In these suburban communities designed for automobile use, folks without their own wheels and a ton of metal to protect them have rough go of it just to get across those necessary 7 lanes. With such a large immigrant community and access to public transit, everyone does NOT have their own car, but they still have to get across Buford—so they dash. You can imagine the problems here, this PBS special tells you all I want you to hear:

Anyway, in the interim between arriving on Marta and meeting at the Civic Center, I needed (yes needed) to get to the Mozart Bakery for a snack and to get some work done (we have no leftover in the house, my lunch had been cheese and crackers, the least i could do is find some Asian pastries, heavy on the almonds, for dinner). But I had to cross Buford Highway. I was resigned to walking past the Bakery to the crosswalk a block further down retracing my steps but I was in a hurry to sit down and work and i decided that IF an opening in traffic allowed here at the top of the hill where i thought i could see in both directions, I WOULD do the Buford Highway Dash myself. An opening appeared, one light was red, and I dashed. Luckily found a convenient crosswalk on the way back to the Civic Center, but most stretches of Burford are not so lucky.

this is the Table of Contents page taken from the “Georgia Governors’ Gravesites Field Guide”

Sadder maybe is what demolition means for the evolution of an area. Lunch the other day found us on Crescent Ave NE, which used to look like the screenshot below. Front Page News is still holding it’s own but that adorable green house was already half gone, making room for something new that will maximize land-use profitability on the corner. However, with land being cleared for another new construction one block back, you have to wonder what this spells out for the rest of that enclave of low-story and mostly residential structures tucked so poetically among the highrises. Diversity is disappearing, you can bet whatever goes up next will not be bright green and cloaked come spring in purple wisteria. Diversity is beautiful.

Knowing him through other people always made me want to know him better and tomorrow I will join others at a memorial reception at the Cherokee Garden Library, a very special place to him, and hope to get to know him a little better, sadly post mortem. Jim died last weekend after a short bout with with lung cancer, and I don’t think anyone was ready to lose him at the young age of 71.
obituary

taken 12/11 in New Orleans with Jim Cothran in mind

Additionally this week Lee Adler has passed. Mr. Adler is among the most famous preservationists in the South and in the US. I have no personal association with Mr. Adler outside of my textbooks, but he was an incredible ambassador for preservation, credited with saving the Victorian District in Savannah through an innovative new approach: “Save historic buildings by buying them, then market and resell them with covenants in place that require their restoration.” He put this into action through the Historic Savannah Foundation and other organizations, including the Georgia Trust caught on, this is the premise of our Revolving Fund today. Although he wasn’t the first to put this idea into action, he certainly spread the word and “changed the way people approached historic preservation” (Savannah Now).

Who is making up our list of great preservationists today? Who will we this sad to lose next? Hopefully, we can say there is a revolving docket of preservationists worthy of such obituaries. The loss is still personal, but their impressions have been made, their torch handed over, their lives well-loved and well-lived.

This was brought to my attention this morning by a story on npr which i subsequently looked up and learned about a very interesting documentary featuring Istanbul called Ecumenopolis (I’ll save that discussion for another day).

Meanwhile, I am in the middle of reading a book for class titled Preserving the World’s Great Cities in which Anthony Tung says of Istanbul that already “the skyline that was once made up of domes and minarets of mosques is now dominated by looming and massive modern hotels.”

Similar to the reconfiguring of cities that went on in Paris in the mid-1800s, and the general flattening of blocks and blocks of existing buildings for the sake of a few 1960s high rises and a multitude of parking spaces, Istanbul is reconfiguring herself to fit the deep pockets of her middle and upperclass guides. Maximization of commercial space/income-producing properties is a priority. Developers are seizing greenspace and the PM is scheming to direct traffic into the last of the metropolis’ forests while locals are suspicious he plans to convert an architectural gem of a public train station into a shopping mall. Meanwhile new developments and gated communities spring up for the wealthy and the poor are crammed into high rise projects to maximize land value and revenue.

One particularly creative twist on the part of developers involves a city park mentioned in the npr story. There has been a park here since the 1940s when an Ottoman army barracks was abandoned and demolished. After years of coveting this prime real estate, someone finally got the brilliant idea to use Turkey’s law of preserving historic buildings to develop it and so, says the director of the Ecumenopolis film, “in order to protect this already-demolished building, they’re rebuilding it… They’re saying their preserving” something that is already gone, making a reconstruction which will, actually, serve as a shopping mall. Oy vey.

What will happen when these capitalist hogs wake up though and find there are too many malls in the historic shells of once-useful buildings, too many to meet the small demand of the few who can eek their way into a city by car or bus on the overpacked roads where not a green thing is in sight. what then?

inside Haydarpasa Station: I can see why developers want it but how about retaining your beautiful historic resources as they were built to be used?

In the early 1960s, under the banner of “Urban Renewal,” The “crime-ridden neighborhood” was torn down to make way for the Atlanta Civic Center which was built in 1967, and other “improvements” to the city of Atlanta. All that’s left of those chatty front porches, churches, corner stores and juke joints is a plaque at Ralph McGill and Piedmont, and a song that’ll get you shaking your hips.

