Kunstler touts some Baltimore neighborhoods, but trashes. . . Formstone?
"The polyester of brick!"
by FERN SHEN
Inviting provocative New Urbanism proponent James Howard Kunstler to your city is well-known to be an exercise in self-flagellation, so no one was surprised that he took a few smacks at Baltimore when he spoke here last month.
After he left town, though, Kunstler really let loose on the subject of Baltimore, in a couple of “KunstlerCasts posted on his website.
He unleashed an exuberant, profane rant on the “despotic” design of the former Legg Mason building and what he said about Formstone will not endear him to fans of Baltimore’s quintessential row-house cladding material . . . .
“Ugly and stupid-looking,” was, in fact, what he called it.
It was a sort of unchained version of the keynote speech he gave in March to the Downtown Partnership.
“Skyscrapers are over,” building parking lots is “a waste of time” and the old Legg Mason tower is “a liability,” Kunstler had observed, as he stood in that very building, critiquing the natural habitat of the downtown movers and shakers he was addressing.
True Formstone had an official sign to verify it was the real thing. (Photo by Fern Shen)
It was actually pretty tame compared to the digital drive-by narrative he delivered later.
New Urbanist eyes Mobtown
The New York-born social critic and author of such books as “The Geography of Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency” is one of the leading proponents of the movement known as “New Urbanism.” It was pretty edgy of the Downtown Partnership to gather the-powers-that-be, including Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake, to hear a talk by a former Rolling Stone writer whose blog is called “Clusterfuck Nation.”
James Howard Kunstler
Among planners, architects and community activists in Baltimore, Kunstler is as controversial as he is everywhere else. A January post about his anti-suburbia TED talk (on the local GoogleGroup Envision Baltimore) generated a 67-comment-long thread.
The reason he stirs so much passion is perhaps even more obvious when he’s doing his KunstlerCasts (virtual walking tours using Google Street View) than when he’s on the lecture circuit.
Listening to these arch commentaries — even if you agree with him about bad sprawl and ugly skyscrapers — it’s hard not to feel the curdling resentment of indigenous people under observation by pith-helmeted anthropologists.
Prowling Googlishly through Federal Hill, along with host Duncan Crary, he notes how “space is at a premium in this kind of miniature neighborhood,” cracks that at least there were “no chickens” and observes that Formstone is “ugly and stupid-looking.”
To be fair, he finds plenty to like in Baltimore, which he calls “a poster child for how cities will contract in the future.”
He calls Fells Point “sweet,” loves, loves, loves Mount Vernon and notes that Federal Hill makes up for its small-sized housing stock by having plenty of little restaurants and coffee places that serve as “a kind of third place,” also known to some as “the European model.” (Who needs Barcelona? We’ve got Spoons and the 7-11!)
Demolish the old Legg Mason building?
The subject that really fires the author up, though, is the building now known as 100 Light Street, since the brokerage firm moved last year to Harbor East. He says in the podcast that he had prepared a photo of it for his talk before he realized he would be making his remarks IN that building, which he refers to as the former headquarters of “Baltimore’s version of Goldman Sachs.”
Back when it still had the Legg Mason name on the building.
The 40-story office tower, Kunstler declares, “is one of the most despotic skyscrapers in the City of Baltimore and one of the real humdingers of the United States of America.” He speaks of “how terribly bad it is and emblematic of the terrible 1970s architectural crap that has afflicted us all these years.”
The rant (on what also used to be known as the USF&G building) rolls on. He points to the “ambiguous open-space plaza thingie” at the base of the building. This configuration makes it look “more like a rocket ship that’s going to take your investments into outer space, which I think it probably did,” he says. “I think the Legg Mason company got into a little trouble.”
“The building really needs to be taken down and replaced,” he concludes, directing viewers to point their Google Street View view up, to the top of the structure:
“Look up, behold the monotony and grandiosity of this stupid building!”
RESOURCES:
Links to the two Kunstler Podcasts on Baltimore:
Here’s KunstlerCast 104 Virtual Tour 1 and KunstlerCast 104 Virtual Tour 2
Here’s Kunstler’s TED talk: