Lacombe
I used this month’s long weekend (November 11 is a stat holiday in Alberta and BC), plus a few of my vacation days, as an opportunity to fly to Alberta for a bit of family visitation. On one afternoon of that extra-long weekend, I was driving through the town of Lacombe with my dad en route to visit my various aunts and uncles and I thought to myself, “What a pretty little town this is!”
I don’t know the town of Lacombe very well, even though a whole passel of my relatives still live there and even though I spent a good chunk of my summers in the Lacombe area when I was growing up. That’s because we always parked our family tent trailer on the dairy farm of my aunt and uncle and there were far too many fun things to do on the farm for any of us kids to want to go into town. (I highly recommend spending summers on a dairy farm when you’re a kid.)
Anyways, the very same day (is that a weird coincidence or what?) that my dad and I were driving around Lacombe, its Historic Main Street (50th Avenue) was selected by the Canadian Institute of Planners as Canada’s Great Street for 2013. (Who knew there was a Canadian Institute of Planners? Not me.) The story made the local TV news that night, and it gave me an excuse to go back the next day and take some photos for this blog.
The architectural style of the buildings on Lacombe’s 50th Avenue is Edwardian ― that’s the style that was in vogue during the first decade and a bit of the last century. Lacombe’s Flatiron building (see above photo) was opened in 1904 and is the oldest flatiron in the province.
Lacombe started out as a boxcar train station on the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was incorporated as a village in 1896 and as a town in 1902. In 2010, it became Alberta’s 17th city (and, with of population of 11,000, its smallest).
University of British Columbia
The last school I want to show you on my tour of schools I’ve photographed is the University of British Columbia. Like Simon Fraser University, UBC is situated a ways away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre ― its main campus is located at the western tip of Point Grey, a peninsula to the west of Vancouver’s toniest neighbourhoods.
UBC is a hodge-podge of architectural styles. For one, it’s got your neo-Gothic. This is the Chemistry Building, one of the first three buildings constructed on the Point Grey campus. That was back in 1925.
For another, it’s got your Brutalism. The Buchanan Tower was built in 1972.
And it’s got your postmodernism. This is the Koerner Library, which was designed by Arthur Erickson and completed in 1997.
UBC is fond of combining architectural styles when it builds additions to existing buildings. The Main Library, another of the three buildings constructed in 1925, morphed into the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre in 2008. The neo-Gothic centre is the original building, now surrounded by a postmodern glass structure.
Here’s a look at it from another angle.
Four wings were added to the Chemistry Building between 1959 and 1989. This is a corner of one of those wings, built in the Brutalist style.
And this postmodern structure is an addition to the Henry Angus Building, which houses the Sauder School of Business. The addition, which opened in 2012, is wrapped around the original building, which was built in 1965 and expanded in 1976.
With 50,000 students, UBC is Canada’s fourth largest university and the largest in Western Canada. These days, the Point Grey campus is one massive construction site. In the past year, work was completed on a new trolley bus loop, upgrades to primary pedestrian corridors (which for some reason I have yet to figure out are called “malls” here), and a new fountain in Martha Piper Plaza. Building construction currently underway includes a new Student Union Building, the new Centre for Brain Health at UBC Hospital, and expansion of the UBC Bookstore. A new building that will house the Faculty of Education is scheduled to break ground this winter.
UBC’s Class of 2016 fittingly calls itself the Class of Construction.
Simon Fraser University
And now, for something completely different.
Unlike the universities I wrote about in the previous four posts, whose campuses are all situated smack in the middle of a city, Simon Fraser University sits above the city, on top of a mountain. (Which, in my humble opinion, takes the notion of an Ivory Tower a tad too literally.)
Construction of SFU’s Burnaby campus was begun in the spring of 1964, and the university welcomed its first 2500 students in September 1965.
The architects were Arthur Erickson ― probably Vancouver’s best-known and most influential architect ― and Geoffrey Massey. The campus atop Burnaby Mountain is in the Brutalist style of architecture, and won the 2007 Prix du XXe siècle from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, which recognizes buildings of significance to Canada’s architectural history.
University of Cambridge
I went to Cambridge for one reason and one reason only: to hear the King’s College Choir.
I got to hear them sing a Choral Eucharist service in this chapel, the King’s College Chapel of King’s College of the University of Cambridge. Quite the chapel. Quite the choir.
I don’t remember much else of the University of Cambridge or the city of Cambridge. It was a quick one-night stop at the end of a three-week English walkabout and I was weary of sight-seeing.
But I’m never weary of choral music. It was worth the stop.
University of Oxford
When I applied to and was accepted at the University of Toronto, I enrolled as a student at Woodsworth College. I didn’t get the whole college-thing they had going at U of T, and didn’t much care what college they stuck me in, but eventually I discovered that all unclassified and part-time students (I was both) were lumped together at Woodsworth.
When I would introduce myself to my fellow undergrads, the first question after “What’s your major?” was always: “What college are you?” I quickly figured out that each college at U of T had its own personality, and prestige, and Woodsworth didn’t rank very high with respect to either.
