Great Shot: Good Old Days
21 07 2008We just love all the little things captured by Flickr user Spmoony of this classic landmark building in the District.
How come they don’t put details like this into buildings any more?
DC Metrocentric
New Buildings, Construction, Destruction, Planning, Real Estate, and Gossip as it happens in the Nation’s Capital
It costs to much, details like that would be a fortune today because hardly anyone knows how to put that type of craftsmanship into something anymore.
One thing that is rarely brought up in the discussion of detailing is the role of the great depression and subsequent World War II, in destroying the apprenticeship system of training quality craftsmen and artisans. While traditional building design stuck around until the 1950s, except with skyscrapers, the level of craft seems to take a nose dive in the 1930s and almost no returning GIs seem to have gone into traditional trades. There are plenty of other issues, like cost and shifting architectural focus, but I think this should be looked into.
On a well-designed and well-crafted modern building, you can still find details that are much better than this one, if more subtle. I don’t really have a taste for highly decorated apartment buildings, since they make the ornament or articulation of civic and public buildings much less striking.
I would like to add that I don’t like this particular example,
Why can’t they just make prefab of this kind of detailing? I mean, once the CADs are made up and the machines set up, isn’t it just as cheap as pumping out that streamlined boring stuff?
In fact, some architects have begun to use CAD-CAM systems, less complicated stone form is pre-cut at the quarry. Similarly, bricks are often panelized at a factory and set up by cranes in many large-scale developments. Wood and metal can be carved by machine ahead of time. It saves a ton of money but the cost of limestone, cut or not, is still far, far too expensive for most projects. Cutting the stone increases it too, because you can’t pay the CAM technician as little as you could an Italian stonecutter with little english and desperate for work.
[…] and has got some amazingly detailed terra-cotta designs. Unfortunately, details like this just aren’t something you see these days dispite all the new construction going on around town. Seeing things like this reminds us how […]