Word: severities
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...celebrate Pearl Harbor Day, Bok lays off all Japanese at Harvard and confines them to Sever 11. To celebrate Chanukah, he lays of all Jews at Harvard. "This will save a lot of money," Bok says, "and besides, they were too goddamned pushy...
...poem of force," French Philosopher Simone Weil once called the Iliad in what must be regarded as howling Gallic understatement. On Homer's blood-drenched plains of Troy, spears cleave through a man's tongue and shatter his teeth or pierce an eye socket. Swords sever heads. Armies mow down opposing ranks like "a line of reapers formed, who cut a swath/ in barley or wheat." Death spreads across the pages like a pool of ink-"numbing darkness," "unending night." Awesome griefs are recorded. Hair gets torn, ashes smeared. But when a mourning fast is proposed, the answer...
Something in the way Richardson chose and trained his assistants insured a continuation But the successor firms were never as innovative as Richardson himself. Sever and Richardson's Austin Hall at the Law School are far bolder and more vibrant than the buildings at Harvard by the firms with the long names. And Richardson went on to even more important buildings, such as the Marshall Field Warehouse in Chicago (now torn down), the full-block building that so influenced the fathers of the skyscraper...
...Richardson's schemes--which often changed in the middle of construction--were always in command, and the details, though left to assistants, always fit in with the patterns of Richardson's work. (Toward the beginning of his career, one F.E. Allen spent an entire week examining the intricacies of Sever, and I suppose the pediments and the cut-brick floral ornaments could hypnotize contemporary dilettantes as well.) The work done by Coolidge, Shepley, and others for Richardson was clearly first-rate--but for most of their lives they were constrained only to think of details. I am certain their imagination...
...between the architect's conception and the everyday thoughts of the building's users. But Richardson's importance as an architect comes from his original manipulation of form and space, not from the round arches and towers he took from an earlier era. The scholar Henry-Russell Hitchcock termed Sever "vigorous," and "manly"--a phrase I deplore--and "rather more orderly" than other influential buildings of the time. What impresses me most is how Richardson subordinated the fine details to his concept of form. As detailed as it is, Sever is not decorated...