Sad. I wonder what it would take to rebuild Wallach?

by Andrew on Oct 8, 2008 4:35 pm • link • report

Post, 2/15/48:

"School officers find this type of building expensive and wasteful to operate because of the unused space"

Impressive that it took them 15 years to actually build the new Hine on the Wallach site.

by alexandrian on Oct 8, 2008 5:07 pm • link • report

alexandrian: I was about to ask, since I was somehow under the assumption that they built Hine because Wallach wasn't big enough.

by Daniel M. Laenker on Oct 8, 2008 5:34 pm • link • report

My roommate brought home a coffee table book the other day that had numerous photos of buildings in DC that have been since been torn down. Eventually I had to stop reading it, it amazes me that nice old buildings kept getting replaced with boring anonymous cubes. (And now, it's the cubes that are being treated as "historic")

by Steve on Oct 8, 2008 5:44 pm • link • report

Daniel: There was an old Hine next to Wallach that was apparently notoriously substandard--the Post articles note that it had picked up the nickname "Horrible Hine" over the years. I'm not sure if size was much of a concern as the white schools in that part of the city were mostly well under capacity by the late 40's.

by alexandrian on Oct 8, 2008 5:51 pm • link • report

I live in that area and after reading through the whole proposal, I am completely psyched. I really hope they don't kill the Penn realignment - having a square there will be SO much nicer.

by Sean Robertson on Oct 8, 2008 6:44 pm • link • report

Progress! The new building was so much better, and I'm sure still in great shape with a flat roof!

by Boots on Oct 8, 2008 6:52 pm • link • report

these pictures always break my heart. DC lost an amazing number of amazing buildings during the 1950's and 1960's. two incredible books show these buildings, "Best Addresses" highlights great buildings > http://tinyurl.com/48ofvj < and "Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings" - > http://tinyurl.com/4cx2jx < reading through this book will truly make you sad.

by dcvoterboy on Oct 8, 2008 7:06 pm • link • report

The thing that always gets me is that the building on the left was built by a society that was much poorer, in real per capita terms, than the one on the right (1860 per capita GDP was $2300 in 2000 dollars, 1966 was $17,290, today's is $38,150). We're twice as rich as the society that build the Hine school, and 15 times as rich as the Wallach's. (source: measuringworth.com)

Could we build a building today that lasts 86 years? Would we decide to?

Are we living in an era of private affluence and public squalor.

by Michael Perkins on Oct 8, 2008 9:02 pm • link • report

Ah, the next time you hear someone complain about historic preservation activists, remember examples such as this. ;)

by Joel Lawson on Oct 8, 2008 9:41 pm • link • report

Alas, this kind of civic vandalism was not limited to DC. My hometown of Minneapolis had some egregious examples, all too often perpetrated in the name of urban renewal, where the replacements have been nothing but parking lots.

An architectural historian in Minneapolis put together a great book of these lost buildings entitled Lost Twin Cities:

http://books.google.com/books?id=uegmzT1auoQC&dq=lost+twin+cities&pg=PP1&ots=JxRgz8R10I&sig=iNSg7xZvkopgu4fL0zBdfmn8ifs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

So, this was not a new thing. Unfortunately, I think it was mostly a product of the era - modernity was in full force. The combined pressures of the baby boom, postwar growth (both in terms of the economy and the population), changing social demographics, mass production, increased wealth, etc - they all lead to this kind of attitude towards old things.

It certainly gives credence to the core idea of historic preservation, but I don't think it endorses the current practice.

by Alex B. on Oct 8, 2008 11:00 pm • link • report

@ Michael "Are we living in an era of private affluence and public squalor."

I'd guess the difference in cost between the two is more due to the difference in the cost of labor between the two periods. In 1860 cheap labor (probably including slave labor) could be used to build the Wallach School. By 1966 enough social equality gains had been reached that it cost relatively more to get relatively less. Interestingly enough, since Reagan public buildings have become more and more elaborate, and union membership is down. Could the rise of the splendour of public buildings have a negative correlation with the demise of a more egalitarian society whose fortunes peaked sometime in the 70s?

by Lance on Oct 9, 2008 1:09 am • link • report

One reason so many beautiful civic buildings arose in the 19th century is because public works contracts were handed out as political rewards to a degree we wouldn't tolerate today. Once you got the contract you could send huge bills to the government, skim off the top, and then point to a job obviously well done.

Today it seems we just get the billing and the skimming without the craftsmanship.

by DCposta on Oct 9, 2008 3:05 am • link • report

Lance - I'd like to see you try to prove that one to anyone's satisfaction, I really would. It sounds like you started on a scheduled right-wing 2-minute hate and got distracted by beautiful architecture.

I would like to assure you that if you desire a school with 8 large classroms, two chimneys, a central hall, no indoor plumbing or electricity or lighting, and medieval castle turrets with nonfunctional parapets, union labor can build it cheaper than that functional glass/brick monstrosity.

Seriously: We started building that way because we figured out it was possible, and it was cheap. It's quite difficult to get a working schoolhouse with interior rooms or a large flat roof or a non-openable glass curtain wall or a steel frame using 19th century building techniques.

All those columns & arched inset windows, 20 foot high ceilings, bell towers, & chimneys were practical elements of any large building using those techniques. However nice you find them now, at the time they were the 'lowest bid'. Hine is another example of the practical way of doing things, from a different era of technology. The use of irrelevant/expensive architectural ornamentation has never really been the norm outside superprojects like skyscrapers & civic highlights like museums, monuments & cathedrals.

Would I like to see more buildings have artistic architecture as a priority during the engineering process? Hell yes. But I treasure variety & originality(as well as sustainability & urban practicality) more than adherence to a particular fetishized style.

by Squalish on Oct 9, 2008 3:51 am • link • report

Well said Squalish.

I was looking at a cost estimation report for school I worked on in New York, and perhaps 50% of costs were systems: plumbing, electricity, HVAC, telephone, hardline datalinks, fire alarms, emergency power, sprinklers, temperature control, alarms, cameras, elevators, automated doors, etc. It's a lot of stuff. Machine for living in indeed.

On the other hand, a "collegiate Gothic" laboratory building I worked on, really a charmless box with some pointed arches, the materials and labor costs for the building were much higher because of traditional finishes that are hard to produce. And they looked bad too.

Remember also there there was a massive body of well-trained and eager workers at the turn of the century. For example, Italy and Greece were training thousands of young men to be really great stone carvers and sculptors, so they could emigrate. For them getting paid almost nothing and working in dangerous conditions was better than being unemployed in the old country. Unfortunately, economic changes, beginning with the great depression and World War II, stopped craft apprenticeships and made costly, well-executed finishes too hard to achieve.

by The King of Spain on Oct 9, 2008 8:15 am • link • report

The building I most regret the loss of is the old Columbia Car Barn in Trinidad.

by David C on Oct 9, 2008 4:51 pm • link • report