We took it down because it leaked and was ugly and we wanted to restore the common facade that the houses share".
177 and 179 Columbia Heights were combined, de-stooped and given a new common facade of sgraffito, colored layers of plaster scored to create a design of urns and floral details.
Lester Migdal, who has spearheaded the campaign and has lived in his house since 1955, said: "We have an old common facade designed in 1883 and 1887 to create a single row of lintels and fenestration, making a single facade that is visible from Park Avenue.
The ubiquity of chain stores, common facades, the leveling work of earth-movers, the apparent ease of moving both people and commodities around the world, all contribute to a sense of here being everywhere, or nowhere in particular.
"The application now before you would, if granted, destroy a carefully preserved and intentionally designed century-old common rear facade of four adjacent town houses, intrude significantly into shared midblock open space, destroy or threaten vegetation that contributes materially to this portion of the district's distinct character and be clearly visible from a public sidewalk," he said.
That fund, along with the support of other groups like Maine People's Alliance and Mainers for Accountable Leadership, has now raised more than Collin's current cash on hand, piercing the facade, common among pundits, that her re-election was certain.
The resulting skyscrapers reflected these debates: the Railway Exchange, the Peoples Gas and the Illinois Continental and Commercial Bank Buildings were each substantial, quarter of block wide palazzo cubes of common height, their facades divided into a classical tripartite design, and sporting classical columns and other features.
In a city where the common rule for brownstone facade repair is to trowel on a coat of tinted stucco, dead and flat, this facade has the rich, luminous quality of real stone.
This design may be a solution for reducing thermal overheating, which is common in completely transparent facades in Mediterranean climates.
The buyers of this 128,300-square-foot four-story 1983 office building plan to renovate its facade, lobby and common areas and add food service.
"It's another scoop-out job," says Clem Cecil of Save Britain's Heritage, referring to the common strategy of retaining the facade of an existing building and mining out everything behind.
