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Reply To: | BP - Telepathic chickens leave no traces. |
Date: | Fri, 1 May 1998 09:07:18 EDT |
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... in Kansas City Missouri, where I lived 1950-1959. It is Greenway Terrace,
a 3 block long street reaching from fancy Ward Parkway to Brookside Plaza, the
streetcar stop/shopping area. On the first block (next to the shops) were the
starter houses (high blue collar); on the middle block (where I lived and
learned to light firecrackers) were the professional grade houses; on the last
block (at Ward Parkway) were the big, custom-designed houses - my grandparents
built a big Tudobethan there.
Architecturally, it was highly legible and pleasing.
When my mother moved us to New York City, I had to slice crosstown in the East
50's from the East River to school near Madison. This was like an archeology
dig done with explosives - Victorian red brick / 1960s white brick /
brownstone / Park Avenue limestone / 1910s storefronts - all jumbled together.
The antithesis of order and layering. I hated it.
No one seemed to be interested in deciphering the jumble, and that caught my
attention, even as a grade schooler. When I left college, with encouragement
from Adolf Placzek and a few others, I set out on my own to establish a
research firm (not a preservation firm) devoted to that task.
Chriftopher Gray
Office for Metropolitan Hiftory
New York City
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