Author: EB_Blue

Few cities have two teams in the same sport. Those that do, form tremendous rivalries which can divide a city. In Chicago that rivalry is between the North Side Cubs and the South Side White Sox. The differences between the teams and their fans are stark. The Sox, playing in the south side neighborhood of Bridgeport, are the favorites of Chicago’s tough and gritty blue collar neighborhoods south of the Loop (downtown). The Cubs, playing in the north side neighborhood of Wrigleyville (as in Wrigley Field), are favored by the city’s relatively affluent northern neighborhoods and suburbs. The Cubs are…

The UB School of Architecture and Planning begins its fall semester lecture series this evening Wednesday, September 14 @ 5:30pm with Toronto Architect Philip Beesley. Beesley is head of his own design firm, Philip Beesley Architect Inc but he is actually as much teacher, artist, writer, and graphic designer as he is architect. All Lectures begin at 5:30 pm in Crosby Hall room 301 – South Campus. They are open to the public and free of charge. From the UB web site:Inaugural Lecture in this year’s Lecture Series, “Relocation.” Philip Beesley will talk on “Limbic Places” and ask “How might architecture inspire our…

This month’s addition to our list of ‘must save buildings’ is possibly in the most dire circumstances. The building is the abused and neglected, but still very elegant, Bethlehem Steel North Office Building. You can also read more about the building in the September Buffalo Spree. After decades of abandonment the building is in severely poor condition. It may have already been abandoned even when the massive steel plant was still in use. In my memory it seems to have always been either unused or underutilized. It was replaced as the main offices for what was once the third largest…

This month’s addition to our list of ‘must save buildings’ is possibly in the most dire circumstances. The building is the abused and neglected, but still very elegant, Bethlehem Steel North Office Building. You can also read more about the building in the September Buffalo Spree. After decades of abandonment the building is in severely poor condition. It may have already been abandoned even when the massive steel plant was still in use. In my memory it seems to have always been either unused or underutilized. It was replaced as the main offices for what was once the third largest…

I finally got around to reading James Howard Kunstler’s book, The Geography of Nowhere. It is a smart, funny, and a sobering indictment of the horrible way we have been building our country over the last 60 years. It is an old but important book, published back in 1995, it is probably more relevant now than it was back then. It should be required high school reading. Too many Americans take sprawl style development for granted. Three generations of Americans have been raised in sprawl environments and know of no other way. Our laws, culture, and economy have worked hand in hand to…

My street held a block party this past Sunday. This is the third year for our daylong neighborhood fest. Each year it gets bigger and each year people on the street make new connections and get to know each other better. Almost every house on the street rolls out a feast and a grill. The savory smells wafting off our little block fill the surrounding streets (too bad for them). One neighbor brings out a full stage full of amplifiers and lighting and puts on a mini music festival. The day is filled with dancing, eating, and playing from noon…

At the bottom of a stair, just off the ornate main lobby of Shea’s Buffalo Theater a carved door lets you into a hallway space so opposite in appearance from the elaborate picture palace above it is hard to believe that you are in the same building. Traversing the low dark pipe-lined hall, unceremoniously lit with bare fluorescent bulbs, you periodically pass oddities such as a gilded throne. After a short distance the hall ends at a small basement room lined with full-height shelves, boxes and, files crammed with the sorts of things that seem to be the leftover fragments…

A few months ago I wrote about St. John of God Church in Chicago (see here). The closed and vacant church has been sold to another congregation in the Chicago suburbs and is currently being strip mined for reassembly several miles from the site it was designed for. The interior of this church and all of its substructure will be sent to the dump. The interior of another closed Chicago church will be assembled behind the facade of this church. This Chicago scenario is disturbingly similar to the proposal for St. Gerard’s in Buffalo, which Catholic Church leaders are planning…

Recent images of the ornate dome being removed from the south tower of one of the city’s most grand east side churches is enough to strike fear in the heart of anyone interested in saving Buffalo’s precious heritage. With so many Buffalo churches rotting, plans for St Gerard’s being sold off for use by an Atlanta parking lot church and the prospect of nearby St. Adalbert’s Basilica being forced into the Catholic Church’s cynically named “Journey In Faith and Grace” program (otherwise known as closing), the sight of this magnificent edifice being deconstructed could easily be interpreted as another major…

I was recently doing a bit of shopping around for a Canadian beach-front rental near Buffalo. In my search I kept reading references to the Fort Erie Friendship Trail. When I was in high school and college I would often ride my bike up to the Canadian beaches from what we then called the West Side but now call the Elmwood Village. There were no bike paths in the city and certainly none in Canada. Much of the ride was pleasant but, often I was forced onto very busy very bike-unfriendly roads. The Friendship Trail runs roughly from the the…