Pawtucket Soccer Stadium, Tidewater Landing Lacks Inspired Design: Architectural Critic Will Morgan
William Morgan, GoLocalProv Architectural Critic
Pawtucket Soccer Stadium, Tidewater Landing Lacks Inspired Design: Architectural Critic Will Morgan
Who would not welcome a $400 million development that will make over the once proud, now tired city of Pawtucket?
A hard-luck town with the nickname of The Bucket would hardly seem to place to draw huge new investment.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTYet, what was once a wealthy and powerful city has history, location, and an unheralded core of notable buildings.
Tidewater Landing, a project of the New York developer Fortuitous Properties plans extensive housing, retail space, offices, and a hotel based around a minor-league soccer stadium.
To judge from the official renderings, the Blackstone Riverfront will come alive with promenades, a pedestrian bridge connecting both shores, and a large cluster of shopping areas and apartments.
An additional boost to Pawtucket will be the opening of a train stop.
(Even better news would be that the magnificent early 20th-century railroad station would be restored as a suitably grand entrance to the revived city.)
Fortuitous, according to its website, "brings decades of experience in real estate, public and private company operations, fund formation/management, capital raise, deployment, and tax incentives."
Yet one looks in vain for any mention of architecture.
Amidst the verbiage about "investment opportunities" and "optimizing returns" one hopes for some demonstration about how the new structures will visually enhance and enrich Pawtucket aesthetically.
While knowledge of "tax-advantaged investments" is necessary, even desirable, the new apartments and commercial space are the same old developers-without-designers packaging that offers nothing other than real estate.
Beyond the interstate highway that never should have been inserted into downtown and today's tawdry cityscape, Pawtucket is an architectural treasure house.
That legacy should be reflected in Tidewater Landing.
And there are lots of handsome buildings from all eras, not least of all the 20th Century,
While he did not build here, it is worth noting that Frank Lloyd Wright, America's greatest architect, lived in Pawtucket as a child.
Pawtucket was the birthplace of Raymond Hood, one of our most notable skyscraper designers, who did the Chicago Tribune tower and much of Rockefeller Center.
Chicago Tribune Tower, Hood & Howells, 1922-25, the result of a worldwide competition
As a young architect, Hood worked in his hometown on the distinguished Sayles Memorial Library with Ralph Adams Cram, best known for his Gothic revival work at West Point and Princeton.
Hood became a master of Art Deco, a style well reflected in Pawtucket City Hall, Shea High School, and the Modern Diner.
The firm of Raymond Loewy, "the father of streamlining" and arguably this country's most successful industrial designer, created the Apex building. Loewy fashioned Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives, the Greyhound bus, and various automobiles, including the Studebaker Hawk and the Avanti.
The Apex department store is not everyone's favorite monument, but there's no denying that this unusual fifty-year-old ziggurat is Pawtucket's most recognizable landmark.
Apex, itself the symbol of another renewal plan, needs to be imaginatively reused and not banished by the Fortuitous' plan.
Pawtucket's role in the creation of the United States as an economic powerhouse should be acknowledged and built upon.
We need some of that revolutionary spirit injected into the Tidewater Landing scheme.
Instead, for $400, million we are offered ho-hum, lackluster buildings.
"I intend on Tidewater Landing being a place where people want to move to live," Fortuitous' Brett Johnson declares.
But what in the appearance of the projected buildings would make you think this was a special place to live? What features about them would make people actually want to move to Pawtucket?
Why in a state with two architecture schools and a literate populace do we continually propose major building schemes that do not include exciting or environmentally significant design?
Some argue that we cannot afford the additional fees for creativity, when, in fact, smart architects could save clients money through thoughtful and innovative solutions.
Rethinking Tidewater Landing as aspirational, exceptional, and innovative would mean a greater chance for lasting success.
It is not too late to integrate unique aspects into the project's appearance, performance, and function.
Mainlining the quality of architectural designers who gave us past great works of architecture, along with the revolutionary spirit that formed the Blackstone River in the first place, let's make Tidewater Landing something that would make the world stand up and take notice of Pawtucket.
