jjakucyk

My guess would be some sort of roof work, but those are pretty big chunks of brick and concrete so I'm not sure what that's all about.

The sidewalk configuration along Montgomery is very peculiar though. There's a small, like maybe 3 or 4 foot sidewalk along the curb with utility poles rammed into it, then a berm with lots of trees, bushes, and ornamental grasses, then another wider sidewalk higher up that sort of roller coasters down to the north to be level with all the storefronts. Aside from the trees hiding the storefronts and signs from the street, it's a surprisingly anti-urban pattern that treats Montgomery as a car sewer to be retreated from. If per chance they allow street parking, it might help a little bit, but my guess is they won't.

No matter how much the starchitects may want to believe it (or want everyone else to believe it) buildings are not and cannot be pure art objects like a painting or sculpture. They have practical, functional, and civic considerations that must be taken into account along with aesthetics. That's exactly why we're having this argument in the first place.

Just because something is rare that doesn't mean all examples should be preserved though. I agree we're in the "danger zone" for mid-century modernism that much Victorian architecture was in a few decades ago. Maybe there will be a turnaround and it will become better liked or even loved, but that's not a guarantee. Either way, a noble goal is to preserve the best examples of a particular style rather than trying to preserve it all with some broad brush. When the individual building is less relevant to the overall form and cohesiveness of the neighborhood, that's when you implement a historic district. When a particular building is a notable example of work in and of itself, then you do an individual landmark designation, but allow the surroundings to "keep trying" to build their own landmarks. Otherwise you eventually run out of redevelopable properties because everything becomes protected in the long term. To some extent this already happens naturally, whether for architectural merit or simple construction quality. By definition the better examples last longer through time on average. There was no shortage of bad Victorian architecture constructed in the 19th century, and much of that has since gone away. Even a lot of the bad mid-century stuff is already disappearing, like high-rise housing projects and dowdy schools from the 50s, etc. Here's the thing to keep in mind though. When talking about the poor examples of any historic or revival architectural style, the adjectives used are usually along the lines of gaudy, garish, ugly, or stodgy. With modernist buildings though, you're more likely to hear terms like despotic, monotonous, shocking, or oppressive. That's a pretty fundamental difference, and it shows that the hatred a lot of people have for modernist designs is more than about stylistic tastes, but even the most basic interaction between the building and the people who occupy and look upon it.

Whenever a building or development is shown from an overhead or distant view, that should be a red flag that its street level interface is lacking. It's sometimes unavoidable for large buildings, but at the very least a distant ground-level view (like the renderings for Dunnhumby) is better than a helicopter view that few if any people will ever see in reality. The brick pattern (stack bond) was a common early-modernist technique for showing that the brick is just a veneer and not load bearing. It has to be executed flawlessly however, because the lined up joints are completely unforgiving to any wavering. The typical layout with each course shifted by half a brick (running bond) is much better at hiding side-to-side variation.

I was going to say something similar the other day, and I think on Vine Street that's probably a fair statement. However, the building is so massive along 6th street you can't help but notice how completely blank and despotic it is. Opening those second floor windows would help, but the first floor is so squat to begin with that its presence is crushed by the mass looming above it. I doubt there's a solution that will satisfy everyone.

Maybe slightly off topic for specific projects, but this diagram from Envision Baltimore almost perfectly describes the development pattern at UC. I would say the analysis ends at where UC was about 10 or 15 years ago however. A further step 7 would likely talk about the spilling out of hypertrophic development in the surrounding community as the pressure to add student housing becomes too great, thus leading to further tension with surrounding residents and more push-back from downzoning NIMBYs and historic preservationists.

^ Nope. Granted it's all reinforced concrete (that's it's claim to fame after all), and it's fully sprinkled, but I'm surprised they haven't been required to do something about it. There may be some serious occupancy limits imposed on the building because of that, but I don't really know.

Notice how dirty and streaky it is already. Yes it's construction mess, but that doesn't bode well for its long-term appearance.

This doesn't have any effect on the Cardinal, right?

One other thing to consider is that there was no need to paint the side walls between buildings since obviously they were hidden. But when one of them was demolished, for whatever reason, the unpainted wall of the building next door was then exposed. We see a lot more of these side walls now than was ever intended.

The OTR guidelines take a pretty sensible approach... I honestly don't know how long it would take for painted brick left to its own devices to completely shed the paint. I do think that it probably is possible though, given enough time, or some scrubbing or pressure washing. Plus there's also the differences in paint types used throughout history...lead, oil, latex, etc. Off the shelf latex paint of today can act as a vapor barrier, trapping moisture that migrates its way from the inside of the building outwards in winter, then freezing as it gets trapped at the paint, causing peeling and spalling. One thing though that's pretty universally ok to do to brick is whitewash it. It cures via chemical reaction rather than simply drying, and it bonds with the brick surface, actually hardening it to some extent. It's more like applying thin plaster than paint. I don't know how common that was in OTR though, because it's generally been regarded as a poor man's paint substitute. Plus white or very light pastels are your only real color choices, and the only color I've ever heard of is pale blue that gets chalkier over time.

Bricks that have been sandblasted need to be painted or sealed at the very least since the hard outer "shell" has been removed, exposing the softer spongier core. Even so, our orange common brick is very soft and brittle to begin with, not to mention porous. It really does need to be painted unless it's well protected by overhangs. Usually only the more expensive and harder face brick on the facade is protected by a cornice, so the exposed common brick on the sides and rear need paint to protect it from the elements. St. Louis has a lot of great red common brick, and Chicago is known for its buff common brick that looks great after you remove the soot stains it gathers over time. They're harder and don't need to be painted for the most part. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the clay used, the type of firing, or a combination of the two that makes up the difference, but it is an important difference.

