Tag Archives: Francis Morrone

arts and culture

Peripatetic Weekend: Southern Wild, Xanadu, Waterfront Walk, New York Poets

MOVIE TO SEE

Beasts of the Southern Wild is playing at BAM starting Friday, July 13th. I saw the film last weekend and loved it. It is worth the price of admission just to see the performance by 8-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis. For all of its magical realism and visual “tropes” it manages to convey the gritty survivalistic life of the impoverished inhabitants of the Bathtub outside of New Orleans nd the horror of Katrina. This visually and viscerally powerful film will make you understand Katrina in a new way.

MUSICAL THEATER AL FRESCO

Friday, July 13 at 8PM: Piper Theatre presents Xanadu, a theatrical reimagining of the Olivia Newton John movie with a young, enthusiastic cast, flying beachballs, and roller skates. 8PM in Washington Park in Park Slope.

WATERFRONT WALK

Sunday, July 15 at 2PM: Francis Morrone, an architectural historian who has written for The New York Sun, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal begins a three-part Walking the Waterfront series (sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society).  It starts at the base of Manhattan, where the initial phase of the new East River Waterfront Esplanade opened in July 2011, and continues through undeveloped sections of the South Street Seaport. The other two tours examine development along the Hudson (Aug 18 at 2pm) and the Brooklyn shorefront (Aug 25 at 6pm).

POETRY AND MUSIC

Sunday, July 15 at 6PM: The Return of Urban Michef with poets Bill Evans, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Joanna Sit, Michele Madigan Somerville and Mike Sweeney will read with percussionists Peter Catapano and Tony Cenicola. Cornelia Street Cafe

 

 

Civics and Urban Life

Fourth Avenue’s Church of the Redeemer to be Torn Down

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From Francis Morrone, architectural writer and historian, I have just learned that the Church of the Redeemer, built in 1866, on Fourth Avenue and Pacific Street in Brooklyn is going to be torn down.

Morrone says that it is one of his favorite churches designed by Patrick Keely, who designed hundreds of churches. Obviously, it is not a designated landmark. “If it’s not torn down, it will probably fall down on its own,” he writes on Facebook.

“I like the play of volumes, the intimate scale, the good detailing, the side garden. I love imagining the church in 1866, when it was slightly more bucolic in these parts, and today, when the church shares its sidewalk with the subway entrance,” he adds. “And I love the mosaic sign for this church down in the subway station. It looks to me like Keely had a somewhat larger budget than he usually did with his Catholic churches. I’d love to see it with its stone cleaned.”

Francis Morrone is an architectural historian and author of Architectural Guidebook of Brooklyn. Morrone’s essays on architecture have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, American Arts Quarterly, the New Criterion and the New York Times. In April 2011 he was named by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the 13 best tour guides in the world.

He thinks a high rise condo is going to be built in its stead.