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Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
What if the sort of extreme weather that has left the University of Iowa inundated in floodwaters is not a freak event? What if it is a sign of things to come? (Photograph by AP Images)
Art & Architecture Renovations Near Completion at Yale U.
Paul Rudolph's 1963 Brutalist icon is getting a makeover, plus an addition by Charles Gwathmey.
Guest Blogger: Anne Stephenson
Even the greenest construction project increases a college’s carbon footprint.
Other News
Land-Rich Universities Weigh New Options for Real-Estate Development
Universities are taking advantage of new ways to develop their holdings through corporate partnerships, a new report says.
U. of Iowa Begins Mucking Out and Assessing the Damage
The university's insurer spent the weekend starting to assess the damage to the auditorium and 19 other flooded buildings.
U. of Iowa Flooding Takes Costly Toll in Research and Equipment
Parking lots are under water, some roads leading to the campus are closed, and the campus utility infrastructure is damaged.
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
NYU Plans to Demolish Playhouse Where Eugene O’Neill Once Worked
The Provincetown Playhouse, where Eugene O’Neill put on plays early in his career, may be torn down by New York U. (Photo by Seth Werkheiser)
New York University has a plan to demolish the Provincetown Playhouse, in Greenwich Village, a theater where Eugene O’Neill put on his first plays and where Edna St. Vincent Millay, Djuna Barnes, Paul Robeson, and Bette Davis once performed.
The demolition would be part of a plan to acquire and renovate six million square feet of space in the city, The New York Times reports. University officials emphasized that the demolition was merely a proposal, and that NYU would discuss the plan with neighbors and preservationists. An architect for the university said a new building on the site would more closely resemble the theater prior to a 1940s renovation that combined four buildings.
According to a history of the theater compiled by a doctoral student at NYU, the actors and playwrights opened the playhouse in that location in 1918. It had been a horse stable, but was used at the time as a bottling plant. “To remind themselves that the space was once a stable, a hitching post was left hanging from one of the walls, with the inscription painted above it: ‘Here Pegasus Was Hitched,’” the account says.
Preservationists are alarmed about the plan. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, told the Times that the theater is “a beloved piece of our city’s history” and that its demolition would “create an enormous rift between the university and the surrounding community, preservationists, theater lovers, that I’m not sure how easy it will ever be to repair.”
Scott Carlson | Wednesday April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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The issue here, among other things, is NYU’s addiction to a culture of demolition.
Full disclosure: I am Leonard Jacobs, the national theatre editor of the entertainment industry trade paper Back Stage and first-string critic for Back Stage and the alt-weekly New York Press. And I am serving as one of the primary liaisons to the working New York theatre community in the fight to stop NYU from demolishing this icon of American theatre.
We ask all concerned citizens to please visit this link and consider emailing NYU President Sexton and others about this matter:
http://www.gvshp.org/ProvincetownLtr.htm
Thank you!
— Leonard Jacobs Apr 30, 11:27 PM #
I think NYU should be able to do with the property whatever it wishes. All you preservationists call foul every time NYU wants to make any move. NYU is as much part of the Village as anyone or anything else.
— Steve Bendt May 1, 07:58 PM #