Uglification still in progress

Goethe called architecture “frozen music.” Extending the metaphor, Rhode Island over the centuries has composed a fairly impressive unfinished symphony. From the stone-enders in rural areas to Colonial box houses in towns and cities, white clapboard churches to rambling stone mills, the state is blessed with buildings that find a balance between aesthetic and function. As elsewhere, long years of poverty may have helped the landscape, requiring residents to be creative about preservation when development dollars were lacking. So the East Side of Providence, the villages of Wickford and Kingston, the granite-quarried streets of Westerly, the modest shingle shacks along the coast and the tidy skyline of the state’s capital city are among the cluster of unparalleled architectural scenes that Rhode Islanders enjoy daily. As Ted Sanderson, executive director of the R.I. Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, said to me earlier this spring: “In some states, they put a velvet rope around a building and invite people to walk around it on special occasions. Here in Rhode Island, people live, work, shop and worship in historic places every day.”

Even allowing for the state’s love of kitsch – which explains the fondness for the Quonset hut, another local invention – Rhode Island has survived the Houstonification of modern life through its passion for preservation and by building with an eye on its surroundings. Until recently, that is, when a combination of suburban sprawl and money-grab development has produced some stunningly bad architecture. New eyesores seemingly pop up like poisonous mushrooms nowadays.

I’ve mentioned some of them before in my annual Broken Anchors Awards, a column devoted to dubious achievements in Rhode Island (Jan. 10, 2008):

THE UGLIFICATION IN PROGRESS AWARD
To developers and politicians in our capital city, where the river walk has jumped the shark from a place of cobblestone and cozy bridges to a showcase for boxy buildings on steroids. Where once there were views, now huge rectangles blot out the State House and surrounding church steeples, casting cold shadows and creating wind tunnels in winter. From the Ice Cube (GTECH World Headquarters), with its neon blue scar illuminating the night sky to Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, the twin Waterplace Towers painted in the color of bad squash, Providence is transforming into North Dallas before our eyes.

Another building that causes a wince is the former Kaiser Aluminum tower that has been converted into penthouses for the Carnegie Abbey Club in Portsmouth. Any joy experienced while driving over the elegant Mount Hope Bridge, taking in the expanse of blue-water, white-sail Narragansett Bay and emerald-green Aquidneck Island below, is quickly muted by noticing the colossal jutting tower, so out of place in its delicate surroundings. I call it the Blight on the Bay, or Old Blightie, when I’m in a Ye Olde Rhode Islander mood. Something that ugly is usually found among the pelicans and palm trees on the Florida coast.

What is the ugliest building in Rhode Island?