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Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Urban Überplanning
Old courtyards in my neighborhood were built as factories in the mid-nineteenth century, when the middle of Berlin was an industrial warren of weavers and printers and other piece-workers who sometimes lived and slept next to their oily machines. The picture above shows the last unrenovated courtyard around. It hosts an alternative bookstore, a few artists' studios, an exceedingly hip (and secret), postindustrial, ironic-Gothic bar, and an Anne Frank Museum. This shabby dark aesthetic appeals to a lot of people who hate what Mitte is becoming -- a chic shopping and drinking district for wealthy tourists from London and Rome. The shabbiness is postwar, deep-Communist, and rapidly vanishing. It gives an idea of how the neighborhood looked in the glum years between 1945 and 1989.
Of course, if denial's your thing, here's what a developer did to the so-called "Rosenhöfe," a courtyard mere footsteps away:
Nice if you miss Beverly Hills. I don't.
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
10:54 AM
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