David J Gill

Ouch. This house looks like an urban transformer station, sans electricity. [/img] THE SCOURGE OF HOUSE FLIPPERS! This IS THAT HOUSE in Cleveland Heights. No, not a power station, just an old modern house. It is the: HAROLD BURDICK HOUSE, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, built in 1938, Harold Burdick, architect BUT, it isn't just any house. It has a noted history and is/was a rare and distinctive piece of modern architecture. But once again a house flipper knowing nothing about the house, not understanding the architecture, not seeing the value of a historic house and not bothering to ask anyone informed about what they should do, has blundered in and F___ it up for no good reason.....and they want to be paid $100K+ for having done their worst for the least possible cost. The before and after photos below of the kitchen and bathroom is shocking. The existing kitchen in the house was, frankly, absurd. Of it needed to be redesigned and reconceived. I can't argue with that, but what has replaced the existing kitchen is so inappropriate and misconceived that I can't believe our flippers were unable to see that. If anyone who understands and appreciates the house they can surely demolish this kitchen and create something that fits with a modern house circa 1938. But what has been done to at least one of the three bathrooms is a much greater outrage. These bathrooms didn't need to be replaced and the new bathroom is straight out of a new suburban tract house in the outer burbs. The original bathroom(s) are tile, mirrors, glass block with elegant original fixtures and chrome fittings. I'm sure these bathroom did not meet current expectations for a modern bathroom but they did not need to be totally destroyed and replaced. Almost any older house is going to have limitations as well as those things that many people like about old houses. If you can't accept and enjoy the house and its historic qualities then why buy an old house. Why would anyone interested in buying a house like this want a bathroom like what has been built to replace the original. The master bedroom has also been destroyed and all of it's modest, but interesting original details have been removed. Again, why would a potential buyer want a bedroom like this rather than the bedroom as it had been. The obsession with painting walls aqua blue I think shows how little the seller knows about selling real estate.[/i][/b][/b][/color] HAROLD BURDICK (1895-1947) Burdick was among those architects in Cleveland who worked for local firms and independently for many years and had a hand in the design of many project in Cleveland. Before opening his own firm he had a hand in the design of two of the finest and most memorable buildings in Cleveland, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland while with the office of prominent Cleveland architects Walker & Weeks where he worked after returning from WWI. Later he was the talent at work on the Moreland Courts Apartments in Shaker Heights while with architects Mead & Hamilton. Burdick lived in the house with his family until his premature death in 1947 at age 52. The house is as rare bit of early modern residential architecture in Ohio. It's design seems rooted in the International Style and in Art Deco. Burdick went to Cornell and likely got a Beaux Arts education in architecture. The work he did in Cleveland was in eclectic historical styles and he may have designed nothing else in a modern style. MORE ABOUT THE HOUSE Cleveland Memory Project: http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=BHB Cleveland Memory Project - digital images: http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/clevehts/id/2082 Cleveland Heights Historical Society: http://www.chhistory.org/HeritageTour.phpTourIndex=TourAZ&Listing=S&Street=Stratford_Road&NoAdd=2414&No=198 Ohio Historic Places Dictionary, Volume 2: https://books.google.com/books?id=YfvhVln0D20C&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq=Harold+Burdick&source=bl&ots=kwhjvtD1ap&sig=Xb7HsZuwUPlmGmUC0avG-7wZQgI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=djGiVKKhJofnoASgg4LYAw&ved=0CJ4BEOgBMBg#v=onepage&q=Harold%20Burdick&f=false The HAROLD BURDICK HOUSE is on the NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES since 1974. THERE IS A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL RESERVED FOR HOUSE FLIPPERS Here are the tragic before and afters:

A few commentators in this forum have offered mildly disapproving remarks on the canopy and another thinks it may be acceptably minimal to not distract from the building. It's a lot worse than that. Can we reasonably assume that these drawings are not the intended design...that what we see is just a quick test fit to start discussion? It's pathetic that Drury is presenting work that has not been given any worthwhile design attention. The plan and image don't seem to be by an architect. How is Drury intending to develop this project? Curiously, sadly, regrettably...this is not the only significant public building by Walker & Weeks that Drury will likely ruin. The have also purchased the magnificent, but little known Art Deco Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's former PITTSBURGH BRANCH building on Grant Street. It is entirely different in style from the Board of Education bldg was built at the virtually the same time and complete in 1931. (The Cincinnati Branch, ALSO BY WALKER & WEEKS...a lovely building that once had sumptuous interiors, now chopped up into mediocre apartments...much like the firm's own office building on Carnegie was chopped up. (At least it avoided demolition!)) CANOPY: This generic, off the shelf budget priced port-cochere purchased might be fine for a motel along the freeway but is totally inadequate for this building in this place. #1. Applying a color and stonework rustication to spindly steel supports is something an architect would not do. Matching the building stone will not work. It needs to be of contrasting metal work and glass. #2. Obstructs one of the unique features of the building...namely the huge elaborate like fixtures. DRIVEWAY: it's not just the canopy structure that is ill-conceived. The driveway configuration makes no sense. #1. Discreet parking will be needed. #2. Buses will pull up at the door. How do they make the sharp 180 under the canopy with cabs and other vehicles in the same area? #3. Why would the entrance and exit driveways be right next to each other? They will conflict. The Pittsburgh Fed Building (below) also by Walker & Weeks and also in the unsteady hands of Drury Inns.

Medina's original library was a Carnegie library in all but name. A local Philanthropist named Franklin Sylvester paid for it and it was originally named after him. Is that unusual? Perhaps they should be included. Just a thought. Medina's Franklin Sylvester Library - views c1910, the 1950's and 1975.

No, GLASS BLOCK is not terrible. But the way it is used in the photo shown IS terrible....it's bad block used in a silly way. Here is a fantastic example from 1936. (Owens-Illinois Research Laboratory, Toledo, Ohio - Walker & Weeks, architects) [/img]

I would have assumed if had up loaded an image I would then be able to edit the post and also delete a an image....But I can find no way to do this basic task. What's going on? How do I do that? The Delete a post function described in the how to page seems not to exist. Can't I delete everything and start over if I want to? When I go to Modify all of the test editing function are absent. Seems a problem. What's going on?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is the headquarters of the Fourth District of the Federal Reserve System created in 1913 with a mandate to manage the nation's money supply and assure the stability of its financial system. The severe financial panic of 1907 the worst of similar crises in 1893, 1896, 1901 and then again in 1910-11. The Cleveland Fed moved into its new, purpose built permanent home at E 6th Street and Superior Avenue in 1923. The architects were Walker & Weeks, Cleveland's pre-eminent firm of the period. Walker & Weeks was founded in 1911 and quickly established a notable expertise in the design of banks as well as a reputation for high quality of their work. The Cleveland headquarters, like the renowned New York headquarters building by York & Sawyer, was modeled on the defensible Florentine and Roman Palazzi of the Renaissance. Beaux-Arts trained architects like Walker & Weeks and York & Sawyer consulted historical precedent appropriate to each commission and the Italian Renaissance Palazzo was an ideal model for the quasi-governmental authority of the Federal Reserve. The New York and Cleveland banks are arguably the finest buildings in the Federal Reserve System and it is hard to imagine a more satisfying application of historical precedent in the Beaux-Arts architectural tradition. While the New York bank would be heavily rusticated and crenulated, borrowing many elements directly from the Palazzo Medici in Florence, Frank Walker conceived the Cleveland bank with elegant, refined gravitas. Walker was fascinated by color in architecture and by the beauty of natural stone and developed a level of expertise with stone selection that allowed him For the entire exterior sheathing of the Cleveland building he chose Pink Etowah marble from the quarries at Tate, Georgia. The result of this bold selection has been a edifice of ravishing beauty for a city that is rarely described in those terms. The building is memorable, to say the least, and it must have stood out even more strongly in the grey industrial city that was Cleveland in the 1920's. [/img]

You are suggesting that we are blighted with infrastructure projects we don't need and public buildings we don't need. That just isn't true. The opposite is true! There are countries where that has happened. Notably Spain, where there are multitudes of new buildings, brilliant architecture by incredibly talented Spanish architects, that were built on credit like the Madrid's 1.1 billion euro Ciudad Real airport built in 2009 and now abandoned. Public works construction does not cripple the economy, it boosts the economy....Spain just went to absurd excess. All over this country we have crowded roads in poor condition, bridges in disrepair, poor public transportation and incredibly negative attitudes about spending money to build things for the public good because too many people, like you, believe things that are untrue.

The cathedrals of Europe were typically built by a town with their own money and employing local craftsmen. The motivation behind these buildings had much to do with competition between towns and the pursuit of prestige, though it certainly was a statement of political power for the local clergy as well, and the result was small towns with huge churches. I wouldn't call any of this architecture elitist. But what initially motivated Martin Luther to dissent from the Church, set the events of the Reformation in motion, was his outrage with the excess of art and architecture built by the popes in Rome. He was sent to Rome at the time Michaelangelo was giving the Sistene Chapel ceiling a coat of paint. Admittedly the mostly secular, political, aristocratic Popes of this period were the elite and one could justly call the palatial building they built for their own prestige elitist. Like you point out, the construction of churches in this country has been unremarkable in comparison, thankfully.