Word: mckim
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...century. There had been noble churches in the U.S. before, but none as boldly resplendent in space and decor as Henry Hobson Richardson's Trinity Church (1872-97) in Boston. There had been libraries too, but none as ambitious as the great Boston Public Library (1887-95), designed by McKim, Mead & White. The library was the first major public building in the neo-Italian Renaissance style that was to become de rigueur in formal architecture. It expressed the praiseworthy idea that the citizen is the reason for the state; that public architecture should be generous, bold and finely built...
...regard to Harvard's near-incredible decision, now being implemented in unseemly haste (as if the perpetrators were well aware that what they were doing was wrong and were eager to get it over and done with) to trash Charles F. McKim's 1902 Great Hall of the Freshman Union by filling it with four levels of offices, seminar rooms and lounges designed by architect Joan Goody, the Boston Globe published on Feb. 19 an interesting article about this most un-Harvardian development by its respected architecture critic, architect Robert Campbell...
...Campbell referred disparagingly to a similar majestic chamber by the same greatly-gifted McKim, Harvard Hall (which the writer mistakenly called "the reading room") in the Harvard Club of New York City, as "a place where nobody goes anymore except to attend a programmed event...
Like the interior of a great cathedral--or like McKim, Mead & White's 1910 New York masterpiece, Penn Station, demolished in 1962 and still ardently missed by many, many New Yorkers--Harvard Hall provides a welcome refuge from outside stresses (no less pronounced in and around Harvard Yard, perhaps, than in midtown Manhattan), a place for either relaxed conversation or solitary reflection, in which the human spirit can take wing and soar. Without a single exception that I know of, every one of the Club's 10,000-odd members takes pride in their Harvard Hall and delights in showing...
...Much of the glory of McKim, Mead & White has been lost to the wrecking ball and we cannot afford to let additional treasures be destroyed. The Great Hall is one of the last of its kind and certainly the last accessible to the general public: while the Harvard and University clubs of Boston and New York both have similar halls by McKim, Mead & White, neither are open for the edification of the public. To destroy this structure would be to sever Americans from their own history, one of the most pernicious and evil of undertakings...