The sell out

           :Doomed for Demolition

Over the past year I have noticed the large number of buildings going up over not just the Pike-Pine corridor/12th Avenue East but also on Capitol Hill.  This has resulted in the demolition of interesting and aesthetically charming buildings (despite renovations) such as the David Weatherford Antiques building and beautiful rose-laden garden on East John Street.

Because Americans are unable to distinguish between architectural historical styles (other than "you, older building and "modern style), this may not come as much of a loss to some people.

But as I grew up on Capitol Hill, in the historic Harvard-Belmont district, the razing of so many century-old homes and the building of some rather or quite awful condominiums and mixed-use buildings has resulted in this neighborhood's losing much of its charm.

In a city given over so much to being hip, "progressive," dynamic, this, some would believe, is the price that has to be paid.  But to deliver the city over so completely to developers is a sell-out.  Why Paul Allen and Vulcan, or Amazon and all the others need to be subsidized is beyond my understanding, especially when they and their attendant enterprises eat up so much of the city's actual living, breathing space while contributing to the loss of much of this city's architectural history.

If there was any neighborhood in this city who architecture was worth trying to preserve, it was and still is Capitol Hill.  But you might as well be talking to a deaf person, as this city and its citizenry's concerns are clearly elsewhere.

Just not awesome or cutting-edge enough.  Forget diversity in this case.  

We need more glass, steel, aluminum, and concrete structures to enhance our neighborhoods and way of life.

No, not a peep from either The Seattle Times or The Stranger's woefully ignorant art critic* over the destruction of David Weatherford Antiques.

 
* one who in a review of a special exhibition of Japanese art deco on view in 2014 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum cannot (1) explain how a presumably important sculpture was was designed to whip up either nationalist Japanese sentiment or instigate/exacerbate anti-Chinese ones (the one does not necessarily presuppose the other--I don't think the Japanese were particularly anti-Chinese at this point in their history) or, worse yet, (2) tell the difference between a dragon and a lion.

I won't get into here how I don't think she may have been the best person to review the current Frye Art Museum's exhibit of Mark Tobey/Isamu Noguchi/Qi Baishi.