It may not be comparable to an actual historic neighborhood, but if you have to live in the suburbs, would you rather have that or the standard suburban crap development of today?

The Loth Street house is a bit low to the ground, and having the cornice sitting right on top of the second floor windows is not quite right, but it's at least decent. An important thing to note about buildings like this (or any really) is that if you keep the shape simple, in this case it's a perfectly rectangular shoe box, then there's more money available for details and finishes. In this day and age that unfortunately means either pocketing the difference or diverting those resources to the interior, but it's one reason older row houses could go all out on an elaborate facade, especially with zero clearance side walls that need no detailing or windows at all. Anyway, I'd rather see a simpler form like this that can be done with a little more sophistication and quality than something that needs to be cheapened because the framing, flashing, and foundations are so much more complicated.

It's right next to the Westin though, you'd think they could work out some sort of parking deal and possibly add a direct entrance. Still, I walked through the building over the winter, and the views are great with some really nice spaces inside. It's solid too, and the original elevator motors and switch gear in the attic is fascinating. However, the building has only one stairwell, and it dumps you into the lobby. That's a grandfathered in condition to the extreme, but maybe by keeping the building as office they can leave it alone. Doing a change of use to residential would almost certainly necessitate adding another stairwell, and that would require either purchasing adjoining property to add a stair tower, or cutting away part of the floor slab on the interior, which is risky business to say the least. One of the four elevator shafts is empty, and next to that is a large pipe shaft and another big shaft for the smoke stack. Those could mostly (but not entirely) be eliminated in a residential conversion and then a second stair could be put in there, but it might be too tight, and there's still the problem of where it terminates at ground level. Regardless these are some significant factors to address.

That's also an incredibly steep climb from the bank of the river to CVG, I doubt even streetcars let alone LRVs or any sort of mainline passenger rail equipment could make that unless it was done in a tunnel with a deep underground terminal at the airport. The Southern Railway tracks take about 10x as long a route to climb to the same elevation, going from the river at Ludlow to Erlanger.

^ But like Travis said, we don't know which poles are going to stay or be removed later. Obviously the new stuff isn't hooked up yet, so they're not going to take down the old ones yet.

Este was always a street to avoid in the past simply because of the terrible pavement condition. It should see a bit more use now, though it's still kind of isolated.

If they need to consolidate and update their facilities (they're in Linwood by Columbia Parkway AND Pleasant Ridge by the railroad tracks), better that they stay in the city to do it than go out to Mason. What concerns me is what, if anything, could be done with the Linwood facility? If it's labs and stuff that's getting obsolete for them, I have a hard time figuring out what else that building might be good for.

Location, location, location. A nice house in a nice neighborhood is great, a nice house in a crappy neighborhood is clearly not a product that many people are interested in. It's not that locals "don't get it" but that they're simply not interested in sinking a bunch of money into a house in a lousy neighborhood, especially when there's so many better houses in nicer neighborhoods. Simple supply and demand shows that few people want to live in these houses/neighborhoods, that's why they're so cheap. Out-of-towners can be tricked into moving into certain areas, because they don't know what they're missing...yet.

Hasn't Cincinnati Bell been all underground for over a century to begin with? That's what prompted the original suit against the street railway companies that forced the installation of dual overhead wiring. Leaking current from the poorly bonded rails caused noise on the underground phone lines. They even bury telephone lines way out in the country. Maybe some newer fiber optic trunk lines were put in overhead in the last decade?

Form-based codes are exactly the kinds of codes and covenants that were used to build Cincinnati's best neighborhoods. No it wasn't as micromanaged as it is today, nor as formal, and that's a worthy criticism of any zoning code, but basic design criteria were in place decades before the use-based Euclidian zoning of today was developed. Even residential streetcar suburbs had covenants attached to the lot specifying things like the build-to line, minimum building sizes, materials to be used, and even a floor on construction cost. That's the exact opposite of the codes today, and yet trying to swing the pendulum back the other way a bit is somehow bad for those same neighborhoods? And just because one particular agency might be using form-based codes to achieve a somewhat more egalitarian land-use pattern, which I guess is an unforgivable sin for some reason, that automatically makes form-based codes bad? Wow.

So affordable housing automatically means subsidized low-income tenements for criminals? You know that landlords who can rent their apartments at market rates aren't going to bother with Section 8 vouchers. It's only when the neighborhood has already started going downhill that Section 8 starts to come in, not the other way around. And besides, there's quite a bit of affordable housing in Hyde Park already, they're just not single-family houses. It's not hard at all to find an apartment in Hyde Park for under $700 a month, which is quite affordable for the neighborhood, and not at all out of line even with the rest of the city. These aren't places being rented by riffraff either. Mt. Adams is a bit too small to find many apartment listings at any one time, but they are there, and they're not outrageous either. Indian Hill is of course completely segregated by income. The point though is that there's more than just super rich people and borderline homeless.

I really don't see how someone who can afford to own a house in Mt. Adams is going to be prompted to move because of a few grand extra per year in property taxes. They're certainly not going to move to these sketchy hillside streets where there's nothing to walk to and they're surrounded by thugs and white trash.