October 2009 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

The sun sets on the atrium to the Saratoga Springs City Center (i.e. convention hall) after twenty-five years of uselessness and civic uglification. Demolition started a few weeks ago. Note, by the way, the equally awful brick box of a hotel attached to it (at right). The hotel has changed hands with shocking frequency -- Ramada... Sheraton... Prime... Hilton -- suggesting a property that nobody really wants, and cannot be run profitably. This is probably due entirely to the hotel's utter lack of charm, which has been sacrificed on the alter of "efficiency."

The City Center atrium, a failed public space due to design imbecilities -- e.g. absence of commercial establishments along the interior edge -- will be replaced by an extension of the convention hall itself, which was deemed "too small." The new building design generated outrage when first publicized in the local paper. It was a banal glass box of the type seen absolutely everywhere around the USA the past thirty years or so, with no reference whatsoever to the regional architecture. It supposedly went back to the shop for a re-do, but it is nearly impossible to find an image of it. The org's own website only published the tiniest rendering, on an obscure back page. (See if you can find it!)

They must be ashamed of it.