Tuesday, October 16, 2012

BACKSTREETS OF OLD LONDON

Old London bore little resemblance to the bland London of the present. Old London was a vibrant, creative, moody city with endless visual delights. It was also dank and mildewed, prone to crime and fire. That's okay...it was still more interesting than any modern city.


With buildings so close together fire was an ever present danger.  The solution of the time was periodic wide boulevards which would act as a kind of fire break. Maybe that was a mistake. Boulevards are frequently awkward and unaesthetic wind traps. You have to have some but too many can deface the city they're trying to protect.

Maybe the city would have done better to regulate the kind of oil lamps that were used. Maybe banning candles and certain types of stoves and heaters might have been more helpful. Or maybe do the boulevard thing, but provide frequent walking bridges or tunnels.


Old London made good use of wrought iron. Iron and bricks (above) make a nice match, especially when the bricks and woodwork were painted black.



Old London was also full of balconies. That needs to be explained since London is a North European city and most Northern cities didn't feel the need for them. Maybe the balconies were a symbol for rooms to rent.


I love balconies, especially wooden ones (above) with wooden floors. Oh, to go back in a time machine and be a kid running around the corridors!


Some of the mid-size streets (above) were incredibly beautiful. If London had retained more of the best ones it could have attracted the kind of tourist dollars that Paris gets now.


And while I'm on the subject of Paris...what if Paris had followed the lead of the English and replaced their old town with a modern monstrosity (above) like the kind that Tati parodied in Playtime? Would anyone, even the Parisians, have had a desire to live there? Fortunately Paris kept the 19th Century part of the city and isolated the newer buildings in a modernist ghetto on the Right Bank.



You could wish they'd retained more of the Pre-Nineteenth Century architecture (above), but lets be grateful that they saved what they did.

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Thanks to Kellie Strom for the great link!



6 comments:

kellie said...

Leadenhall Market in the photo above is still in use, filled with fancy shops and now surrounded by the glass towers of the financial district.

A market that didn't survive was the Neo-Gothic Columbia Road Market, second photo here:

http://sketchesbyboz.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/dust-heaps/

It was knocked down in 1961 and the site used for dull and unfriendly looking social housing. A lot of Georgian and Victorian London was lost in WW2 bombing. It's a tragedy that some planners saw the losses as an opportunity to knock even more down.

David Martingale said...

These are amazing, especially the top one. Thanks for sharing!

Invisibules said...

a shame you spoiled the Playtime puzzle - I recognized it instantly. Now that is an interesting film about dystopian style!

Alex Printz said...

wow, those photos are amazing! And here I was thinking that Jacob Riis's stuff was amazing...


Funny you brought Play Time into the picture... just watched that last week. Wonderful movie; houses should be like this one from in Mon Oncle.

(http://www.fuzzums.nl/~joost/bookmarks/Movies/stills/Mon%20oncle.jpg)

g.b said...

Ahhh Playtime... the film that ruined Jacques Tati, but his use of persepctive was impressive. I have read an article in which you can see technicians pulling the buildings on rails, crazy stuff

kellie said...

Crying out for the Theory Corner photo story treatment: The Staircases of Old London.