Thursday, October 07, 2010

Small is beautiful



I saw this London home in today's NY Times Homes Section. The piece, A London Home Makes the Best of an Odd-shaped Plot describes architect Graham Bizley's 6 year odyssey in designing and building this charming, very "Our Lady of Vilnius" home. The interior as well as the exterior evoke that OLV feel in me. Kudos to Mr. Bizley. Posthumous kudos to our architect as well, theatre designer Harrison G. Wiseman.* Both of them belong in the Our Lady of Vilnius Basement Hall of Fame. Seat them with Dorothy Day and Avery Dulles and give them each a Svyturys!
*
HARRISON G. WISEMAN (1878-1945)

Harrison G. Wiseman was born in Springfield, Ohio, and established a New York City architectural practice which thrived on the design of theater buildings, including the John Golden Theater and the Yiddish Art Theater (12th Avenue and Second Street), as well as the Oriental, Alpine, Cameo, and Commodore Theaters, as a commission for the Loew's theater chain.

Harrison G. Wiseman obituary/ New York Times, June 14, 1945.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've always loved the theatre at 12th Street and Second Avenue - even though it's gone through some sort of cancerous mutation to be divided up into multiple screening rooms for films. I can see a relationship between the theatre and Our Lady of Vilnius' eccentric little towers with their upturned corner peaks.