After last week’s remarkable structures, it’s time to remind ourselves that modern theorists ruined everything. Everything.

Centre Plaza.

“Why not Center Plaza?” “The French spelling is classier.” Why not Plaza Center? “That’s phase two."

Another example of architects hating everything on two legs with eyes:

At least it’s still a going concern, but they really didn’t care whether you knew they’d bricked up a window, did they?

Some context:

The building on the right shows how you can do stripped-down without sacrificing aesthetics.

Here’s the entrance.

If you had to guess what it was built to hold, what would you say? Note the luminex blocks - must have been quite a basement. But no, it wasn’t a bank. That’s the tell-tale style and featurelessness of a telephone company building. Finished n 1930.

OMUB; don’t know what else it could have been.

Columns = money.

I think I would fall to my knees if I came across this by chance: it’s perfect, and it’s untouched!

Actually, no. They touched the hell out of it.

The severity of the interior, designed in the late 30s, makes you wonder whether the modernists of the era regarded design as some form of penance. All shall pay.

Because no American city is just one thing:

There’s a lot of this around the country - buildings whose existence can only be inferred from their marks on an old neighbor. It didn’t go all the way back, and it looks as if there was a courtyard onto which the windows looked.

Two brothers:

You wonder whether phase two had more windows because tenants wanted them, or fewer windows because it got too drafty.

I see two brands, not counting STORAGE WAREHOUSE. Do you?

Am I nuts, or do I see 7-Up as well as Quaker?

A nice solid old marquee usually means an elaborate or well-designed facade.

Usually.

Finally, something that just caught my eye.

So many lives and years behind the paint and the brick. It's good that it survived, but it's like a mummy.