Depressed Phantom

David's just depressed the hell out of me.

Contrary to popular belief, I DON'T have a big problem with giant modern glass buildings - just modern buildings in sensitive settings. We've been worried for some time about what the hell will become of Trident Hall - not an utterly glorious building in its own right, I'll admit, but at least low-rise.

We've known it's been hoovered up by the Greenwich Inc. Empire for some time (which, btw is still looking for places to swallow - thanks for the link, Karen) but we didn't really know what form the hotel we've known they want to build would look like.

Well - here it is, courtesy of David.

Apparently, according to the article, the architect has actually worried about what impact her design will have. Not worried all that much, I would hazard. This looks completely out of place in such a historic site, to me.

But am I just being a jumpy Phantom this week? IS it that bad? I guess it could have been worse. What do you think about this?

Royal Hill Lovelies (1)

Old China has flagged up something I've wondered about myself for some time - some really rather curious windows in one of the houses along Royal Hill.

The ground floor of Number 80, Royal Hill, next door but one to Royal Teas, looks pretty normal, really. It has a pair of tiny square-shaped bay windows, which may or may not be original - it's such an odd little house I'll believe they are - but from there on up it starts to look incongruous.

A pair of fanciful windows, set into a large amount of baby-pink painted frontage. It's something that really needs to be seen in the context of the street to 'get' how quaintly peculiar this looks, but the pic gives you something to look out for. It's the windows of a palace on a terribly sweet little terraced cottage.

The windows look splendidly Regency - they wouldn't look out of place in the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. But these are in the middle of a side street in Greenwich. It's almost as though the builder (who may or may not have been the road's overall developer Robert Royal - the street's named for him, rather than for any connection with the Crown; I guess residents are thanking their lucky stars he wasn't called Boggs...) had a set of fancy windows left over from another job, thought "they'll do," despite the fact that they didn't really go with the rest of the street's style and popped 'em in anyway. "Bish-bosh. Tidy job..."

But that's what makes a Royal Hill Lovely. It's not a single style of regimented houses - though of course there are one or two 'rows' of matching buildings - but a lovely mish-mash of flavours, each of which has its own charm and adds to the whole. There's not another house in Greenwich that looks like Number 80 - and it's all the cuter for it.

According to Darryl Spurgeon - his Discover Greenwich and Charlton is out of print, but turns up on a relatively frequent basis and is a fine (if mildly confusingly formatted) overview of Greenwich history - the terrace was built in 1831 as part of the Hyde Vale Estate, but I know nothing more than that. If anyone's a client of the Osteopath who's currently occupying Number 80, I'd love to know some more about it.

More lovely houses to come...

An Aztec Gem

Vanbrugh Hill

Here's a place you either love or hate. I'm not talking about what goes on inside, but the building itself. Where it stands now, it looks a bit incongruous as its friend, the monster that was Greenwich District Hospital, has now gone and it sits between Victorian villas and a giant hole, but it was once, not so very long ago, part of a 1970s vision.

Admittedly it wasn't a very good vision. I only know one person that mourns the architecture of that dead hospital, with its streaked grey concrete walls, forbidding brutalist walls and yellow-stained chimney. It certainly isn't me. For me that hospital, however handy practically, had absolutely nothing going for it aesthetically.

But this little building...

This building I like. Yes, it's seen better days - I'm sure when its architect drew it's "artist's impression" for the first time, it had Ancient Babylonian window boxes with cascading flowers from every level, rather than a couple of overgrown pot plants and some dead ivy, and the entrance hall is decidedly shabby. The nasty carpet tiles inside and solid concrete stairs drag it down, but just look at that exterior.

I seriously doubt the same architect who created the monstrosity next door designed this, though curiously, it's been nigh-on impossible for me to find anything out about either of the two buildings. It's as though both places have been or are to be expunged from the popular memory - as though that 30-odd years never happened. I've found NO records so far at all.

I love this building because there is something of the Aztec about it. That great stepped pyramid shape, the way it delves below street level - hell - even that service-room on top looks like some kind of ancient altar.

I'm sad that this building, I am told, is for the chop. This is one modern building I'd like to keep. Instead of pulling it down, I'd like to celebrate it. Redecorate inside; reinstate those Babylonian window boxes. Spend the cash saved on pulling it down and rebuilding on extra health services or frivolous touches. How about a reclining figure of Chris Roberts at the temple entrance, like those Mexican figures...

There are few modern buildings around Greenwich that have real architectural merit. Certainly, for me, the hospital didn't, and I'd be only too pleased to see the nasty complex in West Greenwich that houses Somerfield levelled. But I'm not one for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This one, this one, I believe, has earned its place...