(film scenes source: DVD of "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", Paramount Pictures)
Saturday, March 22, 2014
The Friends of Government Center
In honor of the shutdown of Government Center, I present you a side-by-side comparison of scenes from "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1973) and the same scenes, as close as I could get, in 2014.
Although it's neat to see the similarities after 40 years, it's in the sense that: "I cannot believe they left it like this for so long." I won't miss the old brick pimple, the tiny escalators, the cramped fare gate area, or the dirty walls. Government Center is a relic of an era when architects openly longed for the aesthetic of the Soviet Union. A time when it was desired to have design that intentionally repelled life, in order to crush people's spirits, and send them fleeing from the city. Good riddance to all that. Now: what to do about the oversized, desolate plaza and the concrete monstrosity next door...
(film scenes source: DVD of "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", Paramount Pictures)
(film scenes source: DVD of "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", Paramount Pictures)
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Hey, at least the subway stations and entrances that the Soviet Union built tended to be both nicer looking and more functional than Government Center. A major city center transfer station would probably have a proper headhouse, or at least a spacious underground vestibule with plenty of room for passenger flows. And while a lot of Soviet architecture did tend toward the modernist and ugly, subway stations were always fairly conservative, and even the cheapest and simplest-lookings ones were fairly nicely done. Though I admit that even in Moscow, there are a couple of outdoor concrete mostrosities that are just plain ugly.
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