This all seemed rather strange and unusual to me. In Western Canada, you applied to and enrolled in a faculty; in my case, I was a student in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. Colleges were independent entities, completely separate from the universities; I had attended one of those as well before transferring to U of A.
Like I said, I didn’t “get” the whole college-thing they had going at U of T.
Until I got to Oxford, that is.
Oxford is chockfull of colleges ― 38 of them, in fact ― and as I wandered around the “city of dreaming spires,” I came to the realization that the University of Toronto is modelled after the University of Oxford. So that’s where U of T got the idea for all those colleges, I said to myself.
Many of the colleges of Oxford University are open to the public, and I walked reverently through several of them. I happened to walk by the entrance to the chapel of Magdalen College (where C.S. Lewis taught) and was warmly invited to attend the Choral Evensong service that was about to begin. In the Great Hall of Christ Church College, I was greeted by an elderly gent whose sole job seemed to be pointing out the “Alice” window to visitors. (That would be the stained glass window put in to commemorate the author Lewis Carroll, who had been a Christ Church scholar.)
Oxford is a beautiful town. I explored it while on walkabout in the English countryside some years ago, fell in love with it, and made a promise to one day return to it.
University of Toronto
Next up on my tour of schools I’ve photographed: the University of Toronto. I was a student here myself a long time ago, just for a year, and to this day I consider it the prettiest of all the schools I’ve attended (and there’ve been a few).
When I commented to my sister on the architectural style of the buildings at Johns Hopkins, she asked me what the buildings at U of T looked like.
“They’re neo-Gothic,” I said. Also called Gothic Revival, you see neo-Gothic buildings all over Canada ― our Parliament Buildings in Ottawa are probably the best-known example.
The University of Toronto has been around since 1827, has a dozen colleges on three campuses, and is the largest university in Canada with an enrollment of 75,000 students. I took these photos of the St. George campus when I was in Toronto exactly a year ago this week.
Not all of the buildings on the St. George campus are neo-Gothic. The main building of Victoria University, shown below, is called Richardsonian Romanesque, after its architect, Henry Hobson Richardson.
Trinity College is in the Jacobethan style.
And this monstrosity, Robarts Library, was built in the 1970s in what is known as Brutalist Architecture. Appropriate name for the look, I should think. It’s not-so-affectionately known as “the Turkey” by the students of U of T; I’m sure you can figure out why.
Johns Hopkins University
Working on a university campus ― as I now do ― I’m much more in tune to the rhythms of the academic year than I have been for a long, long time. UBC has been delightfully (delightfully!) deserted these past four months, but then, all of a sudden, all at once, more than 50,000 students descended onto the campus this past week, and the place is now overrun (overrun!) with twentysomethings.
On my travels, I sometimes find myself wandering around university campuses. The architecture always fascinates me, as each school has its own unique look. And so, this being September, I thought I would take you on a tour of some of the schools I’ve photographed.
First up: Johns Hopkins University. It’s not the biggest of schools ― about 20,000 students ― but it certainly is a reputable school. I was shown around its Homewood campus by my sister just over a year ago, when I was in Baltimore to visit her.
Hopkins was founded in 1876 through a bequest by Baltimore abolitionist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Johns Hopkins. Here is a bust of the man himself.
Homewood House, seen in the next photo, was a private home built around 1800 that was eventually given to the university. It was built in the Federal Style ― a style of architecture you don’t see much in Canada ― and is said to be the inspiration for the look of the Homewood campus of JHU. It’s now a museum.
This is Gilman Hall, home to the humanities and social sciences departments.
And this is what you see once you step inside Gilman Hall.
Keep on walking, and you’ll come to the Hutzler Reading Room.
It is such a beautiful room I couldn’t stop taking photos. Here’s another.
And another.
The imposing structure shown below is the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. As impressive as it is, it’s not quite as impressive as the George Peabody Library, located at the Peabody campus of JHU, which my sister took me to see after our tour of the Homewood campus. (Click here to see a photo of that library.)
On another day, while waiting for a bus, I realized we were standing in front the Johns Hopkins Hospital, so I took this photo. I quite like the three-storeyed porch, which I didn’t notice until I was editing these photos. Johns Hopkins Hospital is the top-rated hospital in the United States, and its School of Medicine is located on the East Baltimore campus of JHU.
So there it is: your look at Johns Hopkins University. My one regret is I didn’t get to see it in its fall glory, which I’m sure must be spectacular.
Art Talk: Grand Hotel
Yup, it’s another post about hotels, but this time I’m not recommending a place to stay. This post is about yet another art exhibition ― one that I stumbled upon when I was at the Vancouver Art Gallery to see Persuasive Visions.
The exhibition takes its name from the 1932 film Grand Hotel, winner of that year’s Oscar for Best Picture. One of the characters in the film keeps muttering, “Grand Hotel … always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”
Huh. Yeah, right.
Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life, seemingly an exhibition more appropriate for a museum than an art gallery, looks at the history of the hotel through the lens of four themes: travel, design, social, and culture. Displays include scale models of some of the world’s most architecturally impressive hotels, such as New York’s Waldorf Astoria and Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. There are photos and memorabilia about the development of Canada’s tourist industry, thanks to the Canadian Pacific railway hotels (“If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists”), and the development of the same in the United States, courtesy of Highway 66 and motor hotels. Did you know the InterContinental luxury hotel chain was founded by Pan Am? I didn’t.
The exhibition also looks at hotels as agents of change concerning race, class, and gender. The Algonquin Hotel in New York, host to the 1920s writers group known as the Algonquin Round Table, was one of the first hotels to accept solo female guests. Duke Ellington was known to prefer touring overseas because hotels outside of the United States weren’t segregated.
And, finally, hotels are explored as centres of culture: the aforementioned Algonquin Hotel in New York, gathering place of New York’s literati, the Chateau Marmont, home to film stars during Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Hotel Imperial Vienna, focal point of Vienna’s coffeehouse culture.
Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life will appeal to anyone interested in travel, and is on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery until September 15.
Two Days in Seattle
Now that I’ve told you how we got to Seattle, and how we got back from Seattle, you might be wondering what there is to do and see while in Seattle. The city, I was pleased to discover, is the perfect size for a weekend visit. It’s large enough that there’s something for everyone, but small enough that you don’t feel overwhelmed by all the choices.
Let’s start off with the architecture. Upon arrival, you can’t help but notice the Space Needle, a prominent landmark of Seattle’s skyline that was built for the 1962 World’s Fair. It’s impressive when you stand beneath it, but … well … not so impressive I wanted to pay money to go up it.
Never mind. At the base of the Space Needle is a building that did impress me enough to want to pay the admission fee. That would be the EMP Museum, designed by Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry. The building’s deconstructivist style is just so fun to look at, and so shiny and colourful and fluid that you can’t resist reaching out your hand to touch the building as you walk by.
Inside the museum is even more fun, with exhibits more entertaining than I thought possible. Want to learn everything there is to know about Nirvana? It’s here. Jimi Hendrix? Him too.
The museum also has also some really cool artifacts from the world of fantasy and science fiction TV and film. As in: the Cowardly Lion’s costume, Susan Pevensie’s bow and quiver of arrows, Yoda’s staff, Darth Vader’s light sabre, Data’s uniform … they’re all here. Geekdom heaven, wouldn’t you say?
Seattle scored a second “starchitect”-designed building with the Seattle Central Library, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Don’t just walk around its exterior, though. Have a quick look inside too, taking the time to go all the way up to the top floor for a remarkable view over the atrium.
Once you’ve seen Seattle’s architectural highlights, I recommend checking out one of the most unique art installations I’ve seen anywhere: the Chihuly Garden and Glass. (It alone is worth a visit to Seattle.) The museum opened a year ago, so it’s rather new, and it’s rather extraordinary. Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor who creates exquisite works of blown glass. Photos don’t do his work justice, but, forgive me, I’ll post one anyways.
A Seattle institution you shouldn’t miss is Pike Place Market, located near the downtown waterfront. In operation since 1907, it’s one of the oldest farmer’s market in the United States. Fresh local produce, seafood, and flowers are at street level, while the lower levels are filled with shops of all sorts, including bakeries, restaurants, clothing, and local crafts. Be sure to see the fishmongers in action as they throw the fish to each other before wrapping them up for the customer. Oh, and there’s a coffee shop in the market you may have heard of: Starbucks. 
Not just any Starbucks, though ― it’s the first ever one, which opened for business in 1971.
We stayed in Belltown, which turned out to be a great neighbourhood full of funky coffee shops, trendy restaurants, and lively bars. It is also conveniently located halfway between the downtown waterfront and Seattle Center (where the Space Needle, the EMP, and the Chihuly Garden and Glass are located).
One thing we didn’t have time for: a ferry ride across Elliott Bay. And there are dozens of other Seattle neighbourhoods I’m told are worth checking out. In other words? I plan to return for another weekend visit soon, because there’s lots more of Seattle to see.
Through My Lens: La Sagrada Família
For the Third Sunday of Lent, we’re moving on to Barcelona.
Most European cathedrals were built centuries ago. The cornerstone of this one, Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, was laid a mere 131 years ago in 1882. Except for a stoppage during the Spanish Civil War, construction has continued ever since. The basilica is the final work of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, the face of Modernisme, who spent the last decades of his life working on the structure.
When finished (estimated to be in about 15 years), La Sagrada Família will have 18 spires and will be the tallest cathedral in the world. There will be three facades, two of which have already been completed: the Nativity façade and the Passion façade. The Passion façade, which faces west, was sculpted by Josep Maria Subirachs and is particularly moving.
I visited La Sagrada Família with a friend in October 2001. After we left what is essentially the largest construction site either of us had ever seen, we took the metro back to our hotel. Sitting across from us was one of the cathedral’s stone workers, covered in white dust, heading home after his work day. I marvelled at the thought of spending your entire career working on one project. And I felt honoured to be riding the metro with an old-school master craftsman.
There and Back Again 