Posted by Will Hayes on May 13, 2002 at 08:03:13:In Reply to: Re: Would you put a Blob in Williamsburg? posted by JWmHarmon on May 12, 2002 at 21:27:18:
I'm not really disagreeing with the content of your posting (either now or in my previous posts), but
I should point out that Williamsburg's "colonial" buildings are nearly all romantic Disneyesque recreations dating from the 1920's to 1970's, so I'm not sure if "stylistic integrity" really applies in that particular case... ;-)I live in Philadelphia, which is a city that still has lots of ACTUAL urban fabric dating from the 1700's.
In the 1950's-60's, a great many terrific Victorian and pre-Victorian buildings from the early 19th to early 20th centuries were demolished to make way for a similar Williamsburg-esque re-creations of buildings from the 1750's that had occupied the site, in order to impose (or some might say 'maintain') a "Colonial" STYLE in a section of the city being marketed as "Colonial".
Incidentally, the demolished buildings were from the period during which the city was at the forefront of culture and technology in America, if not the Western world, and had great historical and academic value as pieces of Architecture.Personally, I much preferred the quality, beautiful victorian buildings (which were built without self-conscious stylistic baggage) that occupied the site to the current colonial phonies, as well-constructed and 'accurate' as they may be, and I think that the city's architectural heritage has suffered as a result.
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