and Big Video

I enjoyed Flux Night 2015: Dream. It wasn't like the others. It was smaller "acts" in a more legible place. More legible than Castleberry Flux Nights. You know what I mean about Castleberry? It's kind of a mystery to itself even if you are familiar with it. There was no disorienting mystery in the straightforward grid of Edgewood and Auburn Avenue. There was no squeezing together at Castleberry bottlenecks. I like it both ways.

And I've always complained about Flux, I couldn't see everything, sometimes I couldn't even take in a single "act," not in total. I didn't mind the 2014 hiatus. We tend to overdo everything. I was a bit wary abut the theme. I'm resistant to art with a message. I was worried about the rain too. And there was some good football on the tube.


The last thing I saw was "The Dream Lives" by Stephon Ferguson, excerpts from seven speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it was drizzling but I don't think we cared.

So I didn't find any "huge" acts. The location itself wasn't a mystery. It was easy to get there and get around.

Kind of a let down at first. But I stayed with it, just hanging out. I saw everything twice, some three times. I ran into at least 50 people I know.

After about 90 minutes Flux had absorbed me. I found myself in a crowd of young ladies in choir robes. "What's going on?" "We're singing in 10 minutes." I walked with the choir.


The Parable is a performance in which a local African-American choir sings a new composition by Malik Gaines.

I was worn out by 11:30 but didn't want to leave so I didn't get to see everything or all of anything.

All the Flux's were running though my head and I was feeling good.

And I'm wondering about next year.

Here's a 15 minute video. You are probably in it. Music starts at about the 10 second mark.

The first thing you see is "Passage of Sankofa & Nkonsonkonson (a two-part installation)" by Jessica Scott-Felder. You can just spot Jessica in the blue jacket about 01:40.




See you next year.

I wasn't sure what caught my eye on Rocky Ford

I stopped, turned turned, and took a picture. There was something familiar, something that triggered memories.

Rocky Ford is a street in Edgewood Kirkwood (thanks to Anonymous for straitening me out. Edgewood's boundaries go from Moreland to Arizona and I-20 to La France). I presume it "forded" Sugar Creek to the south. Folks just live there. Drivers just look straight ahead.

You'll never see it on a tour unless you are touring with me.

The flare on the verge board caught my eye at 30 mph. When I looked closely, I found this massive architrave with details galore. The chipboard in the gable window didn't put me off at all.


It's a 1930(?) hip-roofed bungalow with a leafy minimal landscape and a double-wide next door. This could be anywhere in the south.



There's a very grand portico with a hint of Tudor-asian-classical-craftsman, painted out in white. The chimney is proud and handsome, the foundation is unfussy and sturdy. The porch pokes out and is recessed in. The steps are massive. The verticals of the chimney and columns, the diagonals of the roof and half-timbering look just right with the horizontals of siding, sill, and eave. The gable, the pointy hip roof, and chimney reach for the sky.


You could build this today, don't you think?

Rocky Ford is not historic, not high style, not designed, not planned, not gentrified, not balanced, not harmonious, not zoned into conformity, not messed with too much.

But it has rewards for architecture tourists. I'm glad I stopped.

Mourning the entablature, weeping for the 12 foot ceilings lost in the fire

I'm an architecture optimist: Neither great architecture nor great design should require millions or mansions.

When this bungalow with a Greek temple for a front porch burned last fall, we nearly lost a great small house in a modest neighborhood. They are rebuilding. It will be the best of modern living. But we lost the porch's entablature, the Parthenon porch.


I can't find anything about the history of this house. All I know is that it was "neck-snapping good."


It's not on any historic preservation list.


Only the very best new houses approach this. This reminds me a little of Spring Island in South Carolina by Historical Concepts.


They saved the columns.


They restored the wonderful windows.


It's looking good.


But you can't tell from here ...


... but we lost the porch's entablature.


Before:




Why?

The original house had 12 foot ceilings. With rare exceptions nobody would rebuild a 12 foot ceiling. So they are doing 10 foot ceilings. It's huge cost savings, much cheaper to heat and cool, and provides livable space upstairs where there was none before.

The house is back better than ever But I continue to mourn a bit.

2 that burned this fall

I'm participating in Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch. Thanks to Susan! Not a nice metamorphosis now, but let's hope these come back. Few drive Whitefoord Avenue in Atlanta. It's a short cut for Architecture Tourists on the way to grandmas through the Edgewood neighborhood. It's hardly a street of high-style homes but it's very interesting and "sets my mind a wandering." This was the belle of the ball. Always meant to stop for some pictures, always thought there'd be another day. Now this. Queen Ann, classic revival, greek revival, trglyphs and metopes, cross-gabled hipped roof, pretty metal fence, arbor, lived-in yard, overhangs, what windows ... Words fail me. They don't do porches and windows like this. If you can bear it, there are more pictures in the slideshow below. On the Druid Hills side, on the "good side of the tracks" Paideia School's "Mother Goose" burned. It's a re-purposed Druid Hills beauty, now in ruin.

Whiteford Avenue parallels Moreland Avenue in the transitional Edgewood neighborhood. As with many Atlanta streets Whitefoord changes it's name at the tracks: Oxford in Druid Hills to the north, Whiteford in Edgewood to the south, leftovers from segregation. Edgewood is in the string of neighborhoods that begin east of downtown just south of the tracks with Cabbagetown, then Reynoldstown, Edgwood, Kirkwood, Eastlake, Oakgrove.

There is more in the slide-show but it's not fun: Let's hope they can restore these houses. Thanks, Terry Thanks to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch.