I always have to take a deep breath before opening a submission from that Manhatteswegian BSWAM. Without fail his USA crap puts our good stuff to shame. I kind of get the feeling that he enjoys rubbing our noses in the outre attempts at tavern building in the say 1790s. Here’s some Doylestown PA, which, even in its worst moments…looks pretty nice. I even like the 1870s and 1970s juxta as seen below.
BSWAM sez…
It’s Halloween in Doylestown, PA! First settled in the early 1700s and a wealthy agricultural and academic center just north of Philadelphia.
The Historic district encompasses pretty much the entire central city, over 1,000 buildings in all, most dating from the 1790s through the early 20th century.
In the early 20th century the eccentric ceramics designer Henry Mercer erected an 11-story cement castle to house his collection of early American farm tools, industrial implements and carriages.
He then nailed the collection to the interior courtyard walls.
Despite the immense historic district, Doylestown residents have not been completely prevented from making tasteful and unobtrusive minor changes over the years to the facades of their residences. Both buildings here were remodeled in the 1870s (left) and the 1970s (right).
The civic fathers (mothers?) also paid Doylestown the favor of removing its quaint Gothic Revival courthouse for a real humdinger of 1960s Flying Saucer Art Moderne.
Which in turn pales in comparison to the inviting elegance and solid craftsmanship of the Domestic Relations Court annex, here seen blending in effortlessly with its older neighbors.
They take Halloween very seriously in Doylestown. This house has acquired a ghost. Eek!
Not a ghost – just some garbage that blew there.
Goodbye Doylestown. Have a happy Halloween. We’ll see ourselves out.
Thanks BSWAM. Doylestown, looks…pretty good. Too good.
The Worst of Perth 
Alas, I was with others who were not interested in documenting the hideous commercial strip that dominate route 611 immediately to the north, visible to all and sundry on Google maps. However it is true that most of Bucks County is to Philadelphia what Litchfield County, Connecticut, is to New York City – glacially kempt.
For real hilarity, TWOPers should head north of Megabucks County to the Pocanos, home of various “romantic” “hotels” famed for sporting champagne glass-shaped Jacuzzis and nightlife offerings from the likes of Engelbert Humperdink.
http://www.weirdus.com/states/pennsylvania/abandoned/mount_airy_lodge/index.php
Here’s a gander at the old Bucks County Courthouse, removed when Gort landed.
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Superb work as always BSWAM
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In other news I have received word that the Paul Rudolph designed Orange County Center in Goshen has been partially demolished.
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I love it all. Especially the remodelled 1870’s penis.
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Great work BSWAM.
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Isn’t the pop star known as Pink from doylestown ?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doylestown,_Pennsylvania&action=edit§ion=9
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What do you do when nobody laughs at your jokes at Uni? Join the Young Libs and produce a ‘satirical’ site like this – http://www.xyz.net.au/. We all know the ABC couldn’t raise a laugh if they slipped on an organic banana peel, but these guys take unfunny to new depths. Word is they were Tones’ fave court jesters
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On the other hand the Paul Rudolph designed Sarasota ( Florida ) high school is being lovingly and expensively restored …
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Like so much modernist architecture , Rudolph s defies structural logic — not a good look where time and gravity are concerned .
The Sarasota high school was very beautiful and impressive with its render paint windows doors balustrades and internal fittings removed during conservation works .
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BSWAM my compliments on your architectural photography skills . But don t they oversell some of these crappy American places you visit and cause lazy Aussie to swoon unnecessarily ?
May i suggest you cover Bedford New York ( not v far from manhatten but kept deliberately as inaccessible as possible ) for sheer toxic suburban daintiness ?
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What street, so I can street view it.
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South School Avenue , Sarasota . Not to be confused with the old high school building , a quite magnificent example of air age gothic architecture . Like Princeton and Yale .
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I’ve always wanted to be a Yale man.
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When I last checked Bob Stern was still architecture dean there . Why not give him a bell when next in new haven about postgrad study ? Have got a hunch he d love your work .
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I’m quite interested in the wealth and boorishness. If Yale still offers that. MOOC?
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It has always offered w & b . But one needn t leave Perth for that sort of thing .
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It really wouldn’t be the same from Edith Cowan.
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FIFO payouts and garden variety stupidity. Not the same thing at all.
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You probably wouldn’t even get your credentials registered on so called graduation.
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It’s the difference between parking your car in a lounge room, or a swimming pool. Superficially similar, but any semiotician will tell you there’s a world of difference.
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They do a side line in wealth and boredom if that’s your thing.
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Gaudeamus igitur
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Heavens !
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But Bedford is absolutely not a worst – unless you dislike the people there. And even when you do, Scarsdale is infinitely more repulsive. The problem is that there’s no way to capture what makes a place like Scarsdale awful on camera. It’s a kind of icy smugness wrapped up in banalities of mechanical good taste, a Stepford, Connecticut, drenched in soy milk lattes. Even White Plains, a black hole of the worst kind of architectural and social mediocrity, is “inoffensive” at street level and on a block by block basis. You have to experience it as living, breathing John Cheever alcoholic commuter hell to know it for what it is.
Doylestown is less a Worst than a WTF, a place so profoundly peculiar and over-the-top that it somehow exists outside of questions of merit. And I didn’t even show Fonthill Castle, the Moravian Pottery Works, the English Tudor mansion behind the Shop N’ Save or the art museum they stuffed into the jail.
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Am sure you could do Scarsdale justice if you really tried
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That would mean actually going there at some point.
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Parking a swimming pool in a lounge room ?? Well I have seen that done in Singapore but didn’t have a semiotic reaction of any kind …
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Oh by the way the archi school at Yale is designed by Rudolph too …
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