From the Archives

© Melchor Sarasketa

My latest backdated story, Portrait of Old Madrid, Summer 1989, long in the writing and intended as part of a book on my adapted city that I later thought better about completing, was an exercise of immersion as a newcomer to Spain, taking the idea of Paolo Portoghesi's genius loci as a literary strategy.  The photographs were taken by Melchor Sarasketa as part of the project, and are used with his permission. 

"If there are cities of stone in Spain such as Salamanca and Santiago, and cities of light such as Cordoba and Sevilla, then old Madrid is a city of earth...."

To keep on reading, click here.

Raymond Hood and the New York Skyscraper

From time to time I publish long out-of-print articles on back-dated pages of this blog. The latest is my 1993 critical-historic look at New York's McGraw-Hill Building by Raymond Hood (1931).

Here are a couple of quotes:

"The skyscraper rising out of the lower buildings of the city, like a stationary turbine in the prevailing winds (on gusty days, the building's steel skeleton groans and suspended light fixtures sway on upper floors) and the ocean liner moving majestically through the great space of the crowded harbor are images of a monstrous, fascinating power which captured the popular imagination."

"From this perspective, the reductive functionalism of the postwar American office building could appear to be an act of contrition for the excesses of the 1920s and the nightmare of the succeeding Depression."

And here's a link.