There goes the neighbourhood (part 6)

Good Lord, but I haven't posted anything about the corner house(s) since March! I took this picture 10 days ago, and it's way, way out of date already. You can see here that they've added "bricks" to the house on the Jedburgh side, but that has progressed well beyond this point, and the house on the very corner on the Woburn side is looking quite "bricked" these days too.


And to think that grand old corner house was demolished only six months ago. Time is money! Gotta get these babies sold. Millions are at stake!

Naming rights (part 3)

Back in the first part of this series, I wrote that the name of Stephen A. Schwarzman—the exceedingly generous donor who just gave the New York Public Library $100 mil and for whom the iconic Fifth Avenue building is being renamed—would not actually appear on the building because the building is protected by landmark status.

Now the New York Times reports that Schwarzman’s name will indeed appear on the building—FIVE TIMES.

According to the story by Marc Santora, the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission agreed to not only the name change but also to affixing it at the base of each of the two centre columns leading to the main entrance; on a gold plaque on the marble floor just outside the front door; and in two locations at the 42nd Street entrance.

His name will not be as big as those of the library’s founders (like Astor and Tilden), but will be from 1 to 2.5 inches high. And it will appear FIVE TIMES.

Check out the Times story – there’s a link to a PDF file prepared by the Landmarks Commission that shows you just where Steve’s name will appear and what it will look like.

I don’t get it. What kind of ego or insecurity is it that drives people to pay to have their names plastered everywhere? There’s Schwarzman and the NYPL, all the people whose names adorn Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital and I just noticed that the names of Hilary and Galen Weston are etched into plaques near the old main entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum. The Westons coughed up $20 mil, and, a ROM press release says, the museum will name its 1933 heritage wing on Queen's Park for Hilary and Galen and the Weston family in perpetuity. (Note to all high-priced donors: “perpetuity” ain’t what it used to be.)

Christopher Isherwood, in a New York Times article last December, called this “the graffiti of the philanthropic class” and asked, “Whatever happened to Anonymous?”

“The naming game is getting a little out of hand, as every nook and cranny of these gleaming buildings is tagged by some wealthy, generous and obviously not publicity-shy donor,” Isherwood wrote.

His article also tells the story of the non-naming of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s business school. The dean was selling the name for $50 mil and no one came up with the dough. He discovered, however, that several donors were willing to contribute to a fund that would ensure that for at least 20 years, the school wouldn’t be “branded.” The no-name fund eventually reached $85 million.

You really ought to read the whole of Isherwood’s article, but I’ll leave you with this:

“Some may ask what the big deal is,” he wrote. “Would you rather they kept the money to themselves, and left the arts to languish? Perhaps not, but I don’t much care for the feeling of being beholden to a law firm, an airline or an investment banking tycoon for the privilege of checking my coat….

“…don’t those who give to the arts do so expressly to benefit a public good? All this naming mitigates the ideally selfless spirit, if not the fact, of such giving.”


(Photo of “Anonymus” is a freely licensed media file from the Wikimedia Commons.)

Naming rights (part 2)

Apologies, once again, to my worldwide fans, for the dearth of posts lately. I have been on the road for my day job, but hope to make up for it with some long-overdue information...

...starting with a "thanks" to Walt (of Crackskullbob) for his comment (under "And now for something completely different") giving the most inventive attribution for "April is the cruellest month" I've ever read, replete with riffs on the Kennedy assassination and other events of the 1950s and 1960s.

...and "thanks" to the anonymous commenter who corrected some of the misinformation I posted about the New York Public Library.

Now to return to the issue of naming rights. Here is a picture of Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital (apologies for the light standards and other urban detritus obscuring the view, and the fact that the pic is ever-so-slightly out of focus):



Or is it Mount Sinai Hospital? The sign says it is also the "Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Health Complex."

Or is it? On either side, we see that two wings are also named, for Isadore Sharp (left) and Lawrence S. Bloomberg (right). Close-ups here:








So whose building is it? What's the name of this place?

Stay tuned.

There goes the neighbourhood (part 5)

What a difference three weeks makes! I predict that these houses will be finished by May, occupied in June and resold in July, demolished in August and construction of FIVE new houses on this very site will begin in January 2009.

There goes the neighbourhood (part 4)

Somehow, in this very cold, very snowy winter, the foundations have been laid and the framing has begun in earnest for the three houses that are going to replace what used to be a single, large house on the corner of Woburn and Jedburgh here in North Toronto.
Here's the framing from the Jedburgh side:

I guess the framers got a little peeved with me shooting so much, so one of them pulled out his cell phone and started taking pictures of me. I smiled and waved.

Happy Leapfrog Day!

I know I've already used this picture, but it's the 29th of February. That makes today, in this Year of the Frog, Leapfrog Day, and so I'm rerunning the picture, dammit. Besides, it's been too damned cold to take any new pictures and I wanted to give you a break from my radio sketches.

New gargoyles for Oxford

Oxford is a city of dreaming spires, but also one of the gargoyle capitals of the world.
Last June, the be-gargoyled university launched a competition for six- to 18-year-olds to design new gargoyles for the Bodleian Library. There is apparently extensive damage to 10 of the current gargoyles on the northwest face of the building, and with no historical records showing what the originals looked like, officials opted to commission new ones.
“The University is taking an exciting opportunity to create a lasting community monument in the heart of the university and the city that will celebrate 1,000 years of Oxfordshire history,” according to Dr John Hood, vice-chancellor of the university.
The ideas were to be based on one of three themes – myths, monsters or people – and have a historical connection with Oxfordshire within the last millennium.
The entrants were asked to give reasons for their choices—which will help gargoyle hunters of the future to understand why the figures appear where they do. In most cases, such information has been lost, if it was recorded at all, or extremely difficult to find.

Nine entries were selected to be carved by a stonemason and placed on the library. They included figures of Oxfordshire author J.R.R. Tolkien and Thomas Bodley.
“After all, he founded the library and the library is named after him,” said Alfie Turner, who submitted that entry.
The other winning entries can be seen here .

There goes the neighbourhood (part 2)

On Saturday, the backhoe landed with much noise, arriving as it did on a flatbed. There was a great cacaphonous chorus of backing-up beeping announcing its arrival—which was actually a help, I suppose, as it was the signal for me to get my camera.

Here you can kind of see that the front door has been removed, possibly sold to an architectural salvage firm. This view adds to the eeriness, though, because the interior stairs, bannister and railing make it so clear that someone lived here relatively recently.
On Monday morning, the garage was levelled and the upper right part of the house had been demolished.
I fully expected to find only an empty lot when I arrived home from work on Tuesday, but there's still a bit left—probably because piles of brick and whatnot had to be carted off before any more could be torn down. So if I get up early on Wednesday, I'll have another picture of the last bits of this house.

Hoppy New Year!

No, no, no. It's not the Chinese Year of the Frog. (According to the Chinese zodiac, it's the Year of the Rat.)
Amphibian Ark has declared it the Year of the Frog, to call attention to the "amphibian extinction crisis which represents the greatest species conservation challenge in the history of humanity."
(The journalist in me feels I must tell you that Amphibian Ark is a joint effort of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) of the IUCN/SSC (World Conservation Union/Species Survival Commission) and the IUCN/SSC Amphibian Specialist Group (ASG).)

So have a hoppy new year—and remember, it's a leap year so there will be a leapfrog day.

Also remember: Time's fun when you're having flies.