January 2009 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Thanks to Scott Douglas of Fall River, Mass, for this edifying sequence of that town's new city hall and its environs.

Scott reports: "[it] has the dubious honor of being the only such [city hall] ever built entirely on an overpass. The structure was the linchpin of the plan to "improve the vitality of the downtown" by bisecting it with interstate 95. Not only did they demolish almost everything in the original City Hall Square, but the one public building they left "that little white classical one peeking out from the edge of [the photo below] is made to look so grossly small is comparison it looks photoshopped in."

"During the same project, the falls that gave Fall River its name were dynamited to make way for the Interstate 95 Braga Memorial Bridge. The remainder of the Quequechan River which had been the city's lifeblood was done the indignity of being placed in pipes and discharged below surface into Mount Hope Bay."

"The true irony in the story of this building is that only forty years before they tore the original down in 1967, several fire fighters gave their LIVES to save the city hall from a fire that otherwise leveled the entire downtown.

After they saved the building, Eisenhower huffed and puffed and blew it right down."

JHK's comment: Change is coming to the USA, all right. We no longer have the capital to invest in Modernist "clean slate" stunts like the one depicted here. We don't know it yet, but we're done building freeways, and accessorizing them with reinforced concrete box civic structures. Get ready to re-connect with your history, everybody. And thanks again to Scott Douglas for this excellent example of grandiose idiocy from the nation we are beginning to no longer be.