The exact boundaries of the old Buttermilk Bottom today are unclear, the Civic Center now stands on part of the larger area which was the western end of the Old 4th Ward, in the floodplain between Ralph McGill and Peachtree. The photo above shows Mayor Hartsfield scoping out the slum near Piedmont in 1959.

With the Peachtree Center station I really had to wonder ‘why so deep?’ after all, the next station just a few blocks away is perched ABOVE the interstate! I was unable to find a cutaway of the Marta station depths like i wanted but I DID find this awesome Marta Guide for trepidatious Marta riders and experienced Marta commuters alike. It includes articles on how to navigate individual stations, what restaurants or attractions are nearby and general tips on courtesy and ease of use. Who knew! Now I wish i had an iPhone to keep this information handy–now, should I exit the train to the left or right to get to Eastbound…

What wikipedia will NOT tell you (anymore) about this building is that in the odd exposed-structure pyramidal top, monkeys dwell. It’s true, says J, a native of the Atlanta metro area who ought to know. Originally the pyramidal top was intended to be covered in glass, but, somehow, the weight of the glass was not taken into account in the construction and had to be left off. What was left was a pyramidal jungle gym perfect for monkeys and you can even hear them calling on late nights downtown. Listen for them next time you’re headed to the Fox.

So, foreclosure, what will this mean for the monkeys?

on THURSDAY, K, M and I went out to the Houseworth-Moseley House to give our newest addition to the Revolving Fund the once-over, consider a listing price and assess what needed to be done on a future workday to help stabilize it (a previous year’s listing). The Houseworth-Moseley house is perfect for a farming couple, and if i had me a farmer I’d want to be there in a hearbeat, till up the front yard for some organic crops, keep chickens where the trailer currently is, store moonshine, i mean water, in the makeshift springhouse… Being only me and not a farmer (as I established a few years ago), I will sadly have to pass that dream to someone else.

on FRIDAY, I stowed my bike in the Taurus and headed back for a midday ride on the Arabia Mtn trail. This time I went north from the parking lot for my first visit to Lithonia and decided I really wouldn’t mind living there in town. Plenty of cute old houses in need of a little TLC abutting the 3 or so blocks of the downtown district. Quaint, not much to do but bike to Arabia and Panola mountains. Just like living at Houseworth-Moseley, as K and I discussed, the commute would be a little much, unless we could work out some sort of work from home OR get me a new job at Arabia:

SUNDAY, J, G and I went again to Klondike Rd. to tour the cemeteries and Lyons Farm that J studied in last semester’s Landscapes class. The rain held off until we got to Lyons Farm and continued intermittently light and hard as we hiked up to the Flat Rock African American/Slave Cemetery, along the boardwalk spur of the Arabia Mtn trail, and finally Chupp Cemetery closer to town. The farm is a dream come true and if it would cost less I would happily live there, on the Heritage Area property, in exchange for aiding the restoration of the farmhouse, tilling the land of Wonderland Gardens, and acting, generally, as a ranger for the trails. Sound like a plan? Who do I need to contact to get this going??

G and J at Lyons’ farm, farmhouse in background

And caves are what I found: a renovated cinderblock (i mean, CMU) former crackhouse duplex; a 2nd level duplex with a ceiling that interrupted the door lintels, windows you have to bend over to look out of, and a kitchen floor that sagged in the middle; and a beautifully renovated efficiency cottage that won my heart but which, sadly, i had to admit my “stuff” had already outgrown.

More interestingly, I forced myself out on a rainy Sunday morning to discover some neat new areas of Atlanta. The affordable hovels above were all in my preferred swath of the atl—Edgewood/Kirkwood, East Atlanta on Moreland, and East Lake at Ridgecrest respectively—but when I broadened my horizons to South Atlanta the possibilities were much more to my liking. East Point, Oakland City and Capitol View neighborhoods all have much to offer, cute little bungalows, just the right size for 1 or 2 people, cheap rent (a whole house for $650, now you’re talking), close to the north-south Marta line (and the airport). In fact, it could be the perfect place to buy, but I will not be at that point until the rest of the up and coming in Atlanta have caught on as well. Sad but true. Also sad is that even I, with all my bravado of street-smart skillz, feel a little sketched at the idea of living in the Capitol View neighborhood as a single solitary lady. Additionally my friends are not too close and it is surprising how indirect the route is from Moreland Ave to Metropolitan Pkwy and Lee St—

So I’m sitting back on my haunches and waiting for the a better option to turn up, something between east and west, between dangerous and safe, between cave and 3-bedroom home. Maybe it was the impromptu pozole that Viv and I concocted last night, but [I decided] I’d rather not go through the moving process until I find a hermitage I can tolerate and even love for a good long while.

GALLERY:
 
This backyard efficiency cottage with it’s screen porch and European kitchenette was ideal for an adventure, but is a brief adventure worth the move-out/move-in process? and there was no place for Pekoe in a yard with collie dogs ): The little Capitol View cottage though (top) might be my dream, if i could make some friends on that side of town.