Author: mark

Behold the first known book jacket, for an 1829 literary anthology. It was discovered at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, minus the book it once encased, which is advertised on heavy cream paper as an “elegantly bound” volume to be had for 12 shillings. The decorative borders, with their Neo-Egyptian type ornaments, are especially nice. More at Nineteenth Century Book Jackets via the Book Bench.

Is it me, or did the New Yorker just retroactively invent a new architectural movement? In his excellent overview of the crisis in the American auto business, Peter J. Boyer writes of Eero Saarinen’s GM Tech Center outside of Detroit, claiming it was “considered a triumph in the Internal Modern style” when it opened in 1956. It’s been a while since I’ve walked the halls of academia, but this seems like a new locution to me. (I’m guessing “International Style” and “Modern” were somehow mashed up in the editing.) I also found this sentence a bit strange: “The chief designer’s office is like something from the set of ‘Mad Men’….” Isn’t it the other way around, though? In any event, it’s nice to see Saarinen and the Tech Center get a little ink. It’s a wonderful project, and you can read a bit more about it in my introduction to Ezra Stoller’s book on the TWA Terminal.

Good Lord! Is the new house jinxed? Should our team have known better than to trifle with the moody ghost of one George Herman Ruth? Must we now wait 86 years for redemption? Oh, Baseball Gods, what have we done?!?

I’m not much of a buyer, but I do like to keep an eye on the baseball memorabilia market, a project undertaken with a combination of curiosity, envy, bemusement, and sheer stupefaction. (A couple of years ago I wrote a piece on Jefferson R. Burdick, the grandfather of all baseball card collectors, that you can read here.) What appeals most, of course, are the wonderful, museum quality artifacts often to be found, like the 1915 Cracker Jack poster you see above, now up for bid on the REA website (minimum bid: $25,000). A few of the other items that caught my eye, or at least my attention:

Continue reading Auction Block

Meet Lamster (no relation), Belgium’s ascendant metal goliath. While the members of this motley crew—Ber, Burny, Bulex, Wiki, and “Dark Side” (real name: Stephane)—do suggest parody, I can assure you that Lamster is indeed real, and not a gimmick to boost sales of De meester van de schaduw in Flanders. Catch them next week in Liege, if you dare. I just want a t-shirt.

To say that I’ve been disappointed by coverage of the new Yankee Stadium by the design press would be an understatement, as noted in this “rant” column for ID magazine. The piece was written before the most recent spate of reviews, which only confirm my thesis that critics are far too concerned with formal criteria and not nearly enough with the many factors that truly define good design (and are most critical to fans). Take, for example, the response by Times critic Nicolai Ourossouff, who does not mention any of the controversy surrounding the stadium’s financing, its appropriation of public land, or the fact that the average ticket is 76 percent more expensive than last year, according to a recent study. There’s no suggestion that the stadium reframes the very idea of what it means to go to a ballgame. Instead he focusses on aesthetics, and ends with this condescending remark, inexplicably posed in the second person: “For us, the buildings [he is also talking about the new park for the Mets] are just another reminder of the enormous gap that remains between high design and popular taste.” It’s worth noting that Paul Goldberger’s review in the New Yorker, though not nearly so snide, similarly fails to address any of the controversies about the new Bronx park. For a contrast, I recommend Alex Belth’s far more insightful take, the most personal and most lyrical of the three.

(PS: Special props to Annemieke Beemster Leverenz for the pitch-perfect illustration that went along with my piece, reproduced above.)

That Thomas Jefferson had an African-American lover is by now common knowledge. Few, however, realize he had a Jewish grandmother, a fact too often neglected by chauvinistic historians. This situation is likely to change, given a recently found trove of notes Ethel Finebaum Jefferson left for her grandson over the course of their lives, usually on scraps of parchment tacked up around Monticello, where she lived in a small garret apartment which she found to be entirely too drafty. A few of those notes are reproduced below, courtesy the Library of Congress.

Continue reading Thomas Jefferson: (Henpecked) Jewish President

Last week I found myself with a couple of hours to kill in Philadelphia and decided to spend them at the art museum. Being an advocate of public transportation (and cheap), I made for the subway, only to find that the Philadelphia subway does not go to the museum, which is literally off the city’s grid. “Just take a cab,” I was told; there’s no other convenient way. Fifteen bucks later (and counting) I’m heading up the Ben Franklin Parkway, Philly’s answer to the Champs Elysees, toward the museum, which sits up on a rise over the city, like the Parthenon. I assumed I would be dropped off in front of the place so I could scale the ceremonial steps, like Rocky. No dice. Instead, I was driven up a circuitous access road to the back entry, which I guess is more convenient for those not into early Stalone pictures or climbing up lots of stairs, but is definitely not a stirring introduction to the museum. Thankfully, there’s plenty of good stuff inside.

After my visit, I decided to climb down the Rocky steps on my way back into town by foot. This was a pretty disheartening trip. At the base of the steps you come to the unforgiving Franklin Parkway, five lanes of traffic with no central crosswalk for pedestrians. This despite the fact that the steps sit directly across from a tree-lined, statue-enhanced midway that is the natural axis of approach for anyone walking to (or away from) the museum. As you can see in the photo above, pedestrians have simply worn a “desire path” through the grass leading to the point where the crosswalk belongs. From there, they risk life and limb dashing across to the museum. This is an especially popular route for joggers, who also like to do the Rocky thing.

Continue reading Look Both Ways: On the Streets of Philadelphia

Would you believe it’s those shifty Canucks, and not the spooks at the NSA, who have the Lamster phonelines tapped? Outrageous but true. Indeed, our recent conversation with Jonathan Goldstein was not only recorded but broadcast to that entire nation. A covert agent north of the border was kind enough to send us a bootlegged copy of the tape, posted here for our own protection and as proof positive of our new world record for complaints.

We are told there are more Lamster-Goldstein conversations buzzing around the mainframes in the darkened basements of CBC headquarters, soon to surface. Watch those airwaves, friends!

My first reaction to the above was, “Oh, good lord.” While it’s true that the events of 9/11 have begotten a good number of ill-conceived memorials, the latest, set for unveiling today at the Yankees’ spring training home in Tampa, might just be the least successful, artistically. The hyper-literal design is constructed of steel from the site and set on a base that itself rests inelegantly on a pentagonal plinth, a tribute to the attack’s victims in Washington. I won’t say it looks kitschy, but it does have the dispiriting feel of a token, an overgrown toy model. (Consider that an analagous memorial to Flight 93 would be a plane not much larger than a matchbox car.) There’s a reason why memorials, from the simple tombstone to the largest public monuments, invariably rely on some form of abstraction (not necessarily of the modernist variety). Should there even be such a memorial at a spring ballpark in Florida, a place for carefree entertainment? I’ll leave that one alone. Certainly, the Yankees were there for NY in the wake of the attacks, providing the city with its first real reasons to cheer with their dramatic performance in the 2001 World Series. And the team does have a penchant for memorials. I think they did better service to the Babe.